Arlington National Cemetery

Arlington National Cemetery. Administered by the U.S. Army, this military cemetery across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C., is one of the nation's most important memorial sites. In 1864, in an act of retribution against Confederate general Robert E. Lee, the War Department confiscated his estate in Arlington, Virginia, and turned it into an army cemetery. After the war, this temporary burial ground became part of a network of federal military cemeteries administered by the U.S. Army.

In the late 1890s and early 1900s, U.S. Presidents promoted reconciliation between the North and South by honoring the Confederate cause at the cemetery. In 1900, President William McKinley signed legislation establishing a Confederate burial section at Arlington for the southern Civil War dead buried in scattered cemeteries around Washington. In 1914, the United Daughters of the Confederacy built a Confederate War Memorial at Arlington. In 1925, Congress made Lee's former home a national memorial, and eight years later the National Park Service took custody of the structure.

Arlington holds the graves of over 150,000 veterans who served in every American war from the Revolutionary War to the Persian Gulf War. The grounds also contain such national memorials as the Arlington Memorial Amphitheater and the Tomb of the Unknowns. Military or veteran's status is required for burial at Arlington, but the cemetery contains the graves of many prominent civilian leaders. The decision of the Kennedy family in 1963 to inter the remains of President John F. Kennedy at Arlington, and five years later those of his brother, Senator Robert Kennedy, enhanced the cemetery's importance as a national site of mourning.
See also Military, The; National Park System.

Bibliography

Dean W. Holt , American National Cemeteries, 1992.
G. Kurt Piehler , Remembering War the American Way, 1995.

G. Kurt Piehler