Lee Arlington House

ErnieMac

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Arlington House, the home of Colonel Robert E. Lee and his family, was owned and built under the direction of George Washington Parke Custis, the adopted grandson of George Washington and natural grandson of his wife, Martha. Upon Custis’ death in 1857 the estate passed to his daughter and only child, Mary Anna Custis Lee, wife of Robert E. Lee. (Lee never owned of the property as Custis’ will had provided Arlington would go to his eldest Grandson, George Washington Custis Lee upon Mary’s death.)

In April 1861, Virginia seceded from the United States. Robert E. Lee resigned his commission in the United States Army on April 20, 1861, and left for Richmond. On May 7, Virginia militia occupied Arlington and Arlington House. With Confederate forces occupying Arlington's high ground, Washington DC would be left in an untenable military position. Mary Lee believed her estate would soon be invested with federal soldiers so she packed such possessions as she could and left for the Confederacy. On May 3, General Winfield Scott ordered the occupation Arlington and nearby Alexandria which occurred on May 24. The Lee’s would never step foot in the mansion again.

On June 7, 1862, the U.S. Congress enacted the Act for the Collection of Taxes in the Insurrectionary Districts which imposed a property tax on all land in "insurrectionary" areas of the United States. The Act was amended in 1863 to require the taxes to be paid in person by the owner of the property. The presumption was that few Confederate owners would appear in person to pay the tax, allowing the federal government to seize the properties and auction them to raise money for the war.

A tax of $92.07 was levied on the Arlington estate in 1863. Mary Lee sent the payment to her cousin, Philip R. Fendall, a resident of Alexandria, but the tax collectors refused to accept the payment. On January 11, 1864, the entire estate was auctioned off to pay the tax due. The U.S. government was the only bidder and won the property for $26,800.

At the same time the cemeteries around Washington used for the burial of fallen Union soldiers were filling rapidly. Quartermaster General of the United States Army Montgomery C. Meigs proposed using 200 acres (81 ha) of the Arlington estate as a cemetery. The first burial there was made on May 13, 1864. Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton gave formal approval to the establishment of a military cemetery on June 15, 1864, creating Arlington National Cemetery.

Initial burials were made at some distance north and east of the mansion. But that would soon change. Meigs held the Confederate leadership responsible for the war and none more so than Robert E. Lee. He directed that burials be put right up against the mansion and personally saw that done. By the end of the war in April 1865, more than 16,000 soldiers had been buried at Arlington. In September 1866, a memorial and a burial vault (containing the remains of 2,111 U.S. and Confederate soldiers who died at the First Battle of Bull Run, Second Battle of Bull Run, and along the Rappahannock River) were buried in Lee's former rose garden on the mansion's east side beneath the Civil War Unknowns Monument, a memorial to honor unknown soldiers who had died during the American Civil War.

Robert never returned to Arlington, Mary visited once but was physically unable to leave her carriage. After their deaths Custis Lee filed suit to regain title to the property and won a 5-4 decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in 1882. Realizing the impossibility of restoring the estate he agreed to sell Arlington to the U.S. Government for $150,000.
 
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I didn't realize that the Lee family actually regained title to the property. I always felt the government's use of Arlington as a cemetery so soon after it was "confiscated" was a bit more vindictive than necessary, despite the fact that the war understandably made feelings run high.
 
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