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.
McClellan Gate
In February 1867, Congress passed a national cemeteries bill which required that all military cemeteries be surrounded by a fence. Arlington was already enclosed by a picket fence, painted white. Construction soon began on a fence composed of sandstone taken from Seneca Quarry in Maryland. Five years later, all the Arlington Estate land not encompassed by the cemetery was declared to belong to Fort Whipple (now Fort Myer). Enclosure of Arlington National Cemetery was complete by 1891. (Due to expansion into the area formerly occupied by Freedmen's Village, the fence was enlarged. This enlargement was completed in 1897.)