On Hallowed Ground

by Robert M Poole

  The Spanish-American War ended quickly. Spanish forces withdrew from Cuba on July 17, 1898, ending four centuries of colonial rule and giving the United States a new foothold in the Caribbean. At the same time, American troops seized Puerto Rico with little resistance; Commodore George Dewey routed Spain from the Philippines; Guam was ceded as U.S. territory; and Hawaii was annexed to round out American’s holdings in the Pacific. Summing up, John Hay, then U.S. ambassador to Britain, marveled at the ease with which these acquisitions had been snapped up. “It has been a splendid little war,” he wrote to his friend Theodore Roosevelt in July 1898, “begun with the highest motives, carried on with magnificent intelligence and spirit, favored by that fortune which loves the brave.”21

  In a matter of months, the United States had established itself as a world power with a new stake in international affairs, a condition that would exact unimagined responsibilities, and a great deal of blood, in the century to come.22

  Both Hay and Roosevelt might have considered the Spanish-American War considerably less splendid if more of their countrymen had perished in it—but relatively few did. Of more than 375,000 in uniform for the war and its aftermath in the Philippines, 460 died fighting, while 5,200 were killed by malaria, dysentery, typhoid, and yellow fever. In the Philippines, where occupation by U.S. forces precipitated an indigenous insurrection between 1899 and 1901, another 4,300 Americans died. Compared to the enormous slaughter of the Civil War, which claimed some 620,000 lives on both sides, the death toll from the new conflict seemed infinitesimal.

  Nonetheless, if nothing else the Civil War had taught that each fatality was a loss to be reckoned, a name to be recorded, a comrade to be buried with appropriate ceremony. This attention to detail grew out of the massive federal effort to recover and reinter almost 300,000 of the Union dead between 1865 and 1870. That program set new standards for diligence and raised public expectations for those who had sacrificed all for the nation.23

  Few better understood the importance of honoring fallen warriors than President McKinley, who had seen battle firsthand and realized the agonies of losing comrades among the Civil War’s thousands of unknowns. In that conflict of long marches, moving fronts, and hurried battlefield burials, months or years had elapsed between the deaths of soldiers and the effort to recover them, a major factor in the extraordinary number of Civil War graves without names on them. To avoid this outcome in the new conflict, McKinley ordered specialized teams to Cuba and Puerto Rico as soon as the fighting ended, so that each battlefield grave could be quickly found, fixed with a marker, and if possible its occupant identified.24 Less than a week after the guns fell silent on San Juan Hill, Congress appropriated funds to disinter and repatriate the remains of all Americans who died in the war.25 This recovery program set a significant precedent for the United States, which for the first time pledged to bring dead servicemen home from overseas instead of burying them on foreign soil if their next of kin requested repatriation.26

  Brig. Gen. Marshall I. Ludington, the quartermaster who oversaw the global repatriation effort, realized the historic importance of the new policy,“probably the first attempt in history where a country at war with a foreign power has undertaken to disinter the remains of its soldiers … and bring them by a long sea voyage to their native land for return to their relatives and friends, or their reinterment in the beautiful cemeteries which have been provided by our government.”27

  To begin the homecoming process, the War Department dispatched D. H. Rhodes, a landscape gardener at Arlington and inspector of national cemeteries, to provide a full accounting of the dead from America’s splendid little war. Arriving in Cuba in August 1898, hot on the heels of departing Spaniards, Rhodes slogged over a hundred miles of backwoods trails, and through swamps and abandoned hospital camps, surveying gravesites every day for five weeks. It took some detective work, since most graves were crudely marked with sticks, stones, broken tiles, bits of tin, strips of boxes—whatever was handy at the time of burial. “In many cases,” Rhodes said of the burial sites, “these had become covered with vines, weeds, grass, etc., rendering the grave difficult to be found, even when only a few feet distant.” Working across the island, Rhodes discovered 654 graves of U.S. soldiers and civilians associated with the war, clearly marked the sites, and kept meticulous notes for each. He managed to identify 141 of the dead on the spot from well-marked graves, interviews with army comrades, uniform insignia, and, in more than a few instances, from ginger ale bottles containing slips of paper identifying the deceased—probably left by burial crews.28

