A Hot Day at Arlington National Cemetery

The day dawned hot and humid. Indeed, it was so hot that some of the elevators at the train stations around D.C. had stopped working and the tracks on the green line of the Washington Metro had bent, thus stopping train service to a portion of the city. In addition, millions of residents in the D.C. region were without air conditioning from a lightning storm that had struck about a week earlier. Truly it was not a good day to traipse around the 624 acres at Arlington National Cemetery. Yet, that was just what Hope and I found ourselves doing on this sticky July afternoon.

            Upon first arriving at the park, we inquired about information on the history of the cemetery at the Visitor’s Center Information Desk. The lobby was packed because it was the week of 4^th of July and every American with the means to do so was visiting D.C. to celebrate our country’s independence. The harried young woman at the counter hastily explained that the best way to get information about the cemetery’s history was to take the shuttle. Since it was blazing hot outside and the sites were 30 minute walks apart from each other, sitting under the cover of the shuttle to learn about the history of the park seemed like the sensible thing to do. After purchasing the tickets and racing out to catch the next shuttle departure we were on our way. Or not. The shuttle driver decided he was hot and grumpy too, so before we left the station, he managed to get into a shouting match with another shuttle driver. It was not pretty. And it certainly set the tone for the rest of the day’s events.

            In an effort at being as far away from the unhappy employee as possible, we elected to get on the last car of the shuttle train. Unfortunately the engine was very loud and we missed hearing his introduction to the history of the park, despite the fact that he was speaking into a microphone. Resigned to our fate, we sat back on the sticky plastic seat and enjoyed the bit of hot breeze that blew through our hair as we rolled past row upon row of headstones at Arlington National Cemetery. Indeed, there are a staggering number of gravestones punctuated by stately oak trees marking the final resting place of some of this country’s most famous veterans, presidents and heroes. According to Fodor’s travel guide, there are more than 230,000 graves at the site and, according to the shuttle driver, about 27 burials are held at Arlington Cemetery every day. No photographs are allowed at these funeral services. It is a somber place and the starkness of this rule serves to emphasize the emotion.

When the shuttle stopped at the Arlington House and quiet settled across the oak-studded hilltop, we realized our grand strategy. We would disembark from the shuttle and tour the Arlington House in an attempt at learning more about the history of the site. Although significant portions of the house and grounds were under restoration – and had been since 2007 – we were able to glean some good information from one of the friendly park rangers.

  There are three phases to the history of Arlington National Cemetery. The first era began in 1802 when George Washington Parke Custis inherited 1,100 acres from his grandmother, Martha Dandridge Custis Washington, who was none other than the wife of the nation’s first president, George Washington. Apparently George Custis had been raised by his grandparents – George and Martha Washington – and when Martha died in 1802, the grandson received the estate and named it Mount Washington. Shortly after this, it was renamed Arlington in honor of an earlier plantation owned by the Custis family.

George Custis’ vision for his estate was closely associated with the early designs for the new capital unfolding on the plain below: Washington, D.C. This was a new city intended to symbolize the new nation. As such, Pierre L’Enfant, the city’s grand architect set about designing the capital with the same kind of balance and dignity as the Constitution had established the new government. Custis had something of L’Enfant’s vision in his plans; between 1802 – 1818, slaves labored to clear the estate and construct the grand mansion now known as Arlington House. Because of the two men’s parallel visions, it’s no coincidence that Pierre L’Enfant’s body was eventually interred at the top of the hill overlooking the city just adjacent to Custis’ grand mansion. According to Fodor’s travel guide, L’Enfant’s “original design for the city is depicted on the top of his gravesite, located in front of Arlington House. The view of the city he designed is breathtaking” below (283).

 Of course, George Washington Parke Custis was not just building a plantation; he was also growing a family. In 1804 he married and over the next several years had children, most of whom died early. The only surviving child, Mary Anna Randolph Custis, married Robert E. Lee in 1831. Importantly the Lee family continued to hold slaves, and the plantation continued to use slave labor even after Mary Anna Custis’ parents died in the years preceding the American Civil War.

