Legislation to Redesignate Arlington House

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Redesignating the Robert E. Lee Memorial in Arlington National Cemetery as the “Arlington House National Historic Site”

Legislative History of Arlington House, The Robert E. Lee Memorial

By Matthew Penrod, National Park Service (ret.)

Purpose: Background on the creation of the National Park Service unit, Arlington House, The Robert E. Lee Memorial.

How did Arlington House come to be designated as a memorial to Robert E. Lee? Following the Civil War, Arlington House fell under the administration of the United States Army. The home was referred to as the Custis-Lee Mansion or simply the Lee Mansion to differentiate it from the cemetery that surrounded it. The home had become an office for the administration of the cemetery.

A generation of American Civil War veterans began dying off in the early 1900s around the time of the 50th anniversary of the war. Memorials and monuments began being erected across both the North and South at an accelerated rate during this period. The spirit and feeling of reconciliation between North and South was strengthened when Arlington Cemetery allowed Confederate soldiers to be buried in the cemetery and a monument was erected to their dead there.

The 1920s marked a volatile time period in American history. After emancipation, many African Americans faced discrimination and violence throughout the Jim Crow era. The mid 1920s marked the height of the Ku Klux Klan in the United States, and in 1925 tens of thousands of KKK members marched down the streets of Washington, DC. The 1920s also marked many other changes. Throughout this time alcohol was prohibited throughout the United States. The 1920s saw a large economic boom in the United States and would later be referred to as “The Roaring Twenties.” The successful conclusion of World War I in 1918 made clear that the United States had become a world superpower. This had seemed unlikely just sixty years earlier when Americans killed each other by the tens of thousands in the Civil War. As the increasing popularity of the automobile made travel much easier, tourism across the nation became extremely popular. Historic sites began to be established as Americans desired to visit sites important to American history, such as Colonial Williamsburg or Mount Vernon.

The area immediately around Arlington began to change greatly at this time. In 1922, the Lincoln Memorial was dedicated directly across the Potomac River from Arlington House. That same year the United States government decided a bridge should stretch across the Potomac River at this location, connecting the Lincoln Memorial to Arlington House and Arlington National Cemetery. The Arlington Memorial Bridge physically and symbolically linked the north and south as a symbol of reunion. A federal parkway was also built during this time to connect the city of Washington, DC to the home of George Washington, Mount Vernon. Completed in 1932 the parkway was known as the Mount Vernon Memorial Highway and is the section of the George Washington Memorial Parkway from Arlington Memorial Bridge to Mount Vernon.

In the 1920s, at the urging of Frances Parkinson Keyes, the wife of a New Hampshire Senator, some preservationists asked the U.S. Army to turn over Arlington House to the United Daughters of the Confederacy so that they could restore it to honor Robert E. Lee. The Army refused, believing that they would use the house to glorify their cause and Lee’s role in the Confederate States.1 In 1925, Congress acted to forge a compromise. The house would be restored to honor Lee, but the U.S. government would control it and it would focus on Lee’s efforts to promote peace and reunion after the war. The 68th Congress that passed this legislation was controlled by the Republican Party. The bill was passed with unanimous consent and was signed into law by President Calvin Coolidge, also a Republican.2 The legislation read: (cosponsored by Louis Cramton of Michigan (R) and Walton Moore of Virginia (D)) “now honor is accorded Robert E. Lee as one of the great military leaders of history, whose exalted character, noble life, and eminent services are recognized and esteemed, and whose manly attributes of precept and example were compelling factors in cementing the American people in bonds of patriotic devotion and action against common external enemies in the war with Spain and in the World War, thus consummating the hope of a reunited country that would again swell the chorus of the Union.” U.S. Representative Louis Cramton (a Republican from Michigan), whose father had served in the Union Army and fought against Robert E. Lee, declared that “it is unprecedented in history for a nation to have gone through as great a struggle as we did in the Civil War”3 and then to become “so absolutely reunited.” He felt that “there was no man in the South who did more by his precept and example to help bring about that condition than did Robert E. Lee.”4

In 1933, during the Great Depression and as many War Department sites were being transferred to the National Park Service, the house, outbuildings and grounds immediately surrounding the home were transferred from the U.S. Army to the National Park Service.

By 1955 the national Civil Rights movement began to take shape. The previous year the Supreme Court handed down the landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling that declared racial segregation in schools as unconstitutional. In Virginia, a campaign of “Massive Resistance” to forcing schools to integrate began. This era was also the same time that the United States was emerging from its successful intervention in World War II. The nation also was nearing the centennial of the American Civil War. In 1957 Congress established a commission to properly commemorate the 100th Anniversary of the war. As the nation prepared to commemorate the centennial, and to mark the 90th anniversary of the surrender at Appomattox, the United States Congress formally recognized the restored home (then called the Custis-Lee Mansion) in Arlington National Cemetery as a national memorial to Robert E. Lee because he “... attained world renown as a military genius, and after Appomattox fervently devoted himself to peace, to the reuniting of the Nation, and to the advancement of youth education and the welfare and progress of mankind ...”