  “In each case where a grave or trench was found unmarked, or where a temporary marker had become totally obliterated,” Rhodes reported, his crews put up “a headboard with the words ‘Unknown United States Solider’ and the proper grave number, in order to identify and preserve this spot as that of a grave.” When Rhodes finished his Cuban mission, he sailed on to Puerto Rico, identified and marked graves there, and returned to Washington in October 1898 to await further orders.29

  They arrived with the New Year. By early February 1899 Rhodes was bound south again to oversee the return of remains from Cuba and Puerto Rico. Traveling with a team of forty-six undertakers, foremen, and laborers, Rhodes began disinterring warriors from graves he had identified the previous autumn. When the dead had been cleaned, placed in new zinc-lined caskets, and loaded onto army transports for the journey home, Rhodes sailed on to the Philippines, where he would direct disinterment operations for another two years.30

  When the repatriation program ended a few years later, the vast majority of those who died in the Spanish-American War were reburied with their identities intact. Only one in seven from the Caribbean theater (13.6 percent) was unidentified—a great improvement over the Civil War record, in which 42.5 percent of all war dead went to their graves without names.31 Virtually all of those recovered from the Pacific theater from 1899 through 1902 were identified, in part because Rhodes had by hard experience developed proficiency in the melancholy art of exhuming and identifying the dead. In 1901, for instance, when he shipped 1,073 Americans home from the Philippines, only 15 of them were unknowns; for each of these he prepared a careful report, including sketches and maps pinpointing not only the cemeteries from which they had been recovered but also the precise locations of individual graves.32 Rhodes improvised use of the “burial bottle” to preserve the identity of the dead through disinterments and transfers. His comrades wrote out the name, rank, and organization for each deceased serviceman, corked the paper in a bottle, and wrapped it into a blanket containing the remains to preserve the dead soldier’s identity.33

  In the next war, Rhodes’s bottle would be replaced by a simple but revolutionary piece of equipment—the dog tag. Stamped with the name, rank, and serial number of its bearer, the metal tag would speed identification and reduce errors. The inspiration for the dog tag is usually credited to Charles C. Pierce, an Army chaplain who helped recover the dead from the Philippines during the time that Rhodes worked there. The two men, working under separate commands, did not always get along, but by trial and error they developed practices that would improve methods for honoring America’s dead.34

  While Pierce and Rhodes sweltered in tropical morgues, President McKinley began a frantic campaign at home, where he was trying to end the war which he had never much wanted to start. The Treaty of Paris, signed on December 10, 1898, spelled out formal peace terms for Spain and the United States, but the agreement required Senate approval, along with a payment of twenty million dollars for acquisition of the Philippines. Ratification was by no means certain; a formidable coalition of conservative Senate Democrats and isolationist Republicans opposed the measure. To drum up crucial support for the treaty and to express his gratitude to those who had helped win the recent war, McKinley boarded a special train in Washington and headed south for the Peace Jubilee, a victory tour he kicked off in Atlanta on December 14, 1898.35

  How would this city of long memories
, reduced to ashes by Gen. William T. Sherman, receive a president who was not only a Republican but also a former Union major? The answer came roaring up from the Atlanta rail station on that biting cold morning as McKinley’s train chugged into view, screeched to a stop, and thousands of citizens cheered their welcome. The cheers exploded into thunder, punctuated by Rebel yells, when the first passenger bounded from the train and the crowd recognized the chipper form of Fighting Joe Wheeler, back from the wars. He would remain at McKinley’s side, providing legitimacy for the visiting President throughout his travels in Georgia.36

  Saluted by cannons and flag-waving children, this incongruous pair—one lugubrious and heavy with dignity, the other fidgeting like a terrier—made its way up the steps of the Georgia state house, where McKinley addressed a joint session of the legislature that afternoon. The president stunned his audience with an unexpected promise: from now on, he pledged, the federal government would take responsibility for the hundreds of neglected Confederate graves in northern states, long an irritant for the family and friends of those who had died in faraway battles, prison camps, or enemy hospitals.37

