USA > Virginia > Arlington County > Arlington County > Historic Arlington. A history of the National cemetery from its establishment to the present time > Part 6
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By this time the disposal of the bodies of those who died at Washington became a serious problem. Gen. M. C. Meigs, then Quartermaster-General of the United States Army, was a man of infinite resources ; but taxed to the utmost by the constant de- mands made upon on all sides he had but little attention to bestow upon these seemingly minor questions. The proper and decent burial of all Union soldiers who died in service he recog- nized, however, as being of the greatest importance. Throughout the North there existed a belief, unfounded on facts, but strong among the masses, that the Union dead were carelessly and irrev- erently buried. This feeling engendered great bitterness among the very classes from which Gen. Meigs felt must come the bone and sinew of the Union Army. The effect of this growing feeling he did not attempt to underestimate, and the news coming at this time that there was no available ground in which to inter the bodies of those then dying in the near-by hospitals caused him to lay aside for a time his other pressing duties to devote his atten- tion entirely to this engrossing problem. He had several confer- ences with Secretary of War Stanton, who requested him to take
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immediate steps to quell the feeling arising in the North, and to provide, at any cost, adequate burial facilities.
Late in the afternoon on the 13th of May, 1864, Gen. Meigs left his office in the old War Department building, and buried in deep thought walked over into the grounds surrounding the White House, intent only on thinking out solutions to some of the many problems with which he had to contend. With eyes bent on the ground and enwrapped in thought he was just passing the White House portico when he was hailed by a familiar voice.
"Step in here, Meigs, and take a drive with me," said the Pres- ident, " you look tired and worn out ; you need a rest."
Gen. Meigs looked up quickly and saw the honest rugged face of Lincoln, lit by a half smile, more serious than mirthful.
Two iron grays stood pawing, restlessly impatient, and the soft cushions of the victoria looked invitingly comfortable. The Pres- ident threw open the low door and the Quartermaster-General entered the vehicle. A moment later the team clattered down the driveway and the carriage whirled rapidly away toward George- town.
The street over which they passed was not the smooth, asphalted thoroughfare of to-day, but a rough, uneven dirt road, sending up great clouds of dust in dry weather, and changing to one vast pool of mud throughout its entire length during the rainy season. Over this miserable roadway, fronted upon but by few houses in the long stretch from the White House to Georgetown, rolled the coach of the President. In a few minutes the town across the creek was reached, and the heavy vehicle rumbled over a very supe- rior quality of cobble-paving, for Georgetown was far in advance of the Capital in some respects. Past century-old houses with whose histories the names of the nation's greatest men are linked ; past the old Keys mansion, where dwelt the poet who has given us our most stirring national hymn, and out upon the Aqueduct clattered the spirited team. The two silent men, absorbed in their own thoughts, had talked but little ; but now as the beauty of the scene, spread out in prospect, burst upon them they lapsed into absolute silence. The restive pair, held down to a walk, drew frettingly upon check and rein, and tossed their proud heads and champed with impatience upon their bits.
Toward the east there rose no magic city, robed in imperial
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beauty, unequalled in the wide world, such as now greets the sight. A few miserable scattered hovels ; here and there unsightly masses of masonry, the beginnings of great results in architecture, as yet inchoate and undefined, and the one great achievement of genius and art, the huge white dome of the Capitol, alone gave faint promise of the magnificent development of later years.
Toward the south and west, however, they gazed upon the same scenes that are presented to-day. Above the bridge, wooded hills, rocky islets, and the Chain Bridge, a noted strategic point in the earlier days of the war. Off to the south the forested is- land home of Gen. Mason, the last of a long colonial line, whose direct ancestors were daily visitors at Mount Vernon, and among Washington's dearest friends. This old mansion, of little beauty but of great strength of masonry and thick beams, is in- timately connected with the classically beautiful mansion-house at Arlington, for between Gen. Mason and Mr. Custis there existed the most cordial friendship, and the two estates were one in all but boundaries. Over the oak-crowned hills of Mason Is- land Mr. Custis hunted with gun and hound, and at Arlington Gen. Mason was ever an honored guest.
