Confederate Memorial (Arlington National Cemetery)
Arlington National Cemetery was established in June 1864 as a cemetery for Union (United States of America) Civil War dead. The first military burial at Arlington (a white soldier, William Henry Christman) was made on May 13, 1864, close to what is now the northeast gate in Section 27. However, formal authorization for burials was not given by Major General Montgomery C. Meigs (Quartermaster General of the United States Army) until June 15, 1864.
Arlington National Cemetery mismanagement controversy
On December 22, 2011, Army officials released the report mandated by Congress in December 2010. The report stated that cemetery officials had completed photographing and documenting every burial marker at Arlington and double-checked the photographic records against the cemetery's 500,000 paper records (which had also been scanned and were now available electronically). The double-checks revealed that records regarding 64,230 (about one-quarter) of the cemetery's 259,978 burial sites contained "discrepancies" that required additional investigation. Arlington National Cemetery officials said in the report that they believed these problems were minor, such as typos in names or dates of death, and that another six months would be needed before these discrepancies could be resolved. Army officials said this did not necessarily mean that remains are buried in the wrong graves, but could not rule it out. The report also found that many burial and management records from the American Civil War period are missing, many headstones are in such disrepair that they cannot be read, and that significant changes in burial procedures over the years have made it difficult to maintain records and keep track of burials.