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The Battle to Interpret Arlington House, 1921–1937,” by Michael B Welcome to a free reading from Washington History: Magazine of the Historical Society of Washington, D.C. As we chose this week’s reading, news stories continued to swirl about commemorative statues, plaques, street names, and institutional names that amplify white supremacy in America and in DC. We note, as the Historical Society fulfills its mission of offering thoughtful, researched context for today’s issues, that a key influence on the history of commemoration has come to the surface: the quiet, ladylike (in the anachronistic sense) role of promoters of the southern “Lost Cause” school of Civil War interpretation. Historian Michael Chornesky details how federal officials fended off southern supremacists (posing as preservationists) on how to interpret Arlington House, home of George Washington’s adopted family and eventually of Confederate commander Robert E. Lee. “Confederate Island upon the Union’s ‘Most Hallowed Ground’: The Battle to Interpret Arlington House, 1921–1937,” by Michael B. Chornesky. “Confederate Island” first appeared in Washington History 27-1 (spring 2015), © Historical Society of Washington, D.C. Access via JSTOR* to the entire run of Washington History and its predecessor, Records of the Columbia Historical Society, is a benefit of membership in the Historical Society of Washington, D.C. at the Membership Plus level. Copies of this and many other back issues of Washington History magazine are available for browsing and purchase online through the DC History Center Store: https://dchistory.z2systems.com/np/clients/dchistory/giftstore.jsp ABOUT THE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON, D.C. The Historical Society of Washington, D.C., is a non-profit, 501(c)(3), community-supported educational and research organization that collects, interprets, and shares the history of our nation's capital in order to promote a sense of identity, place and pride in our city and preserve its heritage for future generations. Founded in 1894, the Historical Society serves a diverse audience through collections, public programs, exhibitions, and publications. It welcomes visitors to its new home, the DC History Center, on the second floor of the historic Carnegie Library. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the DC History Center is currently closed. The Historical Society staff is working remotely to keep you connected to D.C. history. We are eager to welcome you back once the danger has passed. * JSTOR is an online resource that digitizes scholarly research. Academic institutions typically provide organizational access to all of JSTOR’s holdings through their libraries. The Historical Society Membership Plus conveys access to our publications only. July 6, 2020 Confederate Island upon the Union’s “Most Hallowed Ground” The Battle to Interpret Arlington House, 1921–1937 BY MICHAEL B. CHORNESKY n a 1931 sightseeing trip to Washington, General Lee’s home and not a picture of General D.C., Jane C. Gerard of Blue Ridge Sum- Lee?” He answered, “General Lee was really only Omit, Pennsylvania, crossed the Potomac an overseer for Mrs. Lee . he never owned an to pass a “delightful afternoon” at one of the area’s acre of land or a slave.” Dissatisfied with this oldest historic landmarks, the former Arlington answer, which sidestepped the point of her ques- estate of the Custis family. Occupied since the end tion, Gerard left in disgust. “I know how the South of the Civil War by Arlington National Cemetery, loves the great man’s memory and the North also the property’s centerpiece was Arlington House. respects and admires [him],” she continued in a The mansion was famous both for its association letter to the editor of the Richmond Times-Dispatch. with George Washington’s adopted family and as “I have always been taught how great he was.[I]t is the home of Robert E. Lee, his wife Mary, and a shame a Southerner is not put in this home or a their seven children during the three decades person who is big enough to . mention the splen- before Lee’s fateful decision to resign from the did Southern gentleman who was so beloved.”2 United States Army after Virginia seceded from the Jane Gerard’s displeasure was common to Union in April 1861. Led through the old house by many of Arlington House’s visitors in its early a “gentleman who told me he had been appointed days as a government-run historic site. Built by to attend to the furnishing and meet the people the slaves of George Washington Parke Custis who came to see the place,” Gerard later wrote, beginning in 1802, Arlington House is a remnant she found it, “beautiful . filled with exquisite old of one of Virginia’s most celebrated colonial fam- furniture.”1 ilies. Custis was the grandson of Martha Dan- Yet something was missing. According to dridge Custis, the widow of Daniel Parke Custis, Gerard, the caretaker told the crowd of tourists who eventually married George Washington and “everything about the Washington family and not became the first First Lady of the United States. a word about General Lee.” Lingering after the Orphaned at the age of six months, young Custis talk, Gerard asked the caretaker, “Why do you was adopted by the Washingtons and raised at have only the Custis pictures in the hall here at Mount Vernon.3 He moved to the 1,100-acre Arlington House, also known as the Custis-Lee Mansion, became a contested site in the ongoing battle to interpret and memorialize the Civil War. Photographed here in 1864 with Union soldiers lounging on the steps, the mansion suffered from neglect under Union Army occupation and later as the offices of Arlington Cemetery managers. 