JANUARY 23, 2009 Army Spec. Joseph Hernandez, killed by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan, is buried in a full-honors ceremony at Arlington. He is the first enlisted man to be accorded such honors, extended to all service members killed in action. Full honors at Arlington include a bugler, a firing party, a casket team, a marching platoon, a military band, a caisson, and a folded flag.
FEBRUARY 2009 Arlington plans to expand to more than 680 acres by annexing adjacent land. This creates space for a total capacity of 400,000 burials and inurnments, ensuring that the cemetery will remain active until 2060.
APPENDIX II
REGULATIONS FOR BURIAL
Qualifying for Burial or Inurnment at Arlington
BURIAL
Current and former presidents of the United States
Any former member of the Armed Forces who served on active duty and held an elective office of the federal government or the office of chief justice or associate justice of the Supreme Court
Service members on active duty
Those with at least twenty years of active duty
Those on active reserve who qualify for pay upon retirement or retire at age sixty
Those retired for disability
Veterans honorably discharged with a disability of 30 percent or greater before October 1, 1949
Those who have received one of the following: the Medal of Honor, the Distinguished Service Cross, the Air Force Cross, the Navy Cross, the Distinguished Service Medal, the Silver Star, or the Purple Heart
Former prisoners of war
Spouses or unmarried minors of any of the above
INURNMENT
Any of those qualifying for in-ground burial
Any veteran whose last discharge was honorable
Spouses or unmarried minors of any of the above
EXCEPTIONS
The president can make exceptions to regulations on recommendation of the Secretary of the Army
For more detailed information, write to:
The Superintendent, Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington, VA 22211 or visitwww.arlingtoncemetery.org
NOTES AND SOURCES
Any reader who has gotten this far knows that On Hallowed Ground reaches across a broad expanse of time and geography, far beyond the well-fenced borders of Arlington National Cemetery. For this reason, I am indebted to an army of writers who have gone before me, exploring parts of the Arlington story I had no hope of mastering to the extent they have done. I freely acknowledge my obligation to:
Ernest B. Furgurson and the late Margaret Leech, for their studies of Washington in the Civil War, Freedom Rising and Reveille in Washington, respectively, and to Margaret Leech for her book In the Days of McKinley, which treats the McKinley presidency and the Spanish-American War.
The best recent biography of Robert E. Lee is Reading the Man, brilliantly researched and written by Elizabeth Brown Pryor. Her book should be read in apposition to Emory Thomas’s Robert E. Lee. Thomas judges his subject by what Lee did, Pryor by what Lee said or wrote. Both make for compelling reading. The most thorough study of Lee is the late Douglas Southall Freeman’s four-volume R. E. Lee: A Biography, considered to be inexcusably old-fashioned and worshipful these days—but it is essential reading for anyone exploring the general’s life. Murray H. Nelligan, a former historian for the National Park Service, has written the definitive study of the Lee family estate and its restoration in Arlington House.
No history of Arlington National Cemetery would be complete without attention to the clear-eyed work of Drew Gilpin Faust, whose book This Republic of Sufferingexamines American attitudes toward death at the time of the Civil War and recounts the nation’s remarkable effort to recover, rebury, and honor those sacrificed to the conflict.
For much of the material on Washington’s landscape design and Arlington’s place in it, I leaned on Grand Avenues, an entertaining and diligently researched study of Pierre L’En-fant by Scott W. Berg. Jennifer Hanna’s book Cultural Landscape Report: Arlington House, The Robert E. Lee Mansion, is a detailed study of how the people living and working at Arlington have shaped its character, from precolonial times to the present.
The late Barbara Tuchman provides a beautifully written and thoroughly documented account of conditions leading to World War I in The Proud Tower and in her magisterial The Guns of August. By far the best single volume on that conflict is John Keegan’s The World War. To examine the traditions that inspired Americans to honor an unknown serviceman from World War I, see Neil Hanson’s Unknown Soldiers, which takes place largely in Europe but includes an excellent chapter on the Unknown’s path to Arlington.
Thomas B. Allen and Paul Dickson, two friends from Washington, D.C., documented the veterans’ march on the capital following World War I in their book, The Bonus Army, which provided material for my treatment of the subject.
