Lee pointed out that the college needed a space large enough to accommodate the growing student body and suggested that the trustees convert the old chapel room into much-needed classrooms. The board assigned a committee to investigate the matter. Its gracefully flared tower and tall latticed windows stood in stark contrast to the rest of classical Washington College, whose distinctive colonnade it faces, and the gothic VMI campus.
Later that afternoon, inaugurating a Washington College tradition, commencement exercises were held inside the chapel. With the start of the September term, the new chapel was used for daily religious services and as an auditorium.
Lee attended the chapel service each morning and then walked downstairs to work in his office in the basement. A funeral procession carried his remains to the chapel on October 14, , and cadets from VMI provided the honor guard through the night. Just one year after his death, in , the Lee Memorial Association commissioned a life-sized marble statue from Edward Valentine. No suitable home was found for it until June 28, , when the Lee Mausoleum and a memorial room were dedicated at the back of the chapel.
Discussion of enlarging the chapel in the s helped solidify its status as a memorial to the life and character of Lee, but the chapel was fireproofed instead. Restoration work in the s updated the structure but resulted in the loss of much original material. Although it is no longer large enough to accommodate the entire student body, the chapel and its grounds continue to serve as a site for important collegiate and civic events, and to honor the legacy of its namesake.
Encyclopedia Virginia Grady Ave. Virginia Humanities acknowledges the Monacan Nation , the original people of the land and waters of our home in Charlottesville, Virginia. We invite you to learn more about Indians in Virginia in our Encyclopedia Virginia. Skip to content. Contributor: Aerika A. Robert E. Meigs added others as soon as conditions allowed.
He dispatched crews to scour battlefields for unknown soldiers near Washington. Then he excavated a huge pit at the end of Mrs. Lee's garden, filled it with the remains of 2, nameless soldiers and raised a sarcophagus in their honor. He understood that by seeding the garden with prominent Union officers and unknown patriots, he would make it politically difficult to disinter these heroes of the Republic at a later date. The last autumn of the war produced thousands of new casualties, including Lt.
John Rodgers Meigs, one of the quartermaster's four sons. Lieutenant Meigs, 22, was shot on October 3, , while on a scouting mission for Gen. Philip Sheridan in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley. He was returned with solemn honors to Washington, where Lincoln, Stanton and other dignitaries joined his father for the funeral and burial in Georgetown.
The loss of his "noble precious son" only deepened Meigs' antipathy toward Robert E. Lee avoided the spectacle of a trial. Treason charges were filed against him but quietly dropped, almost certainly because his former adversary, Grant, interceded on Lee's behalf with President Andrew Johnson.
Settling in Lexington, Virginia, Lee took over as president of Washington College, a struggling little school deep in the Shenandoah Valley, and encouraged old comrades to work for peace.
Mary Lee felt a growing outrage. The graves "are planted up to the very door without any regard to common decency Her husband, however, kept his ambitions for Arlington hidden from all but a few advisers and family members. Smith, Lee's trusted legal adviser in Alexandria.
To his elder brother Smith Lee, who had served as an officer in the Confederate navy, the general admitted that he wanted to "regain the possession of A. To gauge whether this was possible, Smith Lee made a clandestine visit to the old estate in the autumn or winter of He concluded that the place could be made habitable again if a wall was built to screen the graves from the mansion. But Smith Lee made the mistake of sharing his views with the cemetery superintendent, who dutifully shared them with Meigs, along with the mystery visitor's identity.
While the Lees worked to reclaim Arlington, Meigs urged Edwin Stanton in early to make sure the government had sound title to the cemetery. The land had been consecrated by the remains buried there and could not be given back to the Lees, he insisted, striking a refrain he would repeat in the years ahead.
Yet the Lees clung to the hope that Arlington might be returned to the family—if not to Mrs. Lee, then to one of their sons. The former general was quietly pursuing this objective when he met with his lawyers for the last time, in July The question of Arlington's ownership was still unresolved when Lee died, at 63, in Lexington, on October 12, His widow continued to obsess over the loss of her home.