  “Every soldier’s grave made during our unfortunate Civil War is a tribute to American valor,” McKinley told the packed House chamber that day. Frequently interrupted by cheering and applause, he continued:

  And while when those graves were made we differed widely about the future of the government, these differences were long ago settled by the arbitrament of arms—and the time has now come … when in the spirit of fraternity we should share with you in the care of the graves of Confederate soldiers. The cordial feeling now happily existing between North and South prompts this gracious act, and if it needed further justification, it is found in the gallant loyalty to the Union and the flag so conspicuously shown in the year just passed by the sons and grandsons of these heroic dead … Sectional feeling no longer holds back the love we feel for each other … The old flag again waves over us in peace with new glories.38

  Here was proof that McKinley’s message of reconciliation was authentic, and its effect on those who heard him was electrifying. “When the President referred to the care of the graves of the Confederate soldiers,” the New York Times reported,“a wild cheer went up from every throat in the … Southern audience, a cheer that echoed and reached through the chamber until it was taken up by the crowds outside … One Confederate veteran, now a venerable legislator, had passed forward until he was leaning against the Speaker’s desk, hanging on every word the President uttered. When the reference was made to the Confederate dead this old man buried his head in his arms and, while cheers rang out, cried like a little child.”39

  The nation was reunited again, at least on the surface—a status that would soon manifest itself on Arlington’s green hills, where Confederates from Washington’s scattered cemeteries would be gathered in, reburied, and celebrated. In the meantime, President McKinley continued his tour, combining flattery for southern fighting spirit with an appeal for the Treaty of Paris. Only by ratifying the peace accord, he argued, could the nation honor those who had fought in the recent war. His southern audiences listened attentively and repaid McKinley’s goodwill. The president’s winter charm offensive, combined with strenuous lobbying and some well-aimed promises of patronage, paid off in Washington: On February 4, 1899, the Treaty of Paris squeaked through the Senate on a vote of sixty-one to thirty-nine, just one more than was needed to seal the peace. Last-minute conversions by Sens. Samuel D. McEnery of Louisiana and John L. McLaurin of South Carolina clinched the deal.40

  A few weeks later, on April 6, 1899, just as spring began to smooth the scars of winter in the capital, the first wave of dead soldiers from the Spanish-American War—336 in number—arrived for burial at Arlington, a solemn reminder that even short, agreeable wars required payment in blood.

  With government offices shuttered for the afternoon and flags lowered to half-staff throughout the city, the 4th Artillery Band, brushed and buttoned into their best red coats, formed ranks on a high hill at Arlington just southwest of the Lee mansion and launched into the first soothing strains of “Nearer, My God, to Thee,” welcoming home the warriors disinterred from Puerto Rico and Cuba over the winter. Two newly opened acres, still fragrant of freshly turned earth, had been laid out in straight trenches to receive the dead, their last stop on a long passage that had begun, for most, in high hopes and excitement the previous spring.41

  President McKinley led his cabinet and ranking military officers to the graveside at two thirty p.m. that day. They stood bareheaded as thousands of citizens crowded into the cemetery, some of them scrambling into Arlington’s trees for a better look at the long, long rows of flag-covered boxes, arranged with military exactness and attended by an escort of cavalry troopers, artillery units, marines, and infantry reservists, all with medals gleaming and uniforms ironed to a knife’s edge. Cannons from nearby Fort Myer rumbled tribute every half hour. The parents of an infantryman named John O’Dowd pressed through the multitude, broke into the open, placed a spray of roses on their son’s casket, and melted into the crowd again. A military chaplain read the Episcopal service; a Catholic priest, trailed by three acolytes, blessed the raw, red earth; and silence settled over Arlington. It was broken by a booming three-volley artillery salute; Taps quavered over the hills; army comrades crumbled clods of dirt over each new grave; the president and his entourage put on their hats and departed the cemetery. As dusk came down, Arlington’s laborers went to work, letting the heavy caskets down for the last time, a task that would take them two or three days to finish.42