The old mansion of the Masons is now in ruins, and the family is remembered only by the name the island once bore in the long ago, before the more beautiful Indian name it now bears was be- stowed upon it.
Past Mason Island then, now Analostan Island, the carriage whirled rapidly along toward the camp at Arlington. On every hand sentinels saluted with presented pieces, and groups of strol- ling soldiers of all branches of the army paused and gazed wonder- ingly at the two men in the carriage. Arrived at the mansion- house at Arlington, the President alighted and started out for a stroll among the tents and across the lower portion of the estate to Fort McPherson, whose grim embankments crowned by frown- ing cannon arose from the level plateau stretching away toward the south.
These drives into the surrounding country were of frequent occurrence with President Lincoln, who took this means of throw- ing aside for a brief period the burdens of his position. After a day of trouble and turmoil in the White House, beset on all sides by clamors for advice or assistance, keyed to the highest tension
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by news from the seat of war, and by a full knowledge of the vast responsibilities devolving upon him, he was able at the end of the day to relax the tension and recuperate for another day of great effort by dropping entirely his character of Chief Magistrate and becoming again the genial, hearty, unaffected citizen. Gen. Meigs, however, did not possess the power to apply in similar manner the principles of the conservation of energy, and the difference in the temperament of the two men was shown strikingly in this case. Gen. Meigs had no sooner alighted than he began to busy himself in the affairs under the charge of his office at Arlington. He was in a few minutes deeply engaged in a conference with the corps of surgeons in charge of the hospital tents, and was more strongly than ever convinced of the necessity for immediate action in regard to the proper sepulture of the army's dead. After an hour, how- ever, nothing had been accomplished and, the President having returned, the two men prepared to drive back to the city.
As they stood on the terrace in front of the mansion, awaiting the arrival of the carriage, both men were struck with the glorious natural beauty of the panorama spread out before them. From the placid shimmering bosom of the Potomac they turned their gaze across the broad level basin in which the Capital City lies and absorbed the beauty of the distant Maryland hills, clad in a man- tle of changing tints of red and gold, as the last rays of the setting sun touched tenderly the sturdy forests that clothed their sides.
While the soft eventide breathed only peace and tenderness, Gen. Meigs' thoughts were keyed to harsher feelings. He dwelt reminiscently upon the long months spent in brotherly companionship with the absent Lee, but with retrospection the present grew clearer and a hatred and aversion for his former chum grew in his heart. While Lee had espoused the cause of the Confederacy, he had enlisted heart and brain in the active service of the North, and as the weary years of the war length- ened and the end came not in sight, all soft impulses died out of him, and there came instead the implacable feeling of bitterest enmity against the South and Southerners. To him the word " rebel " was synonymous with all that was base and treacherous, and the act of renunciation had to him cancelled all the good and noble qualities his young manhood's chum had possessed. He was angered at the happiness Lee must have experienced
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amid the beautiful surroundings of Arlington, and in his mind a resolution at once took tangible form.
" Lee shall never return to Arlington," he said abruptly, turn- ing to the President. "No matter what the issue of the war may be, the arch-rebel shall never again enjoy the possession of these estates."
The President smiled good humoredly at the feeling words of the Quartermaster-General, and would have made some reply had not the attention of the men at that moment been called to a sad procession that passed within a few feet of them. On common canvas stretchers, borne by members of a detailed squad, were the bodies of several unfortunates who had died in the hospital tents. They were being carried to the lower part of the grounds to await the coming of the burial squad to convey them to the already overcrowded Soldiers' Home Cemetery. Stopping the sergeant in command of the squad, Gen. Meigs asked, " How many men are there awaiting burial here ?" " With these, a dozen, sir," answered the sergeant ; " no bodies have been taken away during the week."
" Set down the stretchers," commanded the Quartermaster- General, and then, turning to a commissioned officer standing near, he said : " Captain, order out a burial squad and see that all the bodies at Arlington are buried on the place at once." Then walking a few paces away he pointed out the slight terrace bordering the garden of the mansion, "Bury them there," he said.