The late William Manchester’s minute-by-minute account of President Kennedy’s funeral, The Death of a President, was the starting point for Chapter 12. I benefited greatly from selected portions of Manchester’s research files, which were generously made available to me by Wesleyan University. Recent oral histories gathered by Kenneth S. Pond and other members of the Army’s Old Guard provided fresh perspectives on an exhaustively covered event.
Finally, I wish to acknowledge an enormous debt to Steve Vogel of The Washington Post. His recent book, The Pentagon: A History, is a marvel of painstaking research and fine storytelling, the bedrock on which my Chapter 10 was constructed.
Full citations for these references appear below.
To save space in the endnotes, I have employed these abbreviations:
PROLOGUE
1. Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian Wars(New York: Penguin Books, 1972) 143.
2. Caroline Alexander, “Across the River Styx,” New Yorker, Nov. 25, 2004, 47
3. The three-rifle salute, which is rendered at all honors funerals, may be rooted in the ancient burial practices of Rome. Guided by a belief in numerology, Romans held the number three to be auspicious. When a friend or family member was buried, loved ones cast three handfuls of earth onto the coffin and called out the name of the dead three times to conclude the ceremony.
1: LEAVING ARLINGTON
1. Douglas Southall Freeman, R. E. Lee: A Biography, (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1936), I: 440.
2. Ibid., 439.
3. Margaret Leech, Reveille in Washington: 1860–1865 (New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1941), 56-64.
4. Ibid.; Ernest B. Furgurson, Freedom Rising: Washington in the Civil War (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004), 63-98.
5. Robert E. Lee to Mary Custis Lee, May 11, May 25, June 11, Dec. 25, 1861; Robert E. Lee to Mildred Lee, Dec. 25, 1862, D-E Collection, LOC; Robert E. Lee to G. W. C. Lee, Mar. 17, 1858, in Murray Nelligan, Arlington House: The Story of the Lee Mansion Historical Monument (Burke, VA: Chatelaine Press, 2005), 404.
6. Robert E. Lee to Martha Custis “Markie” Williams, Mar. 15, 1854, D-E Collection, LOC.
7. Of the 196 slaves Mrs. Lee inherited, 63 lived on the Arlington estate; the others worked on the White House and Romancock farms.
8. “Romancock” was renamed “Romancoke” by the Lee family; for the sake of clarity, I have retained the original name throughout.
9. Nelligan, 126; Godfrey T. Vigne, Six Months in America (London: Whittaker, Treacher & Co., 1831), 147.
10. Emory M. Thomas, Robert E. Lee (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1997), 144.
11. Ibid.
12. Nelligan, 359.
13. Robert E. Lee to W. H. F. Lee, Aug. 7, 1858, in Nelligan, 356.
14. Slaves also escaped when Custis was running the plantation. He offered a $50 reward for the return of a twenty-four-year-old named Eleanor. Daily National Intelligencer, Oct. 29, 1829, in AHA.
15. Records of Arlington County, Virginia, March 15, May 22, June 29, and July 23, 1858, in Will Book 7, pp. 485, 487, 488 in AHA.
16. Freeman, I: 390–94.
> 17. Robert E. Lee to G. W. C. Lee, July 2, 1859, in Freeman I: 392.
18. Robert E. Lee to E. S. Quirk, March 1, 1866, in Michael Fellman, The Making of Robert E. Lee (New York: Random House, 2000), 67.
19. Records of Arlington County, Virginia, Will Book 7, 485, 487, 488, 490 in AHA.
20. Robert E. Lee to Mary Custis Lee, Dec. 27, 1856, in Thomas, 173.
21. Robert E. Lee to G. W. C. Lee, July 2, 1859, in Nelligan, 359.
22. Robert E. Lee to Edward C. Turner, Feb. 12, 1858, in Nelligan, 354.
23. Robert E. Lee to Anne Lee, August 27, 1860, in Thomas, 184.
24. Freeman, I:428–29.
25. Robert E. Lee to W. H. F. Lee, Dec. 3, 1860, in Thomas, 186.
26. Thomas, 187.
27. Diary of Robert E. Lee, March 1, 1861, D-E Collection, LOC.
28. Clifford Dowdey and Louis H. Manarin, eds., The wartime Papers of R. E. Lee (New York: Bramhall House, 1961), 3.
29. Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005), 350, quoting from William Ernest Smith, The Francis Preston Blair Family in Politics (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1933), II:17. Douglas Southall Freeman was skeptical of the quotation attributed to Lee, which was based on the secondhand testimony of Montgomery Blair, the son of Francis Preston Blair. While the sense of the quotation is plausible, Freeman doubted that Lee would have expressed reluctance to draw his sword upon Virginia on April 18, 1861, when he did not yet know that Virginia had seceded. Freeman, I: 633–35.
