POETIC JUSTICE

  Robert and Mary Custis Lee loved their plantation called Arlington. Mary was the daughter of George Washington Parke Custis, the original owner of Arlington and grandson of George and Martha Washington. He owned 1100 acres and willed the property and Arlington house to Mary upon his death. Mary and Robert E. Lee were married in 1831. After the Civil War began on April 12, 1861 Mary was forced to leave Arlington house just before it was occupied by Union troops on May 24th. The Lee's would never live at Arlington again. When Mary tried to pay the property tax bill of 92.07 via a friend the payment was rejected. The Federal government would only accept the payment if Robert or Mary Lee paid in person. Since the war was in full swing by this time that was not possible. In January 1864 the property was sold at auction and bought by the Federal government for 26,800. This would be over 506, 000 dollars in today's money.

General Lee

Mary Custis Lee

  U.S. Army Quartermaster General Montgomery Meigs was a prewar friend of Robert E. Lee. After Lee swore allegiance to the Confederacy Meigs became a bitter enemy. Meigs wanted to do anything and everything he could to insure that the Lee's could never return to Arlington. This hatred would intensify after Meigs son was killed in battle fighting Lee's army. In 1863 a Freedman's camp was set up on the property. Over the course of the war three Federal forts were constructed. By May 1864 massive casualties were being generated by Grants overland campaign. From early May through June there were the back to back battles of the Wilderness, Spotsylvania and Cold Harbor. In early May 1864 two hundred acres of Arlington was set aside for a military cemetery. Private William Christman was the first burial in Arlington and he died of disease in a Washington hospital. He was buried on May 13, 1864. It was Meigs intention for the first bodies to be buried as close to Arlington house as possible. The problem was that Arlington House was occupied by Union officers and they didn't want bodies buried close to the house. The first burials were made in a lower section of the property. When Meigs found out what was happening he was livid. He evicted everyone of the officers from Arlington house. Meigs then installed a military chaplain and a loyal lieutenant to carry out his orders. Soldiers were being buried in Mary Lee's flower garden next to the house. Captain Albert Packard was the first soldier buried there and by the end of May his grave was joined by forty more. When the war ended thousands of soldiers and Freedmen were buried at Arlington. 

General Montgomery Meigs

  Robert E. Lee only lived five years after the war and lived out his days as president of Washington University in Lexington Virginia, dying in 1870. The Lee's always hoped to return to Arlington but it was not to be. Mary Lee died three years later in 1873. Because of the war the Lee's lost virtually everything. The Lee's oldest child, George Washington Custis Lee was determined to regain ownership of the property and sued the Federal government. He won in a lower Federal court. The government appealed to the Supreme Court and lost by a 5-4 decision. On December 4, 1882 Justice Samuel Freeman Miller, appointed by President Lincoln, wrote the majority opinion, stating that the 1864 tax sale had been unconstitutional and was therefore invalid. Arlington now belonged to George Washington Custis Lee. The government offered Lee 150,000 dollars to buy the property back. In 2019 monetary value this would be the equivalent of almost 4 million in today's dollars. Lee accepted the deal and Congress appropriated the funds. Robert Todd Lincoln, Abraham Lincolns only surviving child, accepted title for the property. We can only imagine what Arlington cemetery would be like today if Lee had not sold the property back to the government.  I have had the honor of visiting Arlington twice since 1996 and it is one one of the most beautiful and moving places in the world. 

George Washington Custis Lee

  I posted this article on to my Facebook page and a lady asked me why this story was poetic justice. The following was my response. That is a fair question. If you take the Montgomery Meigs or radical Republican approach to the question then one can say that Lee was lucky that he wasn't hung for treason and that everything he owned should have been destroyed or confiscated. This is how all civil wars have ended throughout history, at least for the losing side. Our Civil War was the exception. On the other hand, if you take the Lincoln approach, which I do, he wanted to avoid retribution at all costs. He told Grant and Sherman to " let em down easy".His goal was to reunite the country as quickly as possible. I think that if Lincoln had lived to see how Lee lived the last five years of his life he would have been very proud of him. Who knows, they might have become allies in the effort to reunite the country. To me Lee's greatness, even more than his greatness on the battlefield was in how he helped to save the country after the war. Lincoln's greatest fear was that Confederate leaders like Lee, Johnston and Forrest, whom Southerners much admired, would decide not to surrender and break up into guerrilla bands. If that had happened we might still be fighting. In my opinion six men did more to save America at the end of the Civil War than anyone else. They were Lincoln, Grant, Sherman, Lee, Johnston and Forrest. A good book to read about this period is April 1865 by Jay Winick. Personally I call it poetic justice because the concept of private property rights prevailed in the end and I think Lincoln would have been happy about that. To top it all off Lee's son could have been as vindictive as Meigs and held on to the property just for spite, but he didn't. That in itself reflects on his character and that of his father