United States v. Lee (1882)
With local cemeteries in Alexandria County and Alexandria filling rapidly with war dead, Quartermaster General of the United States Army Montgomery C. Meigs proposed using of the Arlington estate as a cemetery. The first burial there was made on May 13, 1864. United States Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton approved the establishment of a military cemetery on June 15, 1864, creating Arlington National Cemetery. By the end of the war in April 1865, more than 16,000 people had been buried at Arlington. In September 1866, a memorial and a burial vault (containing the remains of 2,111 U.S. and Confederate soldiers who died at the First Battle of Bull Run, Second Battle of Bull Run, and along the Rappahannock River) were buried in Lee's former wildflower garden on the mansion's east side beneath the Civil War Unknowns Monument, a memorial to honor unknown soldiers who had died during the American Civil War.
Arlington House, The Robert E. Lee Memorial
On March 4, 1925, the 68th United States Congress enacted Public Resolution 74, which authorized the restoration of the Lee Mansion in the Arlington National Cemetery, Virginia. The War Department then began to restore Arlington House, and the Department of the Army continues to manage over half of the original plantation's 1,100 acres, as Arlington National Cemetery. However, for several years after Congress enacted the authorizing legislation, the War Department, which was responsible for managing the house and grounds, largely ignored the legislation. Contradicting the authorizing legislation, the Department, largely at the insistence of Charles Moore, the director of the United States Commission of Fine Arts, furnished and interpreted the Mansion to “the first half of the republic.” This decision was based, in part, on the popularity of the Colonial Revival movement which was still popular in 1925. The Mansion was restored to the period of George Washington Custis, and no furniture manufactured after 1830 was accepted. This approach negated Lee's role and presence at Arlington.