How Robert E Lee's Home Became Arlington National Cemetery

Table Of Content

• Marriage and family
• Inside the far-right plan to use civil rights law to disrupt the 2024 election
• Arlington House, The Robert E. Lee Memorial Cultural Landscape
• ‘I’m a Grown Man Running Against a 6-Year-Old’: Biden Lets Trump Jokes Fly at Annual Roast
• Civil War
• In Reckoning With Confederate Monuments, Other Countries Could Provide Examples
• Explore subjects and stories related to this park

Robert E. Lee, whose mother was a cousin of Mrs. Custis, frequently visited Arlington and knew Mary Anna as they grew up. Two years after graduating from West Point, Lieutenant Lee married Mary Anna Custis at Arlington on June 30, 1831. They spent much of their married life traveling between United States Army duty stations and Arlington, where six of their seven children were born. After their deaths, Mary's parents were buried not far from the house on land that is now part of Arlington National Cemetery.

Marriage and family

In his farewell address to Confederate troops, formally known as General Order No. 9, he declared that the army had not been defeated but was “compelled to yield to overwhelming numbers and resources.” Lee refused calls to continue a guerilla warfare campaign. His declaration set the framework for how many Confederate veterans perceived the War in the decades that followed. Lee’s reputation had now grown to the point that he and his army had become a major source of national unity in the Confederacy. Civilians as well as soldiers looked to him for leadership and inspiration, rather than to Davis’s problematic government. With his authority at its height, Lee convinced Confederate officials to approve another northward excursion. Always reluctant to fight on fronts not directly related to Virginia’s defense, he argued against sending his men to reinforce besieged Vicksburg, Mississippi.

Inside the far-right plan to use civil rights law to disrupt the 2024 election

Searching for Selina Gray, Keeper of Arlington House - Arlington Magazine

Searching for Selina Gray, Keeper of Arlington House.

Posted: Sun, 19 Nov 2023 08:00:00 GMT [source]

In addition, Lincoln used his advantage to wrest the moral high ground from the South, issuing the Emancipation Proclamation, and effectively collapsing the possibility of foreign assistance to the Confederacy. Lee was again exposed to the volatile politics of slavery when ordered in October 1859 to suppress an attempted slave insurrection led by the radical abolitionist John Brown at Harpers Ferry. Commanding a small detachment of marines, Lee led a model operation in which none of Brown’s hostages was injured, and Brown was taken alive. The ramifications of the disturbing incident were reinforced when Lee witnessed Brown’s ominous predictions of the bloodshed to come, and stood guard at his execution. By the end of the 19th century, Lee's popularity had spread to the North.[161] Lee's admirers have pointed to his character and devotion to duty, and his occasional tactical successes in battles against a stronger foe.

Arlington House, The Robert E. Lee Memorial Cultural Landscape

Descendants of Charles and Maria Syphax can trace their lineage back to Parke Custis, who fathered children with Maria’s mother, Arianna Carter, also a slave. In telling the stories of the people who were enslaved there, historians must contend with the fact that oftentimes little is written about enslaved populations. While Arlington House has extensive records in a few cases, the problem exists there just as it does elsewhere, said Charles  Cuvelier, superintendent of the George Washington Memorial Parkway, the National Park Service unit that manages Arlington House. The mansion, which commands an unrivaled view of the nation’s capital and the Potomac River, is best known as the home of the Confederate general leading up to the Civil War. The National Park Service opened Arlington House to the public Tuesday for the first time since 2018. The mansion and surrounding grounds had been expected to reopen in 2019, but delays and the coronavirus pandemic extended the closure.

Lee found the work frustrating, and the isolation and harsh landscape oppressive. His beloved mother-in-law and favorite sister died early in the 1850s, causing him to embrace a somber brand of evangelical Protestantism, which left him dejected and self-critical. When his father-in-law, George Washington Parke Custis, died in 1857, Lee willingly returned to Arlington to settle the estate. Misfortune again touched Robert’s life in 1821 with a scandal involving his half brother. Henry Lee IV shocked Virginians by seducing his young ward—her name was Elizabeth “Betsy” McCarty and she was Henry IV’s sister-in-law—embezzling her inheritance, and possibly murdering their child. Believing this disgrace would lead to social isolation, Robert convinced his mother to let him join the army.

