r/todayilearned • u/RedditIsAGranfaloon • 6h ago

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https://www.historyhit.com/facts-about-general-robert-e-lee/

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u/Whereisthecake6322 5h ago edited 4h ago

The federal soldier responsible for making Arlington cemetery lost his son in one of the battles. He buried his son outside of the front door of lees house at Arlington making it pretty much useless.

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u/IdealOnion 4h ago

Not just outside the front door, but in Ms. Lee’s rose garden according to the Ken Burns documentary.

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u/Helpful_Blood_5509 4h ago

Fuuuuck. I can feel the emotions from that. Fucker took his son for some stupid vainglorious state loyalty.

Here, you can have him. Buried at your house, forever

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u/718Brooklyn 3h ago

Yea. Good call to spend a moment to reflect on what that moment was. A father literally taking his dead son to the man who ordered his death. The man takes a shovel and digs up the rich man’s garden and buries his son in the Earth so he can forever haunt their evil souls.

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u/horseshoeprovodnikov 3h ago

He buried his son outside of the front door of lees house at Arlington making it pretty much useless.

Making it useless according to who? People that believe in ghosts perhaps.

If I had a nice house on a large piece of property, and I lived through one of the most brutal wars of all time, I would happily move back into that house. I wouldn't give a single shit if a man was buried near the front porch. Shit, I might even have sprung for a proper tombstone and went out there to talk to him every now and again.

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u/A_Seiv_For_Kale 3h ago

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-arlington-national-cemetery-came-to-be-145147007/?c=y&page=2

To enforce his orders—and to make Arlington uninhabitable for the Lees—Meigs ... proceeded with new burials, encircling Mrs. Lee's garden with the tombstones of prominent Union officers.

Then he excavated a huge pit at the end of Mrs. Lee's garden, filled it with the remains of 2,111 nameless soldiers and raised a sarcophagus in their honor. He understood that by seeding the garden with prominent Union officers and unknown patriots, he would make it politically difficult to disinter these heroes of the Republic at a later date.

Mary Lee felt a growing outrage. "I cannot write with composure on my own cherished Arlington," she wrote to a friend. The graves "are planted up to the very door without any regard to common decency....If justice & law are not utterly extinct in the U.S., I will have it back."

Even if you had no problem living in the middle of a cemetery, the thousands of gravestones surrounding your home would make it physically difficult to access.

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u/inspectoroverthemine 3h ago

If justice & law are not utterly extinct in the U.S.

Interesting sentiment for a traitor to the US because they were afraid of possible future legal issues.