After Mary Lee, confined to a wheelchair, sent a representative instead of appearing personally to pay a $92.07 tax bill, the government seized the property.
Quartermaster General Montgomery C. Meigs proposed the land be used as a military cemetery. The Civil War was resulting in huge numbers of deaths and the bodies needed to be buried somewhere.
On May 13, 1864, Private William Christman of Pennsylvania, who died of peritonitis, became the first military member buried there. To ensure that the house would forever be uninhabitable, Meigs directed that the graves be placed as close to the house as possible. It would appear that Mr. Meigs had a bone to pick with Robert E. Lee.
In 1866, he ordered the remains of 2,111 unknown soldiers killed on battlefields near Washington, D.C., placed in a vault in Lee's former rose garden.
Nearly 4,000 former slaves are also buried in the cemetery.
--Old Secesh
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