Arlington House, The Robert E. Lee Memorial
By early 1864, the military cemeteries of Washington, D.C., and Alexandria, Virginia, were rapidly filling with war dead. Quartermaster General of the United States Army Montgomery C. Meigs proposed using of the Arlington estate as a cemetery. United States Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton approved the establishment of a military cemetery on June 15, 1864, creating Arlington National Cemetery. Meigs believed that since Lee had committed treason in deciding to fight against the Union, denying Lee use of the mansion after the war was a rough form of justice. Meigs decided that a large number of burials should occur close to Arlington House to render it unlivable. Officers were to be buried next to the main flower garden south of the house, and the first burial occurred here on May 17. Meigs ordered that additional burials commence immediately on the grounds of Arlington House in mid-June. When Union officers bivouacked in the mansion complained and had the burials temporarily stopped, Meigs countermanded their orders and had another 44 dead officers buried along the southern and eastern sides of the main flower garden within a month.
List of memorials and monuments at Arlington National Cemetery
In 2012, legislation began moving through Congress to approve a "Place of Remembrance" at Arlington National Cemetery. The memorial will be an ossuary designed to contain fragments of remains which are unidentifiable through DNA analysis. The legislation required that these remains be cremated before placement in the memorial. Cemetery officials said that Arlington National Cemetery has no means of receiving and burying these remains, and placing them in the Tomb of the Unknowns would be inappropriate. The legislation leaves the design and placement of the memorial up to cemetery officials. On September 18, 2012, the House of Representatives approved the memorial, sending the legislation to the Senate. This legislation was not acted on by the Senate, and died at the end of the 112th United States Congress.