            Thus the year 1861 begins the second phase of Arlington National Cemetery’s storied history. It was in this year, during the opening salvos of our nation’s search for economic and social justice for people of African ancestry, that the Lee family fled Arlington House. Indeed in April 1861, Virginia seceded from the Union and by May the Army of the Potomac (the Union Army) occupied the strategic estate above the capital city. Barracks were constructed on the grounds and military leaders used the house as headquarters. In 1863, shortly after President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, the army built a Freedmen’s Village, a symbolic gesture toward newly freed slaves. In 1864, over 200 acres were set aside for military graves and the war dead soon began to be buried on the grounds.

            From the perspective of the Lee family and Southerners in general, this Union occupation and overt uses at the site must have been horrifying. Viewed through the lens of landscape politics, this occupation was a necessary and symbolic method for Northerners to declare power over the secessionists. It ensured that the Lee family would never be able to return to their estate and restore the antebellum plantation to its pre-Civil War glory. In something of a scandal, the U.S. government confiscated the property in 1864 on the grounds that Mary Anna Custis Lee had not appeared in person to pay the property taxes. Thus burying Union soldiers in her rose garden seemed to be a fitting symbol for the vanquished, and the official act consecrating Northern victory. Although short, this second phase was certainly decisive.

            Eighteen sixty five ushered in the third and final era for Arlington, which continues to this day. More soldiers were buried there and the U.S. Army erected the Tomb of the Unknown Dead of the Civil War to commemorate the 2,111 unidentified soldiers who died in the battlefields around Virginia. In all, over 500,000 people died during the four years of war, which was a staggering number considering the entire country only had a population of 31 million (Burt 288). Other monuments and tombs associated with the Civil War were constructed, including the Confederate Memorial in 1914 and the memorial to Robert E. Lee in 1955 when Congress dedicated Arlington House in his honor. Along the way, the national park Service acquired the estate in 1933 and the Arlington House was once more renamed to be The Robert E. Lee Memorial in 1972. Since the opening of this phase, many other memorials and monuments have been constructed at Arlington and it has come to be the nation’s darling of cemeteries.

           Perhaps the most surprising information – for me -- about Arlington Cemetery was its history. Although I love history, I tend to shy away from histories that are associated with wars. Thus when I learned about Arlington’s origins and relationship to George Washington, along with the connection the property had to Robert E. Lee, I was surprised. The property has quite a rich history, weaving together events from the early Republic, the antebellum South, the building of the capital in D.C. and, of course, the American Civil War.

The estate’s geographic location on the northernmost reaches of Virginia – a symbol of the Old South -- is also significant and worth returning to as a point of surprise for me. It is a common technique for a vanquisher to claim the physical space of a vanquished enemy. Among other things, it symbolizes utter victory and an uncontested domination of the physical realm. It also symbolizes psychological defeat. The vanquished is always reminded that this was theirs, but now it is not. The Spanish did this to the Maya in Mexico when they built Catholic cathedrals on top of Maya temples in the 16^th century. The Han Dynasty did it to their defeated foes in 5^th century China, and the Greeks did it in the aftermath of the Pelopennesian War in 6^th century BCE. Now I learn that the North employed the same technique of landscape politics to declare their victory over the South by claiming the very plantation of the South’s leading war hero. It is a stunning use of psychological and physical power. And with this realization I am prompted to reflect with new insight about the vigor with which the South has resisted the results of the Civil War, going so far as to declare that “the South will rise again!”

             After spending over an hour at Arlington House we got back on the shuttle, this time with a different driver. We also sat closer to the front where we could hear less of the engine and more of the tour.  Although it was still blazing hot, this portion of the journey was much more pleasant. One of the stops we made during this segment was to the John F. Kennedy Eternal Flame Memorial. The somber quality of the memorial is profound. Our driver cautioned us to speak in hushed tones. This instruction seemed unnecessary, however, since the very sight of the flame burning in the already intense heat of the midday served as a searing reminder of the nation’s loss of one of our greatest presidents. Although I was not yet born when President Kennedy was assassinated in 1963 my family, which originally hails from Boston, were staunch supporters of the Kennedy family and the Democratic Party. It was, in a sense, bred into me to admire and revere John F. Kennedy. Thus seeing this flame, the marble slate and the Cape Cod fieldstone of his gravesite represented a culminating moment. That he was reported to have said “it’s so peaceful here, I could stay forever” while visiting Arlington Cemetery just 12 short days before his death seems like poignant irony, beyond which words can scarcely do justice (Burt 280 – 281). The flame – burning eternally – honors this sentiment. The torch from which it burns symbolizes the inspiration he offered to the nation’s youth when he called them to ask not what the country could do for them, but what they could do for the country. He was, in life as in death, passing the torch to a new generation. Fittingly it was his wife, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, who decided to have the eternal flame placed at his memorial. This, too, seemed symbolic of the searing love she must have had for him; I would like to think that the flame meant something about the nature of their relationship as much as it reflected his inspiration to the nation.    