The officer saluted and disappeared. The carriage of the President, which had drawn up a few minutes before, was stand- ing ready, and President Lincoln and Gen. Meigs entered and were driven rapidly back to Washington.
A few minutes later a squad, in charge of a corporal, came quickly up the broad driveway in front of the mansion, with picks and shovels, and, stopping at the place indicated by Gen. Meigs, began at once the work of preparing the shallow re- ceptacles that were to contain the remains of their dead fellows. Places for twelve graves were marked out about a dozen yards south of the house, and soon the yellow mounds of moist earth began to rise at the sides of the narrow pits.
In half an hour the labor was completed, and as the last of the
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clay-soiled workers emerged from the grave he had made and joined his comrades, a sombre black ambulance doing duty as a hearse and bearing within its gloomy interior the bodies of those who had died at Arlington drove slowly up the driveway. The bodies were in black pine coffins, and as the hearse halted they were quickly drawn forth and placed beside the graves that were to contain them.
The sun that but a short time before had blazed out behind the western hills and had massed the low hanging clouds into vast banks of glowing crimson, seen in brilliant glory through the black broad oaks of Arlington, was now low out of sight, and the early evening came on with the many noises of night, and the cool, steely blue of the nocturnal heaven had killed out the warm reful- gent glow of the dying day. Darkness was coming on quickly, and down in the deep woods to the north the great flocks of crows had settled into quietness aud harmony, announcing their pres- ence only by an occasional discordant cawing. From the mansion came the chaplain, an elderly ecclesiast who, with more feeling than was common, read a burial service over the twelve bodies lying before him. The bodies were then quickly placed in the rude graves and the heavy lumps of clay thumped upon the lids with a dull monotonous regularity until there remained only twelve ghastly yellow mounds standing out sharply from the green lawn. The members of the squad shouldered their implements and were a few seconds later swallowed up in the grim forbidding forest that now loomed out in black massiveness about the mansion.
The first interment of Union dead had been made at Arlington.
CHAPTER VI.
ESTABLISHMENT OF THE NATIONAL CEMETERY-BODIES OF SOLDIERS COLLECTED ON THE BATTLE-FIELDS AND BURIED AT ARLINGTON.
In this manner, on the 13th of May, 1864, the national ceme- tery at Arlington was established. Gen. Meigs, by his decisive action, not only provided for the proper sepulture of the dead he- roes of the Federal cause, but at the same time carried into effect his resolution to tear from the possession of the Confederate leader the beautiful estate that had been his home.
He knew that the united sentiment of the great North would never permit the desecration of the graves by the disinterment of the Union dead, and for this reason he ordered the first burials to be made around the edge of the garden near the house, in order to prevent any section of the grounds from being set aside for cemeterial purposes after the war, and, being thus cut off from the house and surrounding acres, to allow the latter to again be occupied by the Lee family or any of its members. It is an ill wind, however, that blows no good to any one, and Gen. Meigs by this bit of retributive malice secured to his country a monu- ment to the martyrs who died " in the blue " that will endure when tablets of brass and shafts of granite shall have mouldered into dust. The everlasting hills, the groves of oak and elm will stand for centuries, nature's vast memorial cathedral, amid whose leafy aisles the errant wind shall murmur eternally a sad requiem, or in fiercer blast a jubilant pæan of martial glory.
The most striking fact in connection with the first burial at Arlington was that the first man interred was a rebel prisoner, L. Reinhardt, of the 23rd North Carolina regiment, who was taken captive in one of the battles about Washington and who died of his wounds in one of the Arlington hospital wards. His was the grave nearest the house and the first over which the few words of the brief burial service were read. His interment was registered as the first in a cemetery where now 16,000 bodies lie. The second interment on the register is that of Edward S. Fisher, a sergeant of Company "D," 40th New York infantry regiment.
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Thus the wearers of blue and gray dissolved all differences in death and lay down to their long sleep indifferent to the success alike of North or South.
These first graves were not allowed to remain unmolested, for after the Secretary of War had approved the action of the Quarter- master-General, and ordered that the grounds should be used thenceforth for cemeterial purposes, these first buried bodies were reinterred in the lower cemetery marked section "A" on the map of Arlington, and the bodies of commissioned officers were buried along the terrace.
