At a recent event, someone posed a question about the Confederate graves at Arlington. His ancestor is one of the ones in Section 16. But the greater question is: were there Confederates buried in Arlington during the war? That is a great question, and the internet is all over the place.
Arlington was constructed
by George Washington Parke Custis and was home to him and his family. The house
sits on Arlington Heights, overlooking Washington, D.C. Custis’s daughter Mary
married Robert E. Lee, and after the death of Custis, the house passed to her.
When Robert E. Lee was in town, and not on duty someplace, this is where he
called home. Lee was here when called upon to put down John Brown’s insurrection
at Harpers Ferry, and it was here Lee returned when called from Texas in 1861.
It was here that Lee chose to resign from the United States Army and enter the
service of Virginia. It was in mid-May when Mary Lee left Arlington for the
last time. On May 23, 1861, 10,000 Federal troops crossed the Potomac River and
seized Arlington Heights.[1]
The home and grounds became a military encampment and headquarters. Irvin McDowell set up his headquarters in the house. Fortifications were constructed nearby. Arlington would be inside those fortifications protecting Washington, D.C.
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| Graves in Arlington, ca. 1865 (LOC) |
In 1862, the U.S. Congress passed an act dealing with collecting taxes “in the Insurrectionary Districts within the United States.” Mary Lee was taxed $92.07, and she sent the funds through a relative. However, the tax commissioners refused to accept the payment, declaring that the payment had to be paid in person by the legal owner. Mary was unable to do that The property was seized, and a sale held where the U.S. government, for $26,800, purchased the house and 1,100 acres.[2]
Due to the proximity of the front lines, sometimes at the very door of the city, Washington was one vast military hospital. Churches and schools were pressed into service in emergency duty. Early in the war, the civilian hospital, the Government Hospital for the Insane, and the Union hotel were seized for permanent hospitals. Others were opened: the Providence Hospital, the Judiciary Square Hospital, Mount Pleasant Hospital, the Armory Square Hospital, St. Aloysius Hospital, and others. At the height of the Maryland Campaign, there were about sixty hospitals in the capitol.[3]
Many of the Federal
dead were taken to the Soldiers Home Cemetery, on Rock Creek near Fort Totten. Needing
more space, Montgomery Meigs, Quartermaster General of the Army, who was in
charge of the burial of Federal soldiers, allowed Federal soldiers to be buried
on the grounds of Arlington. The first documented war-time grave appears to be
that of Pvt. William Christman, 67th Pennsylvania Infantry. He was
interred on May 13, 1864, near the slave cemetery on the grounds of Arlington. A
few others followed, but on June 15, 1864, Meigs requested Secretary of War Edwin
Stanton to declare Arlington House and two hundred surrounding acres, a
military cemetery. Stanton approved it the same day. It is often speculated
that Meigs’ actions were to keep the Lee family from ever returning to the
property. By the end of 1864, over 7,000 graves were located on the grounds.[4]
Confederate soldiers, Southern civilians, and Northern political prisoners were kept at the Old Capital prison, a former hotel that had served as a hotel, and as the U.S. Capitol building after the British burned the Capitol in 1814. Official records record that 5,761 prisoners passed through this prison. Many were on their way to some other installation. However, at least 457 died while incarcerated at the Old Capitol Prison, most of them in the prison hospital or another hospital within the city. Some of those were interred at the Congressional Cemetery, about a mile away from the prison. (You can read more about the cemetery here) But were all of them?
Apparently not.
They were buried in different cemeteries across the city, including Soldiers’
Home Cemetery, Rock Creek Cemetery, Congressional Cemetery, and starting in
1864, Arlington. Samuel E. Lewis was a Confederate doctor during the war,
moving to Washington, D.C. after the war where he continued his practice. He was
also a member of the Charles Broadway Rouss Camp, No. 1911, United Confederate
Veterans. Lewis was concerned with not
only the care of aging veterans, but also with the burial of Confederates who
died during the war. There were over 500 Confederates who died in the Federal
capital. There was a modest relocation of 241 Confederate soldiers’ remains to
Virginia and the Carolinas in the 1870s, organized by various Ladies Memorial Associations.
Yet the others remained.
It was Lewis who
urged the military, Congress, and the president to get involved and designate a
number of acres within Arlington for the reburial of the remaining Confederate
dead in Washington, D.C. Taking care of the Confederate dead was something that
President McKinnley advocated in a speech in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1898.
Congress appropriated $2,500 for the purpose of removing those dead from the Soldiers’
Home Cemetery and three different plots within Arlington, to Section 16 of the
Arlington National Cemetery in 1900. Not everyone was in favor of this idea.
The Southern Memorial Association wanted the remains of the Confederate
soldiers returned to the various states and reburied in Southern cemeteries,
most notably, Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond. Eventually, Lewis won the
argument.[5]
A map showing the original location of Confederate
graves with the new section. (Virginia Museum of History)
There were 136
Confederate graves at Arlington, and 128 at the Soldiers’ Home Cemetery.
Reinterment work began in early 1901, and the work was finished in October
1901. Each soldier’s grave was marked by a white marble tombstone. What became
known as the Confederate section was near what was then the main entrance of
the cemetery.[6]
To return to our
question, yes, there were Confederate prisoners of war buried at Arlington National
Cemetery once internment began in the spring of 1864. There were also
Confederates interred at other cemeteries as well. Those interred at Arlington
were originally in three different sections and were consolidated into Section
16 in 1901. There are still Confederates buried in the Congressional Cemetery
as well. Probably half of the Confederates who died and were buried in
Washington, D.C., during the war were returned to Virginia and North Carolina.
