Plantation to Cemetery!
The Story of General Lee’s Property
On June 17, the National Republican reported:
The ‘powers that be’ have been induced to appropriate two hundred acres, immediately around the house of General Lee, on Arlington Heights, for the burial of soldiers dying in the army hospitals of this city. The grounds are undulating, handsomely adorned, and in very respect admirably fitted for the sacred purpose to which they have been dedicated. The people of the entire nation will one day, not very far distant, heartily thank the initiators of this movement…. This and the contraband establishment there are righteous uses of the estate of the rebel General Lee, and will never dishonor the spot made venerable by the occupation of Washington.[25] http://www.nps.gov/arho/historyculture/cemetery.htm
Describing the hospitals, Washington journalist Noah Brooks wrote: “Maimed and wounded…. arrived by hundreds as long as the waves of sorrow came streaming back from the fields of slaughter…. They came groping, hobbling, and faltering, so faint and so longing for rest that one’s heart bled at the piteous sight.”[22] As many of these men died, cemeteries in the city and surrounding areas filled to capacity.
To relieve the desperate situation, the Army started burying soldiers along the northern border of the Arlington estate, approximately one half mile from the mansion-headquarters, in May of 1864.[23]Meanwhile, the office of Quartermaster General Montgomery Meigs set about the task of identifying an appropriate place for a new, offical cemetery. Meigs did not have to look very far.
As the Army had occupied Arlington since 1861 and the U.S. Government had legally purchased the property at public auction in January 1864, it emerged as a logical choice. The fact that the land had also been the plantation home of Robert E. Lee probably made it even more attractive to Meigs, who formally proposed Arlington as the site of the new cemetery in a letter to Secretary of War Stanton on June 15, 1864. The same day, Stanton approved Meigs’ recommendation and instructed that part of the Arlington Estate, “not exceeding two hundred acres” be surveyed and laid out for the national cemetery.[24] http://www.nps.gov/arho/historyculture/cemetery.htm
As it turned out, the Lees would never return to live at Arlington again. Whether influenced by Meigs’ efforts to make the mansion uninhabitable or not, Robert E. Lee and his wife decided not to pursue regaining the title to the mansion after the War.[31] Instead, the former Confederate General and his family settled in Lexington, Virginia where he spent the last five years of his life as the President of tiny Washington College. While the family was later compensated for the estate, the Lees would never again reside on the property.[32]Meigs got his wish and the Cemetery became a permanent feature at Arlington.
http://www.nps.gov/arho/historyculture/cemetery.htm