Almost as quickly and the Lee family departed the estate they loved and called home, the Union Army moved across the Potomac and began using the rolling hills around Arlington House. By 1862 the Lee family owed $92.07 in taxes on their former estate. To settle the tax matter, either General Robert E. Lee, or his wife...the great-granddaughter of George Washington, would have leave their Southern sanctuary to pay the debt in person. It was an unwinnable situation. Under the "Act for the Collection of Direct Taxes in the Insurrectionary Districts within the United States", the federal government in Washington, D.C. confiscated the land once part of George Washington's own family.
Under Brigadier General Irvin McDowell, the 1,100-acre plot became a buffer zone on the border between the Capitol City and the "Insurrectionists". It was the ideal location for a hospital, and two military forts were erected to defend it (Fort Whipple which later became Fort Myer and Fort McPherson). On January 11, 1865 the federal government offered Arlington House and its land for sale at public auction. It was purchased by a tax commissioner "for government use, for war, military, charitable and educational purposes." It was the open door for the man who now commanded the garrison at Arlington House to vent his hatred for Robert E. Lee.
Brigadier General Montgomery Meigs jealousy for Robert E. Lee predated the beginning of the Civil War, and General Lee's defection to the Confederacy only fueled the fire. By the Spring of 1864 a Nation wearied by three years of Civil War, tragic battles at places like Shiloh, Antietam, Gettysburg, Chickamauga and others, waited desperately for an end to war. General Meigs was determined to insure that Robert E. Lee would never return to Arlington. On May 13, 1864 Union Private William Christman became the first American to be buried on the grounds at Arlington. Meigs excavated the once-beautiful rose garden to create a 10-foot-deep stone and masonry vault to inter the remains of 1,800 soldiers killed in 1862 Battle of Bull Run near Manassas, Virginia. By the time the Civil War ended, more than 16,000 Union soldiers were interred on the grounds of Robert and Mary Anna Lee's estate. General Meigs vendetta proved a success, Robert E. Lee never returned to claim the now uninhabitable estate for his son, George Washington Custis Lee. In 1870 Robert E. Lee died and was buried in the chapel of Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia. In 1892 General Meigs died in Washington, D.C. He was buried nearby in what was now a National Cemetery...only 100 yards from Arlington House.