Rent On Hallowed Ground: The Story of Arlington National Cemetery

Synopsis

Created toward the end of our greatest national crucible, the Civil War, Arlington Cemetery — as revealed in On Hallowed Ground — reflects much of America's history over the past century and a half. The mansion at its heart, and the rolling land on which it sits, had been the family plantation of Robert E. Lee before he joined the Confederacy; strategic to the defense of Washington, it became a Union headquarters, a haven for freedmen, and a burial ground for indigent soldiers before Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton made it the latest in the newly established national cemetery system. It would become our nation's most honored resting place.

No other country makes the effort the United States does to recover and pay tribute to its war dead—an effort Poole reveals in poignant details from the aftermaths of the Civil War, Spanish-American War, World War I and II, Korea, Vietnam, and the conflicts in the Gulf and Afghanistan today. Every tombstone at Arlington tells a story: from Private William Christman, the first soldier buried at Arlington, on May 13, 1864, to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and John F. Kennedy's eternal flame: from scientists and slaves to jurist and generals and tens of thousands of ordinary citizen-warriors, among the more than three thousand interred on Arlington's 624 acres. Their saga, and the rites and rituals that have evolved at Arlington—the horse-drawn caissons, marble headstones, playing of Taps, and rifle salutes—speak to us all.

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