This legislation was introduced by Republican Representative Joel Broyhill of Virginia in the House of Representatives, a staunch segregationist. Broyhill was part of a large group of Southern congressmen and senators that signed onto a “Southern Manifesto” that declared their opposition to integration of public places in the United States the following year in 1956. But the legislation that created the Robert E. Lee Memorial was introduced in the US Senate by Senator Estes Kefauver, one of only three Southern Democrats who refused to sign this segregationist document. The bill was also supported in the US Senate by another Southern Democrat who refused to sign the Southern Manifesto and later became a United States President, Senator Lyndon Baines Johnson of Texas, who would go onto to sign the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The bill was passed by the Democratically controlled Senate and House unanimously and was signed into law by Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Following the Civil War, Robert E. Lee had showed his commitment to reunification by taking an Amnesty Oath on October 2, 1865 where he swore allegiance to the United States government. However, this oath became lost for decades until it was re-discovered in the National Archives in 1970. Shortly after that discovery, in 1972, the Custis-Lee Mansion was officially renamed Arlington House, The Robert E. Lee Memorial and the house was affirmed again as a memorial to Robert E. Lee. The name known to both the Custis and Lee families had officially been returned. This action passed unanimously in the Democratically controlled 92nd Congress of the United States and was signed into law by Republican President Richard Nixon. This legislation was introduced again by Joel Broyhill of Virginia as he wished for a differentiation to be made between Arlington House and Lee mansion at Stratford Hall in Virginia.

In 1975, as the nation reeled from the Watergate scandal and the conclusion of the Vietnam War, but as it prepared for the nation’s bicentennial, Congress voted to restore Robert E. Lee’s citizenship as “this entire Nation has long recognized the outstanding virtues of courage, patriotism, and selfless devotion to duty of General R. E. Lee, and has recognized the contribution of General Lee in healing the wounds of the War Between the States.”

Senator Harry F. Byrd (I) of Virginia introduced the bill in the Senate. This bill passed unanimously in the Democrat controlled United States Senate. Among the votes in favor of the motion were future presidential candidate Senator Joe Biden (D) and current Senator Patrick Leahy (D). The bill then passed the Democrat controlled House of Representatives on a 407-10 vote. Included in the majority vote, were eleven of the sixteen members of who were African American representatives, including Shirley Anita Chisholm, the first African American woman elected to Congress. According to The New York Times, the ten dissenters objected more to the fact that there were no protections for Vietnam War draft evaders included and dismissed the bill as “Bicentennial fluff.”5 Republican President Gerald R. Ford officially posthumously restored Robert E. Lee’s citizenship by signing the bill into law at a ceremony on the portico at Arlington House on August 5, 1975. Before signing the law, President Ford reminded the audience that Lee worked to restore the Union following the bitter war: “Once the war was over, he firmly felt the wounds of the North and South must be bound up. He sought to show by example that the citizens of the South must dedicate their efforts to rebuilding that region of the country as a strong and vital part of the American Union.”6

Over the course of fifty years between 1925 and 1975, Robert E. Lee was honored by the United States government on at least four separate occasions by four different Congresses and Presidents. All four times, there was overwhelming support from both Republicans and Democrats, both North and South, and both black and white, to acknowledge Lee’s efforts to reunite the country in the wake of the American Civil War. All four of those occasions focused on the importance of Arlington House in telling the story of reconciliation and reunion in the United States, culminating with the important symbol of restoring Robert E. Lee’s citizenship on the portico of the house in 1975.

Rather than a static monument to the man, Arlington House is a living memorial. It exists as a place of study and contemplation of the meaning of some of the most difficult aspects of American history: military service; sacrifice; citizenship; duty; loyalty; slavery; and freedom.

A major rehabilitation effort was completed in the spring of 2020 that included artifact conservation, facilities restoration, and installation of new interpretive exhibits. As the stewards of Arlington House, the National Park Service preserves the site as a place that can inspire people of all backgrounds. Park staff are committed to telling stories inclusive of multiple historical perspectives and grounded in current research.

References

  1. Chornesky, Michael. “Confederate Island upon the Union's "Most Hallowed Ground": The Battle to Interpret Arlington House, 1921-1937.” Washington History. Vol. 27, No. 1 (SPRING 2015), pp. 20-33.
  2. Congressional Record, January 21, 1925.
  3. Restoration of Lee Mansion: Hearing, Sixty-eighth Congress, First Session, May 28, 1924. U.S. Government Printing Office, 1925. 2.
  4. Ibid., 3.
  5. “Citizenship is Voted for Robert E. Lee” New York Times, July 23, 1975.
  6. President Gerald R. Ford's Remarks Upon Signing a Bill Restoring Rights of Citizenship to General Robert E. Lee