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.
Tanner Amphitheater
The popularity of Arlington as a site for patriotic meetings and Civil War remembrance events soared after the establishment of Decoration Day (later known as Memorial Day). Spontaneous decoration of Civil War graves and the maintenance of cemeteries had occurred since the early days of the war in both the North and the South since the earliest days of the war. John A. Logan, a former Major General in the Union Army, had been elected "Commander in Chief" of the Grand Army of the Republic, an organization for Union Civil War veterans. Aware of the growing acceptance of Decoration Day as a holiday, Logan issued a statement on May 5, 1868, calling for "Decoration Day" to be observed nationwide on an annual basis. Logan set the date for May 30, because it was not the anniversary of any particular battle.