30. J. William Jones, Personal Reminiscences, Anecdotes, and Letters of General Robert E. Lee (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1875), 141.
31. Thomas, 145.
32. Freeman, I: 437.
33. Robert E. Lee to Sydney Smith Lee, April 20, 1861, Wartime Papers, 10.
34. Freeman, I: 439.
35. Agnes Lee to Mildred Lee, April 18, 1861, D-E Collection, LOC.
36. George L. Upshur, As I Recall Them: Memories of Crowded Years (New York: Wilson-Erickson, Inc. 1936), 16.
37. Grace H. Sharp, “Colored Servant of Adopted Son of George Washington,” Christian Science Monitor, Sept. 24, 1924. The slave James Parks was born at Arlington, spent most of the war there, and continued to work there as a laborer after the war. Reporters and historians describe him as an honest witness who never exaggerated his role and admitted it when he could not provide answers. Although his memory was generally reliable, he confused a few facts in old age—but not many. I have quoted him accurately, but in the interest of clarity, I have translated into standard English the stereo typical dialect ascribed to him.
38. Freeman, I: 442.
39. Robert E. Lee to Simon Cameron, April 20, 1861, in Wartime Papers, 9.
40. Robert E. Lee to Winfield Scott, April 20, 1861, in Wartime Papers, 8–9.
41. Robert E. Lee to Sydney Smith Lee, April 20, 1861, in Wartime Papers, 10–11.
42. Robert E. Lee to Mrs. Anne Lee Marshall, April 20, 1861, in Wartime Papers, 9–10.
43. Goodwin, 351.
44. Freeman, I:434.
45. W. W. Scott, “Some Reminiscences of Famous Men,” Southern Magazine, July 1894.
46. Robert E. Lee, “Speech to the Virginia Commission Upon Acceptance of Command of Virginia Forces,” April 23, 1861, and Robert E. Lee, “General Orders, No. 1,” April 23, 1861, both in Wartime Papers, 11.
2: OCCUPATION
1. Mary Custis Lee, “Manuscript Statement,” Sept. 1866, in Murray Nelligan, Arlington House: The Story of the Lee Mansion Historical Monument (Burke, VA: Chatelaine Press, 2005), 393.
2. Nelligan, 393; Karen Byrne Kinzey, interviewed by author, March 7, 2006.
3. A few weeks after his warning to Mrs. Lee, Orton Williams resigned from the Union Army, joined the Confederates, and saw several years of fighting. Captured behind Union lines in 1863 while disguised as a federal officer, he was accused of spying and hanged the next day.
4. Nelligan, 393–94.
5. Mary Custis Lee to B. J. Lossing, May 1, 1861, D-E Collection, LOC.
6. Mary Custis Lee to Robert E. Lee, May 9, 1861, D-E Collection, LOC; see also Jennifer Hanna, Arlington House, The Robert E. Lee Memorial, Cultural Landscape Report (Washington D.C.: National Park Service, 2001), 65.
7. Robert E. Lee to Mary Custis Lee, April 26, 1861, in The wartime Papers of R. E. Lee, ed. Clifford Dowdey and Louis H. Manarin (New York: Bramhall House, 1961), 13.
8. Robert E. Lee to Mary Custis Lee, April 30, 1861, in Wartime Papers, 15.
9. “Encampment of the Fire Zouaves,” The New York Daily Tribune, May 10, 1861, in AHA.
10. The New York Daily Tribune, May 17, 1861, in AHA.
11. Robert E. Lee to Mary Custis Lee, May 11, 1861, D-E Collection, LOC.
12. Thomas, 194.
13. Wartime Papers, 20, 22, 23, 27–28.
14. The New York Daily Tribune, May 9, 1861, in AHA.
15. Ernest B. Furgurson, Freedom Rising: Washington in the Civil War (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004), 89.
16. David W. Miller, Second Only to Grant (Shippensburg, PA: White Mane Books, 2000), 89–90.
17. Miller, 95.
18. Furgurson, 52.
19. Mary Custis Lee to Mildred Lee, May 11, 1861, D-E Collection, LOC.
20. Mary Custis Lee to Mildred Lee, May 5, 1861, D-E Collection, LOC.
21. Nelligan, 396.
22. Douglas Southall Freeman, R. E. Lee: A Biography (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1936), I: 508.
