Mrs. Lee's Rose Garden - Book Review

In preparation for a trip to Washington D.C. with 4-H's Citizenship Washington Focus, I read Mrs. Lee's Rose Garden - The True Story of the Founding of Arlington by Carlo DeVito.

I did not know much about Arlington National Cemetery before reading this book - just basic facts that were taught in school. This book gave a much more in-depth background through the eyes of three people during the outbreak of the Civil War: Mary Anna Randolph Custis Lee, Robert E. Lee, and Montgomery C. Meigs.

The large Arlington estate overlooked Washington before the Civil War. Mary Custis Lee was a young, charming woman who loved to work in her garden, especially in the flowerbeds. She would spend countless hours tending the flowers along with her mother and her three daughters.

There was a rose mentioned that the women were fond of: Rosa laevigata or the Cherokee Rose that was first introduced in the United States in the early part of the 1800s. It originally came from southern China and Taiwan.

Source

The historians at Arlington House said, "The flower garden was as important to the Lee family as any room in the main house. It was here they came to entertain, study, seek solitude, pray, play, and even bury their pets. The garden was well known among their friends and relatives, and plants from Arlington's garden and the conservatory found their way into many other Virginia gardens."

Robert E. Lee was a promising soldier who was successful in the Army Corps of Engineers. Montgomery Meigs was Lee's friend and was the engineer responsible for helping complete the capital.

When the time for war arose, Lee refused the opportunity to head the Union Army. The book details how he accepted a commission in the Confederate Army instead, and fought against his old comrades.

Ultimately, the estate is overtaken and Mary Custis Lee is forced to leave her home. The land begins to be used for burial plots for soldiers - first, in the furthest corner from the home.

Something I found interesting was that General Meigs asked that a large shipment of bodies of unknown soldiers be sent to Arlington for reburial. He had laborers working to excavate a huge pit just to the southwest of Mrs. Lee's gardens. Twenty feet deep and twenty around, it was a mass grave. There were 2,111 soldiers buried in the mass grave. The vault was sealed and a giant white marble sarcophagus was placed on top, designed by Meigs.

When Mary Custis Lee was in her 60s, she returned to what was her home at one point. Seeing the changes in it and the state of disrepair of the flower gardens made her final departure from the estate one in which she never looked back upon. She wrote to a friend a week later, "My visit produced one good effect...The change is so entire I have not the yearning to go back there an shall be more content to resign all my right in it."

A little more than four months later, she died. She never saw Arlington again.

Montgomery Meigs and his son, John Rodgers Meigs, are buried at Arlington. These graves are, apparently, very popular to see. The latter Meigs' grave has a bronze sculpture of him in a soldier's uniform. The image looks like he may have looked when he fell on the battlefield.

This was an interesting book that provided a lot of detail and insight into Arlington National Cemetery, and some of the people buried there. It provides a great foundation for better understanding what I will be seeing in Washington D.C. this summer.