21 ernment to provide historic restoration and inter- felled by the combination of a tyrannical Republi- pretation of the building. can government, its overwhelming military might, During the past decade, historians have delved and repeated violations of the Constitution. This into the origins and evolution of Americans’ per- interpretation first took shape in the final days of sisting disagreements on the causes and conse- the war and was shepherded into the post-Recon- quences of the Civil War. Narratives of the conflict, struction period by an alliance of Confederate vet- along with the complementary rituals and tradi- erans’ organizations and local Ladies’ Memorial tions, continue to resonate for many modern audi- Associations. These ladies’ associations began when ences. Was the war fought to emancipate the groups of southern women came together to enslaved? Was it the the result of economic factors, recover the Confederate dead from the war’s many or was it a clash of cultures that had grown apart battlefields for reinterment in local cemeteries. Dis- over time? Who prevailed in the battles between parate groups later combined into a national orga- influential citizens, memorial groups, and the gov- nization, the United Daughters of the Confederacy, ernment as they sought to circulate their stories of which took on the reburial functions and pursued the war and Reconstruction? After a war ends, a broader mission to perpetuate the Lost Cause how does a losing side honor its heroes on the through education and memorialization. By the same soil where the winners also celebrate their end of the Spanish-American War in 1898, the own fallen? Along with honoring their dead, did four-year-old United Daughters of the Confeder- memorial associations in the South also perpetuate the “Lost Cause,” an amalgam of mythology and memory that celebrates the South’s “idyllic” plan- tations, its cultural supremacy, and its insistence George Washington Parke Custis, father of Mary Anna Lee (pictured about 1844 with Robert E. Lee, Jr.), made Arlington House a that secession was a constitutionally protected shrine to the step-grandfather who raised him, George Washington. Courtesy Library of Congress; Virginia Historical Society aspect of each state’s rights? The battle over how Arlington House would display and interpret the Arlington estate, which he received upon his history of its inhabitants is a revealing interlude for grandmother’s death in 1802, after realizing that how Americans have struggled and allowed cir- he would never inherit Mount Vernon. He dedi- cumstance to guide them toward divergent and cated his life to building and improving Arlington still evolving understandings of the Civil War. House, growing experimental crops on its farm, and perpetuating George Washington’s legacy by During a tumultuous decade of Reconstruction maintaining a portion of the home as a makeshift following the Civil War, Americans clashed over museum to his step-grandfather. how the states of the defeated Confederacy would Custis’s only daughter, Mary Anna Randolph be politically reintegrated and the extent to which Custis, married U.S. Army Lieutenant Robert E. they would be permitted autonomy within the Lee in the house’s White Parlor in 1831, shortly reunited Union. Reconstruction ended in the win- after Lee’s graduation from the United States Mili- ter of 1876-1877 with a contested election and a tary Academy at West Point. At the time, Arling- bargain that removed U.S. Army troops who had ton House seemed the perfect setting for a union remained stationed throughout the South in between two storied Virginia families. Between exchange for the ascension of Republican Ruther- 1861 and the mid-twentieth century, however, it ford B. Hayes to the presidency. White southerners instead became a battlefield in a protracted conflict proclaimed their “redemption” and acted quickly over the causes and meaning of the Civil War. The to undo many of the political reforms of Recon- Senate Park Commission’s (McMillan) Plan, out- struction, stripping free black southerners of their lined in 1901, prepared to usher the nation’s capi- civil rights and reducing them to second-class citi- tal into a new era through the eventual zens through violent repression and local fiat.
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