Arlington National Cemetery

The military burial ground and shrine of the United States, Arlington National Cemetery lies on the south bank of the Potomac River, directly opposite Washington, D. C. The land originally belonged to Martha Washington, wife of President George Washington, and passed down through her grandson George Washington Parke Custis to his daughter, Mary Anne Custis. In 1831 Mary Anne married army officer Robert E. Lee, who became strongly attached to the Arlington estate. After Lee sided with the Confederacy in 1861, however, the Union government began a policy of confiscating Southern property to subsidize the war effort, and it seized the estate. (When the Custis family sued for their rights to the land in 1882, the Supreme Court sided with them, and they received $150,000 in compensation.)

Battles fought near the capital necessitated nearby burial sites, and early in the Civil War several hundred dead were interred at Arlington in makeshift graves. In 1864

Quartermaster General Montgomery C. Meigs, who was responsible for the burial of military dead, suggested that the government turn the 200-acre facility into a national military cemetery. He did so less out of altruism than anger against Lee and the Confederacy. Secretary Edwin M. Stanton concurred with the decision, and by 1865 16,000 Union dead had been interred at Arlington, including several thousand unknown soldiers and a handful of Confederates. Among the dead was Meigs’s own son, John Rodgers Meigs, who had been killed by Confederate guerrillas. On the first Decoration Day (Memorial Day) in 1868, a vengeful Meigs specifically denied entry to all Southern women who had come to honor Confederate dead.

Animosities subsided slowly. It was not until 1898 that President William McKinley, addressing a new generation of Americans, was able to thank former Confederate veterans for valuable service in the Spanish-American War. Two years later Congress authorized the addition of a Confederate section within Arlington, and in 1906 the United Daughters of the Coneederacy were allowed to erect a monument to Southern war dead.

The cemetery landscape has continued to develop since the first monument, the Tomb of the Unknown Dead of the Civil War, was dedicated in 1866. Subsequent additions to Arlington include the Memorial Amphitheater, whose cornerstone was laid by President Woodrow Wilson in 1913, and the mast of the battleship Maine, sunk just prior to the Spanish-American War in 1898. In 1921 President Warren G. Harding dedicated the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier as a memorial to all American combatants who fell in World War I; since 1937 the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier has been further distinguished by being constantly guarded by a uniformed military sentry. In 1958 President Dwight D. Eisenhower officiated over ceremonies in which a pair of unknown soldiers, one from World War II and one from the Korean War, were also interred in the structure, now renamed the Tomb of the Unknowns. In 1963 President John F. Kennedy was buried with military honors at Arlington, and his grave was supplied with an eternal flame.

Among the national military luminaries, buried on the site is one of the Civil War’s leading heroes—Philip H. Sheridan—along with more modern figures such as John Pershing, William F. Halsey, Omar Bradley, and Hyman G. Rickover. Gen. Lee, whose land was confiscated to create the cemetery, is also honored by having an avenue named after him. The facility now covers 420 acres of land and entombs 290,000 servicemen and - women of all services, each marked by an individual marble headstone. Arlington is thus one of the nation’s largest cemeteries, second only to the Calverton National Cemetery on Long Island, New York, in terms of headstones present. Arlington is also a popular tourist attraction, drawing millions of visitors yearly.

Further reading: Owen Andrews, Arlington National Cemetery: A Moment of Silence (Washington, D. C.: Preservation Press, 1994); Rick Atkinson, Where Valor Rests: Arlington National Cemetery (Washington, D. C.: National Geographic, 2007); Philip Bigler, In Honored Glory: Arlington National Cemetery, the Final Post (St. Petersburg, Fla.: Vandamere Press, 2005); George W. Dodge, Arlington National Cemetery (Charleston, S. C.: Arcadia Press, 2006); James E. Peters, Arlington National Cemetery, Shrine to America's Heroes (Bethesda, Md.: Woodbine House, 2000).

—John C. Fredriksen

Armistead, Lewis A. (1817-1863) Confederate army general

Confederate general Lewis Addison Armistead was born on February 18, 1817, in New Bern, North Carolina. His parents were army engineer Walker Keith Armistead and Elizabeth Stanly. Raised on his family’s farm near Upper-ville, Virginia, Armistead entered the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1834 but was expelled in 1836 for rowdy behavior. Through his father’s connections, he joined the Sixth U. S. Infantry as a second lieutenant in 1839, serving in Florida and the West. He fought in the Mexican-American War and was promoted for his bravery at the Battle of Churubusco in 1847. After the war, Armistead was assigned to frontier duty.

Armistead’s personal life was marked by tragedy. In 1844 he married fellow Virginian Cecelia Lee Love, who bore him a son and a daughter. The daughter and Cecelia both died in 1850. In 1853 Armistead married a Virginia widow, Cornelia Lee Taliaferro Jamison. An infant son died in 1854, and Cornelia succumbed to cholera in 1855. Armistead’s surviving son, Walker Keith Armistead, served as his aide-de-camp during the Civil War.

Stationed in the Far West in 1861, Armistead resigned from the army and returned to Virginia to fight for the Confederacy. Appointed as colonel of the 57th Virginia Infantry in 1861, Armistead was quickly promoted to brigadier general. He saw significant action in the Battles of Seven Pines and Malvern Hill and was wounded at the Battle oe Antietam.

Armistead’s heroism at the Battle oe Gettysburg, where his brigade fought in Pickett’s division, became legendary. Leading his brigade on foot during James Long-street’s assault on July 3, 1863, Armistead held his hat aloft on his sword for his men to follow. As the remnants of Pickett’s division reached the Federal position on Cemetery Ridge, Armistead shouted, “Come on boys, give them the cold steel. Who will follow me?” Mortally wounded, his final words were addressed to his close friend, Gen. Win-eield Scott Hancock: “Say to General Hancock for me that I have done him and you all a grievous injury for which I shall always regret.”

Further reading: Wayne Motts, Trust in God and Fear Nothing: Lewis A. Armistead, CSA (Gettysburg, Pa.: Farnsworth House, 1997).

—Amy J. Kinsel