Within weeks, Mary Lee petitioned Congress to examine the federal claim to Arlington and estimate the costs of removing the bodies buried there. Her proposal was bitterly protested on the Senate floor and defeated, 54 to 4. It was a disaster for Mary Lee, but the debate helped to elevate Arlington's status: no longer a potter's field created in the desperation of wartime, the cemetery was becoming something far grander, a place senators referred to as hallowed ground, a shrine for "the sacred dead," "the patriot dead," "the heroic dead" and "patriotic graves.
The plantation the Lees had known became less recognizable each year. Many original residents of Freedmen's Village stayed on after the war, raising children and grandchildren in the little houses the Army had built for them. Meigs stayed on, too, serving as quartermaster general for two decades, shaping the look of the cemetery. Lee's garden, established a wisteria-draped amphitheater large enough to accommodate 5, people for ceremonies and even prescribed new plantings for the garden's borders elephant ears and canna.
He watched the officers' section of the cemetery sprout enormous tombstones typical of the Gilded Age. And he erected a massive red arch at the cemetery's entrance to honor Gen. George B. McClellan, one of the Civil War's most popular—and least effective—officers. As was his habit, Meigs included his name on the arch; it was chiseled into the entrance column and lettered in gold. Today, it is one of the first things a visitor sees when approaching the cemetery from the east.
Accompanied by a friend, she rode in a carriage for three hours through a landscape utterly transformed, filled with old memories and new graves.
For him, regaining the estate was a matter of both filial obligation and self-interest: he had no inheritance beyond the Arlington property. On April 6, , within months of his mother's funeral, Custis went to Congress with a new petition.
Avoiding her inflammatory suggestion that Arlington be cleared of graves, he asked instead for an admission that the property had been taken unlawfully and requested compensation for it.
While the petition languished for months in the Senate Judiciary Committee, Meigs worried that it would "interfere with the United States' tenure of this National Cemetery—a result to be avoided by all just means. A few weeks later, the petition died quietly in committee, attended by no debate and scant notice. Custis Lee might have given up then and there if not for signs that the hard feelings between North and South were beginning to soften. Rutherford B. Hayes, a Union veteran elected on the promise of healing scars from the Civil War, was sworn in as president in March Hayes hardly had time to unpack his bags before Custis Lee revived the campaign for Arlington—this time in court.
Asserting ownership of the property, Lee asked the Circuit Court of Alexandria, Virginia, to evict all trespassers occupying it as a result of the auction. As soon as U. Attorney General Charles Devens heard about the suit, he asked that the case be shifted to federal court, where he felt the government would get a fairer hearing.
In July , the matter landed in the lap of Judge Robert W. Hughes of the U. Circuit Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. Hughes, a lawyer and newspaper editor, had been appointed to the bench by President Grant. After months of legal maneuvering and arguments, Hughes ordered a jury trial.
Custis Lee's team of lawyers was headed by Francis L. Army then occupied their estate, located on strategic high ground across from the nation's capital, as a camp and headquarters. Because Mrs. Lee failed to pay taxes in person, as then required by law, the federal government confiscated the estate, purchasing it on January 11, "for Government use, for war, military, charitable, and educational purposes. Meanwhile, the war's mounting human toll had overwhelmed the capacity of cemeteries in the D.
Brigadier General Montgomery C. Meigs, quartermaster general of the U. Army, authorized military burials on the Arlington property — the presence of graves, he believed, would deter the Lees from ever returning. On May 13, , Private William Christman became the first soldier to be buried at Arlington , and on June 15, , the Army formally designated acres of the property as a military cemetery.
Meigs himself was later buried within yards of Arlington House, along with his wife, father and son. Throughout the war, the Arlington estate also supported thousands of African Americans fleeing enslavement in the South. On December 4, , the federal government dedicated Freedman's Village , a planned community for freed slaves on the southern portion of the property. Freedman's Village grew to a community of 1,, with a hospital, two churches, schools and a home for the elderly.
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