The cemetery being now regularly established, a reliable and intelligent sexton was placed in charge; neat, if not substantial, headboards were placed at every grave containing all obtainable information concerning the occupant, and everything possible done to dispel the feeling, still existent, that the soldiers dying at Wash- ington were irreverently and negligently treated. From the 13th of May, 1864, the burials at Arlington were constant and many. Every day the gloomy black ambulances, laden with corpses en- closed in common pine coffins, made their way along the dusty highway from the Aqueduct to the gates of Arlington. In the two months and a half from May 13 to June 30, 1864, the inter- ments at Arlington numbered 2,619; 231 of those buried being colored soldiers. From this time on the work of burying the bodies of those who died in the hospitals at Washington was car- ried steadily on at Arlington until the close of the war, in April, 1865. The interments to June 30, 1865, numbered 5,291 .: Before the. war had been concluded, however, the idea of establishing national cemeteries at convenient points had been developed until there were a large number located about Washington. In con- sequence the interments at Arlington for this year do not repre- sent all the deaths in Washington hospitals, for the terrible record of mortality shows that 15,708 heroes yielded up their lives dur- ing the year ending June 30, 1865, in the hospital wards of the National Capital ; a number whose appalling magnitude does not force itself upon the imagination until it is remembered that this great total of male adults represents the population of a large city.
In this year the work of establishing new national ceme- teries and improving those already established went forward
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with great strides. A grateful country now had full leisure to appreciate the great debt it owed to the men who had laid down their lives in their country's defence, and took such steps as would best demonstrate the desire felt to express a nation's gratitude and remembrance. At Arlington everything possible was done to restore to the place its natural beauty and former grandeur of forested hills and sloping lawns. The splendid oak groves imme- diately surrounding the mansion had not fallen before the devas- tating scythe of war, and thus the great element of the natural and familiar aspect of the place had been preserved. As far as pos- sible the estate was restored to its pristine condition, and the old mansion, dismantled of its priceless treasures but still preserving its classical and dignified architectural beauty, was given over to the superintendent of the cemetery as his quarters. Terraces battered down by the constant trampling of man and horse and utterly denuded of turf were built up and resodded, and the long sloping hill, stretching away to the south, scarred by drain pits and camp-fire sites, was leveled and planted with groves of orna- mental trees. Drives were restored, and emerald lawns again stretched away in velvety beauty from the portico of the mansion. As far as possible the scars of war were obliterated, and in a few short months the place again resumed the quiet beauty it had known as the homestead of Custis. The sturdy forests by the river side, however, could not be restored, and the beautiful surroundings of the far-famed Custis Spring became but a memory. In the im- mediate vicinity of the house, however, a perfect restoration was possible, so that in the latter part of 1865 those who had known the place before the internecine strife would not have noted any great changes save for the long lines of white headboards that gleamed through the vistas of forest aisles on every hand.
Near the battle-fields of Spottsylvania and the Wilderness the national cemeteries were established during this year in which were interred the remains of those who fell in these battles and were not accorded proper burial at the time. Capt. Moore, with a detail of men, was sent into this region on the 12th of June, 1865, and was engaged during the rest of the month in collecting the remains of Union soldiers and reinterring them in the newly- established cemeteries. A careful and thorough search was made and all bodies found were buried under the direction of Capt.
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Moore, and headboards bearing the name, rank, and regiment of those reinterred were placed at each grave.
At the Wilderness two national cemeteries were established, cem- etery No. 1 being on the Orange Court-House turnpike, about two miles from the Wilderness tavern ; cemetery No. 2 being lo- cated on the Orange Court-House plank road, about 2} miles from its junction with the turnpike.
At Spottsylvania few bodies were found uninterred, the dead of both armies having been buried by a Mr. Sanford, having a farm in that region. These, however, were disinterred and buried in the new national cemetery established there.
The work of repair on the old Soldiers' Home cemetery was com- pleted in this year. This practically comprised the cemeterial work done in the early part of 1865.
