Air Force Magazine – July-August 2019

36 JULY/AUGUST 2019 AIRFORCEMAG.COM JULY/AUGUST 2019 AIRFORCEMAG.COM 37

T

he day after Virginia voted to secede from the

union in 1861, US Army troops crossed the

Potomac and took a strategic hill overlooking

Washington, D.C. From a hilltop mansion built

by President George Washington’s adopted

grandson, they had a commanding view of the

White House and Capitol, and they quickly settled in on

the property. Almost exactly three years later, the first

American soldier was buried there.

There would be many more. The estate belonged to Mary

Custis Lee, wife of Gen. Robert E. Lee, and both she and

her children had been raised there. Lee, who had declined

President Abraham Lincoln’s offer to command the Union

Army in a fight against the South, had hoped to preserve the

property, but Union Gen. Montgomery C. Meigs had other

ideas. In his view, Lee was a traitor, and his punishment

deserved to be severe, personal, and lasting.

“I recommend,” Meigs wrote in June 1864 to Secretary of

War Edwin M. Stanton, that “the land surrounding the Arling-

ton Mansion, now understood to be the property of the United

States, be appropriated as a National Military Cemetery.”

Flash forward 155 years. Meigs never imagined more

than 200 acres would be needed, even in the midst of the

bloodiest war in American history. He certainly couldn’t

have envisioned that Arlington National Cemetery would

still be operating today, the final resting place for 375,000

men and women, sprawling out into 624 acres of rolling

hills, dotted with row after row of white marble headstones.

And at the present rate of activity, Arlington will run out of

its remaining 67,000 burial sites in about 12 years.

Arlington's

Southern

Expansion

By Brian W. Everstine

Photo: Mike Tsukamoto/staff

With space running out,

Arlington spreads out to surround

the US Air Force Memorial—and

to limit who can be buried on its

hallowed grounds.

With more than 20 million living veterans today, nearly

2 million currently serving members in the Active, Guard,

and Reserve components, and tens of thousands of new

veterans becoming eligible for burial at Arlington every

year, change is in the wind.

“It’s a tough reality,” Karen Durham-Aguilera, the ex-

ecutive director of Army National Military Cemeteries,

told lawmakers in March 2018. “We cannot serve that

population.”

The spires of

the Air Force

Memorial,

adjacent to

Arlington

National

Cemetery,

soar into the

evening sky as

visitors study

a black granite

wall inscribed

with Air Force

core values

such as valor,

integrity, and

service.

Arlington National Cemetery: A complex history

From the first military burial in Arlington National Cemetery in 1864 through

its pending southern expansion, America's most iconic military burial ground

has been steeped in history —and controversy.

1802: George Washington Parke Custis, the
adopted son of George Washington, builds
Arlington House on a hill overlooking the
Potomac River and the nation's capital.

1831: Custis’ daughter, Mary Anna, marries Lt.

Robert E. Lee in the main hall of the mansion.

The couple lives in the Custis-Lee mansion

and raise their children there.

May 1861: Militia occupy the

property and the Union Army

transforms Arlington House

into a military headquarters.

1864: Secretary of War Edwin Stanton

declares the grounds a military cem-

etery. The government acquires the

land at a tax sale for about $26,800.

1868: Gen. Ulysses S. Grant and

Gen. James Garfield attend the first

Decoration Day commemoration held

at the cemetery. Decoration Day is

eventually renamed Memorial Day.

March 1883: Custis Lee

sells the estate back to the

government for $150,000,

and the land becomes a

military reservation.

May 13, 1864: Pvt. William

Henry Christman is the

first non-family member

buried on the grounds.

1874: Custis Lee, the

heir to Robert E. Lee’s

estate, sues for owner-

ship of Arlington.

December 1882: The US Su-

preme Court rules 5-4 in Lee’s

favor that the property had

been confiscated without due

process, returning ownership

of the estate to Lee.

June 1900: Congress authorizes a Con-

federate section of the cemetery. Soldiers

of the Confederacy already interred at the

cemetery are moved to the new section

the following year.

June 4, 1914: A

memorial to Con-

federate soldiers is

constructed.

1887: The Army’s Quartermaster

General orders the closure of nearby

Freedman’s Village where the gov-

ernment constructed housing for up

to 3,000 freed slaves. In all, some

4,000 former slaves were buried in

Section 27 of the cemetery.

April 1861: Having de-

clined the Union Army,

Robert E. Lee takes

command of the Confed-

erate Army instead.

June 1862: Congress approves a law

to collect taxes on real estate in “in-

surrectionary districts,” leading to a

tax of $92.07 on the Custis-Lee estate

in Arlington.

1800 1820 1840 1860 1880 1900 1920

CHANGES COMING

For Arlington National Cemetery to remain an active

burial ground, something has to give. Two sets of changes

are coming: First is a major expansion, the first since the

Millennium Project begun in 2007—which was the first

expansion in almost 40 years. Surrounded by highways,

parks, the Pentagon, and other military facilities, space is

limited. But there is room on the south side of the cemetery,

where the former Navy Annex once stood, up the hill from