The Unknowns

[Thomas Kearney]

(10-26-2015 11:23 AM)L Verge Wrote:  I suspect that few Americans know that there is also a tomb to the unknowns of the American Civil War. It is located closer to the Lee Mansion (Arlington House) and was created in 1865-66. The first thought was to gather unknown Union remains, and Quartermaster Gen. Meigs sent men out to scour battlefields around D.C. -- mainly First and Second Manassas.

Some bodies had been interred on the battlefields, but most were unburied skeletons bleached by weather with no indication as to Union or Confederate. Over 2000 bodies were mingled together in a 20-foot deep and 20-foot wide brick-lined vault. It was compartmentalized so that skulls went in one place, arm bones in another, leg bones in another, etc. When the vault was filled, an ornate sarcophagus was placed on top.

I first visited that tomb when I was about twelve, and my mother told me a family story. Her father was born in 1868 and had a half-brother who fought for the Confederacy, but never came home. We knew that he had fought at Brandy Station and later had sent his photo from Richmond. Until the day she died, my great-grandmother kept a light in her front window to beckon Charlie home. For years, my grandfather visited battlefields between D.C. and Richmond trying to find Charlie. He finally gave up, and my mother said that he then turned his thoughts to the Civil War unknowns entombed at Arlington - convinced that Charlie was one of the 2000+ in that sarcophagus. It was not until I met James O. Hall that Mom and I found out that Charlie died at the fighting around Weldon Railroad (Globe Tavern?) at the end of the war. We still don't know where he is buried, but it is probably not in the Tomb of the Unknowns of the American Civil War.

The monument is in the James Tanner amphitheater, located south of the Arlington House.