            Just down the road from the memorial to John F. Kennedy our driver stopped at the grave site of his brother Robert F. Kennedy. His death, perhaps even more so than JFK’s, symbolizes the turmoil of the 1960s. By the time Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated in June 1968, our nation had passed the 1964 Civil Rights Act, our soldiers were increasingly embroiled in war in Vietnam and Martin Luther King, Jr. had just been shot to death in April. Cesar Chavez was on a hunger strike for workers’ rights in California. Poverty was on the rise across the United States and President Johnson had declared war on it. Needless to say, the country was in upheaval. Robert Kennedy’s quest for the nomination as Democratic Party’s presidential candidate must have been an advance that challenged the opposition in unimaginable ways.  Yet his assassination was not conducted by one of those vowing to see the South rise again – as might have been suspected. Rather he was shot by Sirhan Sirhan, a young Palestinian man who was disturbed by RFK’s pledge to send air power to Israel. In a sad twist of fate, the long arm of conflict in the Holy Land was striking a blow at progressive politics on the domestic American landscape. The dual assassinations of the Kennedy brothers ushered in an era of cynicism that the nation has yet to overcome.

            In many ways, these historic events have become defining moments in my own life. I was a toddler when Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. were killed. I vividly remember televised scenes from the war in Vietnam, so much so that my mother evicted the television from our house after I had a series of nightmares from watching the image of a naked child in flames running down a Saigon city street. My family never acquired another television until after I left home for college. Largely because of the murder of Robert Kennedy, Richard Nixon was elected president in November 1968. His presidency can be noted as a low point in our nation’s political history. And the rhetorical question what if JFK and RFK had not been shot will remain forever unanswered. These are things I thought about and the deep, abiding emotions I struggled to contain on the hot, hot July afternoon at Arlington Cemetery.

             The intense heat from the sun, the enormous sound from the shuttle’s engine and the vast number of well-ordered headstones seemed to merge into one overwhelming moment during this visit to Arlington National Cemetery.  At one point during the shuttle tour, into my notes I scribbled “I hate war. I love my country.” This, more than anything else, captures the philosophical ambivalence I feel about visiting Arlington. This is a cemetery which originated out of war and which houses hundreds of thousands of people who died fighting in war. Profoundly, there are few things I despise more about the world in which I live than war. So, here I find myself visiting, reflecting on and writing about a cemetery supported by my country, in honor of war dead. The irony is not lost on me. Furthermore, having traveled to many countries across most of the world’s continents, I have seen first hand the corruption, incompetence and frightening enormity of governments unlike my own. I have been forced to pay bribes in exchange for my freedom in the Amazon region of Brazil. I have found myself caught in the crossfire of jungle conflicts along the Thai-Burmese border and in the Lago Atitlan region of Guatemala. These examples of government corruption and military quests for power make me appreciate the steadfast resilience of the U.S. Constitution. The rule of law, established by the Constitution, works well in the U.S. most of the time. When President John F. Kennedy was shot, Vice President Johnson quickly stepped in to office to restore stability to the nation. After Robert Kennedy’s assassination, due process oversaw the fate of Sirhan Sirhan.  For this and more I love my country. For this I love and appreciate my government. And although I am the first to admit that there are imperfections in the U.S. government – as evidenced by a too cozy relationship with the military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned us against (we do, after all, have over 800 U.S. military installations across the planet) – we are still the world’s shining example of democracy. And for that I am grateful to have been born in such a time and in such a place as this.

Works Cited

Burt, Sandra and Linda Perlis. Washington, D.C., with Kids. 4^th ed. New York: Random   House, 2008.