During the first year of the Civil War, he served in minor combat operations and as a senior military adviser to Confederate President Jefferson Davis. Army then used the property to establish the military burial ground that became Arlington National Cemetery. Congress passed legislation that sought to restore the home in Lee’s honor in 1925, during the Jim Crow era. The Norris family included Wesley Norris, who according to some accounts escaped from Arlington House in 1859 when Lee was managing the estate. When Norris was captured, Lee insisted that Norris be whipped 50 times and that the wounds be washed with brine, according to newspaper accounts, including one given by Norris directly to an anti-slavery newspaper.

Civil War

General Robert E. Lee, a native Virginian who reportedly spent the night nervously pacing upstairs in his home, Arlington Estate, as he deliberated whether to lead the Union Army or fight for his home state’s Confederacy, resigned from the U.S. He left for Richmond, Virginia, the next day, and told his wife, Mary Anna Randolph Custis Lee, the great-granddaughter of original First Lady Martha Washington, to vacate their house. With the high hilltop position overlooking Washington, D.C., Lee knew the Union forces were likely to seize the property, which was in a mostly rural area at the time. Meanwhile, the war's mounting human toll had overwhelmed the capacity of cemeteries in the D.C. Brigadier General Montgomery C. Meigs, quartermaster general of the U.S.

In Reckoning With Confederate Monuments, Other Countries Could Provide Examples

Lee explained, "We should employ them without delay ... [along with] gradual and general emancipation". The first units were in training as the war ended.[123][124] As the Confederate army was devastated by casualties, disease and desertion, the Union attack on Petersburg succeeded on April 2, 1865. Lee then made an attempt to escape to the southwest and join up with Joseph E. Johnston's Army of Tennessee in North Carolina. However, his forces were soon surrounded and he surrendered them to Grant on April 9, 1865, at the Battle of Appomattox Court House.[125] Other Confederate armies followed suit and the war ended. The day after his surrender, Lee issued his Farewell Address to his army. Although she resisted for a few weeks, Mary Custis Lee accepted what seemed the inevitable Union takeover of the Greek Revival home she had inherited from her father and fled to a nearby family house.

"Restoration of Peace & Harmony" - Arlington House, The Robert E. Lee Memorial (U.S - National Park Service

"Restoration of Peace & Harmony" - Arlington House, The Robert E. Lee Memorial (U.S.

Posted: Tue, 24 Aug 2021 07:00:00 GMT [source]

In Baltimore's Wyman Park, a large double equestrian statue of Lee and Jackson is located directly across from the Baltimore Museum of Art. Designed by Laura Gardin Fraser and dedicated in 1948, Lee is depicted astride his horse Traveller next to Stonewall Jackson who is mounted on "Little Sorrel". Architect John Russell Pope created the base, which was dedicated on the anniversary of the eve of the Battle of Chancellorsville.[178] The Baltimore area of Maryland is also home to a large nature park called Robert E. Lee Memorial Park. Military historians continue to pay attention to his battlefield tactics and maneuvering, though many think he should have designed better strategic plans for the Confederacy. He was not given full direction of the Southern war effort until late in the conflict.

The following day, Lee’s other wing commander, James Longstreet, brought up his men to rejoin the two corps in the heat of fighting—an immensely difficult battlefield maneuver. On August 30, Longstreet hit Pope’s vulnerable left flank, crushed the Union force, and chased them to the horizon. (The three-day battle has come to be known as the Second Battle of Manassas.) Jackson followed the retreating Union troops, but was halted at the Battle of Chantilly on September 1.

The next day, Lee determined to attack the Northern forces, despite the misgivings of his lieutenants, including Longstreet, in particular. Under generals George G. Meade (who had taken command of the Army of the Potomac a few days earlier) and Winfield Scott Hancock, the Union line had been strengthened overnight by entrenchments and an ingenious fish-hook formation that allowed for easy reinforcement of its weaker sections. E. B. Stuart, who served as the eyes and ears of Lee’s army, was absent (with Lee’s approval) on an extended expedition, foraging and harassing Union troops away from the front lines.

Jackson’s corps was sent to take logistically important Harpers Ferry, and the rest faced McClellan’s advancing men. The two armies clashed at South Mountain on September 14, where Lee was able to delay, but not defeat, the Union forces. In this spirit Lee undertook an invasion of Union territory, a move that was popular with the public and the troops. Lee wanted to spare Virginians the ravages of two armies and he was anxious for his men to live off Maryland’s greener pastures.