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.
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.