10-104 Garand Picture of the Day -Arlington,

[Mark in Rochester]

A view of the celebration for Armistice Day in front of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
Location: Arlington, VA, US
Date taken: 1942
Photographer: Myron Davis




The government had acquired Arlington at tax sale in 1864 for $26,800 [4] after Mrs. Lee had not appeared in person to pay and the government had turned away her agent attempting to timely pay $92.07 in property taxes assessed the estate[5]. In 1877, Custis Lee, heir under his grandfather's will passing the estate in trust to his mother, sued the United States claiming ownership of Arlington. After the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in Lee's favor in 1882 that Arlington was confiscated without due process in 1864[6], Congress returned the estate to him. The next year Custis Lee sold it back to the government for $150,000 at a signing ceremony with Todd Lincoln, Secretary of War

Information

Warning: This is a relatively older thread This discussion is older than 360 days. Some information contained in it may no longer be current.

[Bob Womack]

When you tour the Lee/Custis home at the summit of the hill, you are told that the Union did the little tax two-step during the war in order to add insult to injury to Robert E. Lee by both seizing his estate and turning it into a cemetery and thus insuring that he and his family would have nowhere to return to as of the end of the war.

Bob