December 26, 1799, Washington, D.C.
As the Nation mourned the
death of its first President, a somber mood hung over the halls of
Congress. Slowly the former governor of that President's home
state of Virginia, now a member of the House of Representatives, stood
to his feet to eulogize his friend. Little did he know the
historic impact of his simple, but powerful eulogy....
"First
in war, first in peace,
first in the hearts of his countrymen."
Slowly the congressman sat
back down. A war hero in his own right, former General Henry
"Light-Horse Harry" Lee would miss his friend...George
Washington.
George Washington
had loved this area...had surveyed the landscape nearby as a
17-year old boy. For that reason, when assigned by Congress
to select an area for our Nation's capitol, he had looked not far
from his home at Mount Vernon, and selected the site near
Georgetown that would become the District of Columbia.
Overlooking that district on the other side of the Potomac was the
lush landscape of an 1,100 acre tract that now would pass to the
President's heirs.
George and Martha
Washington had no children of their own, but the widowed Martha
Dandridge Custis had brought two children to the family when the
couple married in 1759. John Parke and Martha Parke Custis
had grown up under the fatherly hand of George Washington.
John named a son in his step father's honor, George Washington
Parke Custis. When John Parke was killed at Yorktown in
1781, George and Martha Washington adopted two of their
grandchildren. It was, therefore, the step-grandson of
George Washington who would receive the estate of the Washington/Custis
family. Included in that estate was the 1,100 acres
overlooking the Capitol.
In 1802 George
Washington Parke Custis began building his estate on the hillside
overlooking the Capitol. Initially he considered naming it
"Mount Washington" in honor the step-grandfather who had
raised him, then opted to call it Arlington. George Custis's
own father had purchased the tract only three years before his
death at Yorktown, and Arlington had been the name of the Custis
family ancestral estate in Virginia.
ARLINGTON HOUSE
became the home of George Washington Parke Custis and his wife
Mary Lee, and they moved into it shortly after the south wing was
completed in 1802. In all, it would take 16 years to
complete the sprawling complex that measured 140 feet from north
wing to south wing. Designed by George Hadfield, an English
architect who had assisted in the design of the Capitol itself,
the front portico featured eight columns, each 5 feet wide at the
base. It was inside this house that George Custis built a
memorial to his grandfather, filling one wing with portraits and
personal papers of his grandfather, George Washington. It
was also in this house that Mary Lee gave birth to the couple's
only child, a girl they named Mary Anna Randolph Custis.
In 1831 Mary Anna
married her childhood sweetheart, a young man from a family that
would have made her great-grandfather very proud. Mary Anna
married the son of "Light-Horse Harry" Lee, a young,
aspiring soldier named Robert. Young Lee attended the
Military Academy at West Point, graduating second in his
class. He and Mary Anna also began their own family with the
birth of a son they named George Washington Custis Lee.
When Mary Anna's
parents died in 1857, the 40-year old Robert E. Lee came home from
his position as superintendent of the same Academy from which he
had graduated. As title to Arlington House passed to his
wife (such title often remained within the blood-ties of the
family name and was not viewed as community property), Robert E.
Lee took it upon himself to restore areas of the large Greek
Revival-style house. As the couple set about the tasks of
raising their own family, the prominent structure overlooking our
Nation's capitol became known as the Custis-Lee Mansion.
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On
November 6, 1860 Abraham Lincoln was elected president of the 34
United States of America. One month later, the political
leaders in the State of South Carolina met in St. Andrew's Hall
in Charleston. In 22 minutes they discussed, then voted to
approve an unusual declaration:
"We,
the people of South Carolina, in convention assembled, do
declare and ordain....that the union now subsisting between
South Carolina and other states under the name of the United
States of America is hereby disolved."
It
was the opening steps in what would soon become a civil war.
One by one, additional southern states followed South Carolina's
lead, and conflict became more inescapable. General Winfield
Scott called upon the patriotism, leadership and courage General
Robert E. Lee had demonstrated throughout a distinguished military
career and offered the resident of the Custis-Lee Mansion command
of the Army of the Potomac. In the early months of 1861,
Virginia had maintained a neutral status towards the secession of
other southern states, and Lee prefered to keep it that way.
He declined Scott's offer. By April 17th, however, Virginia
could stay neutral no longer, and became the 7th of what would be
the 11 Confederate States of America. Three days later,
General Robert E. Lee resigned his commission in the United States
Army, then offered his military services to his home state of
Virginia...a Confederate Army.
The
following month, the son of Revolutionary War hero Henry
"Light-Horse" Lee wrote to his wife at Arlington: "War
is inevitable, and there is no telling when it will burst around
you...You have to move (from Arlington) and make arrangements to
go to some point of safety which you must select. The Mount
Vernon plate and pictures ought to be secured. Keep quiet
while you remain, and in your preparations...May God keep and
preserve you and have mercy on all our people. With
that, the descendants of the Father of our Country, moved to
another estate in the vast Virginia holdings of the Washington/Custis/Lee
family. With them they took, and secured, the precious
George Washington collection so laboriously put together by Mary
Anna's father.
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Almost
as quickly and the Lee family departed the estate they loved and called
home, the Union Army moved across the Potomac and began using the
rolling hills around Arlington House. By 1862 the Lee family owed
$92.07 in taxes on their former estate. To settle the tax matter,
either General Robert E. Lee, or his wife...the great-granddaughter of
George Washington, would have leave their Southern sanctuary to pay the
debt in person. It was an unwinnable situation. Under the
"Act for the Collection of Direct Taxes in the Insurrectionary
Districts within the United States", the federal government in
Washington, D.C. confiscated the land once part of George Washington's
own family.
Under
Brigadier General Irvin McDowell, the 1,100-acre plot became a buffer
zone on the border between the Capitol City and the
"Insurrectionists". It was the ideal location for a
hospital, and two military forts were erected to defend it (Fort Whipple
which later became Fort Myer and Fort McPherson). On January
11, 1865 the federal government offered Arlington House and its land for
sale at public auction. It was purchased by a tax commissioner
"for government use, for war, military, charitable and educational
purposes." It was the open door for the man who now commanded
the garrison at Arlington House to vent his hatred for Robert E. Lee.
Brigadier
General Montgomery Meigs jealousy for Robert E. Lee predated the
beginning of the Civil War, and General Lee's defection to the
Confederacy only fueled the fire. By the Spring of 1864 a Nation
wearied by three years of Civil War, tragic battles at places like
Shiloh, Antietam, Gettysburg, Chickamauga and others, waited desperately
for an end to war. General Meigs was determined to insure that
Robert E. Lee would never return to Arlington. On May 13, 1864
Union Private William Christman became the first American to be buried
on the grounds at Arlington. Meigs excavated the once-beautiful
rose garden to create a 10-foot-deep stone and masonry vault to inter
the remains of 1,800 soldiers killed in 1862 Battle of Bull Run near
Manassas, Virginia. By the time the Civil War ended, more than
16,000 Union soldiers were interred on the grounds of Robert and Mary
Anna Lee's estate. General Meigs vendetta proved a success, Robert
E. Lee never returned to claim the now uninhabitable estate for his son,
George Washington Custis Lee. In 1870 Robert E. Lee died and was
buried in the chapel of Washington and Lee University in Lexington,
Virginia. In 1892 General Meigs died in Washington, D.C. He
was buried nearby in what was now a National Cemetery...only 100 yards
from Arlington House.
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