How Arlington National Cemetery Came to Be

On June 15, 1864, Robert E. Lee's home becomes Arlington National Cemetery. From the article:
"...Meigs moved to make official what was already a matter of practice: “I recommend that...the land surrounding the Arlington Mansion, now understood to be the property of the United States, be appropriated as a National Military Cemetery, to be properly enclosed, laid out and carefully preserved for that purpose,” he wrote Stanton on June 15, 1864. Meigs proposed devoting 200 acres to the new graveyard. He also suggested that Christman and others recently interred in the Lower Cemetery should be unearthed and reburied closer to Lee’s hilltop home. “The grounds about the Mansion are admirably adapted to such a use,” he wrote.

Stanton endorsed the quartermaster’s recommendation the same day.

Loyalist newspapers applauded the birth of Arlington National Cemetery, one of 13 new graveyards created specifically for those dying in the Civil War. “This and the [Freedmen’s Village]...are righteous uses of the estate of the Rebel General Lee,” read the Washington Morning Chronicle.