词条 | Arlington National Cemetery |
释义 | Arlington National Cemetery cemetery, Virginia, United States ![]() In 1831 Lee married Custis's only daughter, Mary Ann Randolph, who inherited the Arlington estate upon her father's death in 1857. On April 22, 1861, at the onset of the American Civil War, Lee left Arlington to join the army of the Confederacy (Confederate States of America). The area was quickly occupied by federal troops, who converted the Lee mansion into an army headquarters and used its stables for cavalry units operating in northern Virginia. Two forts (McPherson and Whipple) were hastily constructed on the grounds as part of a defensive perimeter around the nation's capital. In 1862 the government enacted legislation to collect property taxes (which property owners were required to pay in person) on lands held by the Confederacy. Although Lee's wife paid the $92.07 tax, the government seized the property because Lee failed to deliver the tax himself. Freedman's Village, a community for more than 1,000 freed slaves, was constructed on part of the property in 1863 and continued to operate until 1890, when the land was rededicated as a military installation. More than 3,800 former slaves are buried in the cemetery. On June 15, 1864, Quartermaster General Montgomery Meigs (Meigs, Montgomery C) authorized the creation of a national cemetery on 200 acres (81 hectares) surrounding Arlington House to accommodate “the bodies of all soldiers dying in the Hospitals of the vicinity of Washington and Alexandria.” However, ownership of the land remained in dispute, and, after the Civil War, Lee's eldest son, George Washington Custis Lee, sued the federal government for confiscating the plantation. In 1882 the U.S. Supreme Court (Supreme Court of the United States) declared (5–4) that the federal government was a trespasser. Rather than disinter the more than 16,000 people buried at Arlington, however, the U.S. Congress (Congress of the United States) purchased the land the following year for $150,000. ![]() ![]() Located near the Tomb of the Unknowns is the Memorial Amphitheater, which was built through the efforts of the Grand Army of the Republic (an organization of Civil War veterans from the Union forces) as a gathering place for Memorial Day services. The holiday had originated at Arlington in 1868. The structure was dedicated on May 15, 1920, and since then every U.S. president has visited the amphitheatre during his tenure. The roofless, white marble structure, which encloses a natural amphitheatre, is copied from both the Theatre of Dionysus (Dionysus, Theatre of) in Athens and the Roman theatre in Orange, France. The Fields of the Dead, with their seemingly endless lines of plain stones, follow a pattern adopted in 1872 for use in all national cemeteries. The Women in Military Service Memorial is located at the gateway to the cemetery, and the U.S. Marine Corps War Memorial (the Iwo Jima flag-raising statue) is also nearby. Arlington remains an active military cemetery, with an average of 5,400 funerals each year. By the early 21st century more than 260,000 people had been buried on the grounds. Additional Reading A complete history of the cemetery, including timelines, maps, and biographical sketches of notable figures buried at Arlington, can be found in Philip Bigler, In Honored Glory: Arlington National Cemetery, the Final Post, 3rd ed. (1999); and James Edward Peters, Arlington National Cemetery: Shrine to America's Heroes, 2nd ed. (2000). Gene Gurney and Harold Wise, Arlington National Cemetery: A Picture Story of America's Most Famous Burial Grounds from the Civil War to President John F. Kennedy's Burial (1965), provides helpful background. |
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