23. The War of the Rebellion: a compilation of the official sources of the Union and Confederate Armies (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1880), Series I, Vol. 2, 39–41, hereafter O.R.; Margaret Leech, Reveille in Washington: 1860–1865 (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1941), 80.
24. Grace H. Sharp, “Colored Servant of Adopted Son of George Washington,” The Christian Science Monitor, Sept. 24, 1924, in AHA.
25. Richard H. Schneider, Taps: Notes from a Nation’s Heart (New York: William Morrow, 2002), 5–12.
26. O.R., Series I, Vol. 2, 39–42; “The Seventh In Virginia Friday,” The New York Times, May 28, 1861; Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Weekly,New York, June 1, 1861; Furgurson, 93–94.
27. Maj. Gen. S. P. Heintzelman to Lt. Gen. Winfield Scott, July 29, 1863, in O.R., Series I, Vol. 2, 39–42.
28. O.R., Series I, Vol. 2, 39–42; Brig. Gen. Irvin McDowell to Mrs. R. E. Lee, May 30, 1861, O.R. Series 1, Vol. 2, 655.
29. The New York Times, May 27–28, 1861; O.R., Series I, Vol. 2, 39–42; Edward W. Emerson, Life and Letters of Charles Russell Lowell ( Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1907), 207.
30. Robert E. Lee to Mary Custis Lee, June 9, 1861, Wartime Papers, 45; Emory M. Thomas, Robert E. Lee (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1997), 198.
31. O.R., Series I, Vol. 2, 39–42; Pictorial War Record, Jan. 28, 1882.
32. Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, June 15, 1861, AHA.
33. Nelligan, 407.
34. Mary Custis Lee to Maj. Gen. Charles W. Sandford, May 30, 1861, VHS.
35. Robert E. Lee to Mary Custis Lee, May 25, 1861, Wartime Papers, 36.
36. Robert E. Lee to Mary Custis Lee, June 24, 1861, Wartime Papers, 53.
37. Robert E. Lee to Mary Custis Lee, June 11, 1861, D-E Collection, LOC.
38. Thomas, 196.
39. Mary Custis Lee to Maj. Gen. Charles W. Sandford, May 30, 1861, VHS. Mrs. Lee’s “my boy Billy” is Billy Taylor, one of two slaves who stayed with her throughout the war. The author can find no record of the slave Mrs. Lee called Marcellina; perhaps she is referring to Magdalena Parks, one of Lawrence Parks’s nine children. Robert E. Lee took slaves with him too—among them was a man named Meredith, otherwise unidentified; George Parks, a cook; and Perry Parks, a valet. George and Perry Parks, brothers of James Parks, continued working for Lee after their emancipation, at which point they were paid for their labors.
40. Brig. Gen. Irvin McDowell to Mary Custis Lee, May 30, 1861, in O.R. Series I, Vol. 2, 655.
41. The New York Daily News, July 9, 1861, AHA.
42. The National Republican, July 12, 1861, AHA.
43. War Department, “Arlington House,” interview with Mrs. Emma Syphax and Mrs. Sarah Wilson, Dec. 16, 1929, AHA.
44. Diary of Maj. Gen. S. P. Heintzelman, May 26, 1861, in Nelligan, 401; Karen Byrne Kinzey, interviewed by author, March 7, 2006.
45. Sketch by anonymous Union soldier, c. 1863, AHA.
46. Karen Byrne Kinzey, “The Remarkable Legacy of Selina Gray,” CRM 4, (1998), 22.
47. Furgurson, 105–6.
48. Furgurson, 116; Leech, 86.
49. Brig. Gen. Irvin McDowell to Lt. Col E. D. Townsend, July 21 and July 22, 1861, in O.R. Series I, Vol. 2, 316.
50. Furgurson, 122–3.
51. Mrs. Annice Baker, daughter of Selina and Thornton Gray, The Evening Star, Washington, D.C., Dec. 11, 1950, in Virginia Room, ACL.
52. Leech, 102.
53. Furgurson, 121.
54. Leech, 107.
55. William T. Sherman, William Tecumseh Sherman: Memoirs of General W.T. Sherman (New York: Library of America, 1990), 199.
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