Arlington House: The Robert E. Lee Memorial: Cultural Landscape Inventory, Arlington House: The Robert E. Lee Memorial, National Park Service

Ribeiro Jones, Angelina

Arlington House: The Robert E. Lee Memorial is a 16 acre site managed by the National Park Service that is located within Arlington National Cemetery, a 600-plus acre cemetery managed by the US Army and located in Arlington County Virginia directly across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C. The site is a memorial to Robert E. Lee, and serves as a museum exhibiting decorative arts; archives; music; gardens; manuscript collections; Civil War memorabilia; 18th and 19th century furnishings and relics of the Robert E. Lee and Custis families and the slaves who also lived on the property. These objects can be found throughout the site: on the grounds, in the house itself, in the potting shed/museum building and in the slave quarters. The period of significance for Arlington House: The Robert E. Lee Memorial is 1802-1880. Three periods associated with a sequence of historical development can be found within this time frame. One, 1802-1861 relates to the time that the Custis and Lee families used the estate as a residence. Two, 1861-1865 is when Arlington was used as the headquarters for the Army of the Potomac during the Civil War, and finally, 1865-1880 relates to the time when the site was transformed into a national cemetery. The 16 acre property is what remains of an 1,100 acre estate on the banks of the Potomac River that was inherited by George Washington Parke Custis (G.W.P. Custis), step-grandson of George Washington. Custis was the grandson of Martha Washington through her first marriage. After his natural father, John Parke Custis, died in 1781, G.W.P. Custis went to live at Mount Vernon where George and Martha Washington raised him as their own son (http://www.nps.gov/arho/historyculture/george-custis.htm). This report will refer to G.W. P. Custis as Washington's step-grandson. During his childhood, Custis became very attached to George Washington who was said to regard G.W. P, Custis his own son. Arlington Estate, first known as Mount Washington, was one of several estates owned by Custis and run by his slaves. It was more of a family seat than an income-generating plantation like his others. Custis considered Arlington a memorial to his step-grandfather George Washington. Custis, like Washington, was interested in advancements in agriculture, but he was also a painter, a playwright, a lover of music and a storyteller. Thousands of visitors came to the estate every year to enjoy social events and outings at Arlington Spring, a public meeting place that Custis established in the southwest section of the estate on the banks of the Potomac River. The focal point of the estate, Arlington House, was set upon the highest topographic point of the estate and was designed and built between the years of 1803-1818 by George Hadfield, an English architect who is known for designing numerous classical residences as well as Treasury Building (1800) in D.C . and the District of Columbia City Hall (1820). The house is notable for being the first temple-form residence built in the United States, and was purposefully set in a prominent position overlooking the growing capital city of Washington, D.C. A single carriage road accessed Arlington House. It headed uphill to the west along the edge of the Park of Arlington from the Alexandria-Georgetown Turnpike which bisected the entire estate. The house rested on a terrace above the sloping parkland in which sheep grazed among oak trees and groves of eastern red cedar that framed views of the river below, and to the city beyond the estate. To the immediate north and south of the house were both a flower and a vegetable garden, and behind, or to the west of the house were slave quarters that were built in the same style as the main house. Beyond the slave quarters, a vast dense forest grew lending a dark and mysterious backdrop to the estate, contrasting with the large open area of the park to the east of the house. Tucked into the woods, and on the other side of a ravine to the west of the house, were stables accessed by a carriage road spur. In 1831, Custis’ daughter Mary Anna Randolph Custis married Lt. Robert E. Lee. The couple called Arlington home and raised their seven children there. Lee’s military career frequently kept him away from Arlington but following the death of GWP Custis in 1857, Lee became the master of Arlington despite the fact that the estate was actually owned by his wife Mary. Lee took on the responsibility of managing the estate and lived a contented life with his family at Arlington. Following the eruption of the Civil War on April 12, 1861, when Confederate artillery opened fire on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina, Lee faced the difficult choice of joining forces with the north, or fighting for the south. He resigned from the U.S. Army on April 22, 1861 and left Arlington to command the Virginia forces which he named the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia. Lee went on to become the leader of the Confederate Army during the Civil War. Mary Custis evacuated Arlington in May of 1861. A few days later the Union Army crossed the Potomac River and spread out over Arlington Estate claiming the land for the north. From 1861 to 1865, Arlington was used as the headquarters for the Army of the Potomac during the Civil War. Troops lived and were trained on the estate. Arlington’s elevated view and prominent setting high above Washington gave the army tactical defense advantages and symbolically announced their presence to the capital city. As forts were established around the borders of Arlington Estate, the army built a system of roads for better access from headquarters at the house. The landscape began to transform from a picturesque estate and farm into a more practical landscape where officers and infantrymen lived and trained among the forests and fields, and where the remaining slaves also resided and worked to sustain themselves and their families. Under the watchful eyes of the Lee family slaves who remained on the estate, the house, personal items left by the Lee family, and the gardens and grounds near the house remained largely unharmed. As the war progressed, and the slaves were relocated, the house and grounds deteriorated. The Park at Arlington was devastated by the loss of trees that provided the army with timber, Black campfire circles dotted the larger landscape, paths were widened and slopes eroded under the heavy usage by troops, but somehow Arlington Woods remained largely intact. By 1863 garden fences had disappeared and the gardens themselves were reduced to trampled mud pits and the terraces were losing their definition. Some of the only remaining features near the house were the trees that provided valuable shade to the enlisted men. In 1863, Freedmen’s Village was established in the southern portion of the estate west of the Turnpike. It was the most famous of several freedmen’s camps established by the army on the Potomac River built to accommodate the influx of fugitive and former slaves into Washington. The village was approximately 400 acres and hosted a community with homes and churches and a school and hospital where residents could farm nearby government-owned lands to establish financial autonomy through agriculture. It also included a cemetery nearby which, in 1864, a soldier from Pennsylvania was buried. In 1864, Arlington Estate was deemed suitable for the location of a national cemetery. It was chosen because it was owned by the federal government, for its close proximity to hospitals in Alexandria and Washington, for its picturesque location, for the security from floods that its elevation provided, and because it was the former home of Lee, leader of the Confederate Army.

Arlington House: The Robert E. Lee Memorial: Cultural Landscape Inventory, Arlington House: The Robert E. Lee Memorial, National Park Service

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