During the year ending June 30, 1866, the Quartermaster-Gen- eral's office continued to carry on the work of collecting into national cemeteries the remains of those who fell in battle or died in the cause of the Union. At the end of the fiscal year, forty- one of these cemeteries had been established, and ten more had been decided upon. Ground was purchased, wherever practicable, on or at least near the great battle-fields, and dedicated as na- tional cemeteries. Some of these cemeteries, as shown in the case of Arlington, were created during the war; Gettysburg, for instance, at whose dedication, November 19, 1863, Lincoln deliv- ered his memorable address, having been commenced compara- tively early in the war. The majority came into existence in the years immediately subsequent, being filled in many cases with the bodies of those who were removed from the hastily excavated graves on the battle-fields. This work of collecting the bodies from the battle-fields was continued in this year under the direc- tion of Brevet Brigadier-General J. J. Dana.
At this time there were 412 cemeteries, not the property of the nation, in which loyal soldiers were buried to the number of 237,142. The national cemeteries contained at this time 104,528 bodies, aggregating, with those buried in other cemeteries, 341,670. Of these, it was possible to identify only 202,761, it being utterly impossible to identify 138,901 bodies. There were besides in the national cemeteries the remains of 13,657 rebel prisoners. The total expenses incurred by the Government in procuring proper
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burial for these remains amounted to $1,144,791, while it was estimated that $1,609,294 would be required to complete the work.
As stated before, the work of collecting the dead from the battle- fields was carried forward in this year. The actual operations in the department of Washington were under the superintendence of Col. M. G. Ludington, chief quartermaster, assisted by Capt. John R. Hynes and Brevet Major James Gleason, assistant quar- termaster. These officers, besides having the care of the ceme- teries at Annapolis and Point Lookout, Maryland, containing 2,675 and 3,523 graves respectively, were entrusted with the disinter- ment of all bodies buried on the battle-fields of Maryland and Vir- ginia within a circuit of thirty-five miles from Washington. All these bodies were reinterred at Arlington. To Col. Ludington was also assigned the work of reinterring the bodies from the line of the Orange and Alexandria railroad as far south as Orange Court- House, and from the district tributary to that road on each side, extending half-way to the line of the Richmond and Fredericks- burg railroad on the east and to the Blue Ridge on the west. The bodies north of the Rappahannock river were removed to Arling- ton Cemetery, those south of the Rappahannock being interred in the cemetery established at Culpeper Court-House.
A vault in this same year was constructed at Arlington under the superintendence of Col. Ludington, to which were removed such scattered and disorganized remains from the battle-fields of Bull Run and Manassas as could not be identified for separate burial.
Perhaps no work ever before attempted by an army officer presented such gruesome and uncanny features as this labor of collecting from the fields of strife and carnage these poor dis- membered fragments of human skeletons that were once swadded, perhaps, in the huge muscle and sinew of some titanic hero who dashed forward into the very heart of death's kingdom with bay- onet fixed and the warrior's cry of battle ringing from his lips. Some fierce, wild struggle, worthy the tribute of a laureate's pen, would be but vaguely imagined in a group of bleached skeletons hidden in some fence corner, with bare desiccated bones fractured by splintering shell or pierced by stinging bullet. In sequestered nooks in the pine and cedar growth of the forests of this region
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a few grim relics of man's mortality would tell a story of heroic deeds more glorious than the achievements of mailed knights ; the sortie by night and the ambushed surprise, with the hopeless bat- tling against invincible odds ; the gallant company encompassed by battalions and brigades and fighting till the last cartridge ex- ploded and then waiting death and oblivion with fast-gripped bayoneted rifles and the courage that made of our country a land of god-like heroes. These were the stories the mute witnesses told ; not in the well-rounded sentences of the historian or the spirited verse of the poet, but in a language as easy to understand. Throughout all this region the fighting had been of the severest kind ; roaring parks of artillery had flung the death-dealing shell with frightful accuracy, and at every point the hand-to-hand con- flict had left the story of its terrible intensity in the massed bodies of the mangled dead.
At times a tale both pitiful and tragic would be told by the soli- tary skeleton of some lone picket who had fallen at his post with- out having been able to fire a shot in his own defence.
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