  With minor variations, this ritual would be repeated at Arlington in successive months, which stretched into years, as hundreds of soldiers, sailors, marines, and civilians found their way home from the scattered theaters of the Spanish-American War. A new shipment of the dead arrived in May 1899, another in December of that year, more in 1900, still more in 1912.43

  President McKinley and all of Washington turned out to greet 150 dead warriors from the wreck of the Maine, who arrived from Cuba on December 28, 1899. The capital was blanketed in snow when caissons met the funeral train and set out for Arlington under cavalry escort. The fresh snow muffled the sound of horses’ hooves as the Maine men were conveyed to a new section of Arlington with a commanding view of the Lee mansion, the frosted pines fringing it, and the broad Potomac beyond, swirling with chunks of ice. Only seventy-four of the new arrivals could be positively identified; the other seventy-six went to their graves as unknowns. All were seen off by comrades and shipmates—a battalion of marines in scarlet coats and spiked hats, cavalry from Fort Myer with winter capes flapping in the wind, sailors from the U.S.S. Texas, the Maine’s sister ship, in thick blue jackets. The Maine’s old commander, Capt. Charles D. Sigsbee, presided over the ceremonies at Arlington that day, assisted by the ship’s chaplain, the Rev. John P. Chidwick, who had plucked many of his shattered and dying shipmates from Havana Harbor just the year before.44

  “With head bared to the wintry blast, this best-beloved of naval priests read the memorial service of his faith, consigned the dead, blessed the ground, repeated the Lord’s Prayer, and concluded with a fervent appeal for the repose of the souls of the departed,” the Washington Post reported. When Chidwick was done and the last notes of Taps faded, as if on cue a pair of gray-haired women moved deliberately down the line of flag-covered caskets, closely scrutinizing each one for a name. They told a reporter they were looking for their sons. They never found them, and the unnamed women vanished that day, just as their boys had done.45

  Thirteen years would pass before the rest of the Maine’s victims could be recovered from the wrecked ship and reunited at Arlington, where they were gathered in the shadow of the vessel’s mainmast, salvaged from Havana Harbor. Brought to Washington, raised at Arlington, and recast as a war monument in 1915, the mast became the centerpiece of the U.S.S. Maine Memorial. The shrine, designed by architect Nathaniel Wyeth, son of the artist N.
C. Wyeth, celebrated the individuals who slept around it, as well as the event that led the United States to war.

  President McKinley made good on his promise to assume the care of Confederate graves in the North, which closed the circle in his crusade for reconciliation.46 Even as the Spanish-American War dead were being repatriated through 1898 and 1899, Confederate veterans explored Civil War cemeteries around Washington to locate the graves of old comrades. They found Rebel tombs slumping, matted with weeds, and marked by rotting headboards, or by the same thin tombstones as those issued to former slaves and civilian employees of the quartermaster’s department.47 Veterans identified 128 Confederate graves at the Soldiers’ Home Cemetery in northwest Washington; another 136 were scattered through Arlington. All were teetering in a sad state of neglect—a sore point among those who had worn the gray.48

  One of these, a Washington-area physician named Samuel Edwin Lewis, asked McKinley to have the Rebels disinterred and removed to a plot at Arlington, where they would form the advance guard of a new Confederate section. Lewis argued that segregating former adversaries within the national cemetery not only would be appropriate but “would doubtless also be gratifying to many good people of the North.” McKinley promptly agreed, letting it be known that he would back legislation authorizing the initiative.49

  With this encouragement, two former Civil War enemies rolled up their sleeves and went to work on the legislation. Brig. Gen. Marcus J. Wright, a Tennessean who had fought for Confederates in the western theater, drafted a bill for the reburial program, while Sen. Joseph R. Hawley, a Connecticut native brevetted major general of Union volunteers, introduced the measure on Capitol Hill.50 Their bill provided two thousand five hundred dollars for disinterring Confederates in the Washington area and furnishing each with a new pine coffin and a prominent plot at Arlington, hard by recent burials from the Spanish-American War. In the brotherly spirit of those times, this legislation sailed through Congress without objection. President McKinley signed the bill into law on June 6, 1900, and the first interments were made the next year.51