TMP Covert Ops — Episode 15
Before Arlington’s white rows became the symbol of American sacrifice… before marble markers flowed across the Virginia hills like silent waves… there was another place. A quieter hilltop. A desperate solution. A burial ground born not from ceremony, but from crisis.
Welcome to the United States Soldiers’ and Airmen’s Home National Cemetery—the first true Civil War cemetery and the ancestor of every national cemetery that followed.
A Recon Mission from the Roadside
This stop was different from the others.
I didn’t get inside.
Access to the cemetery can be unpredictable, and most of the surrounding grounds belong to the Armed Forces Retirement Home, which is strictly restricted. The gate was locked, so all I could do was stand at the fence line, camera in hand, catching three quiet photos from the road.
And honestly?
Maybe that was fitting.
Some places keep their stories close. Some invite you to listen from a distance first. And this one—this first sanctuary of the fallen—carried a weight that didn’t need me to walk its paths to feel it.
This is where our oldest war dead became part of the national memory.
This is where the arc of this whole Covert Ops trip comes full circle.
Washington in Crisis
The year was 1861, and the Civil War’s first major battle—Bull Run—had just closed in disaster for the Union. Washington, D.C. was unprepared for the human cost that flooded its streets in the weeks that followed.
Hospitals overflowed.
Churches became operating rooms.
Warehouses became morgues.
The government had no plan for the fallen.
No system.
No burial ground.
Earlier wars had relied on churchyards and family plots. But the Civil War was different; it was war on an industrial scale. The capital needed a solution—and it needed one immediately.
Just three miles north of the White House sat the U.S. Military Asylum, a retirement home for old and disabled soldiers. In late July 1861, the commissioners offered a portion of their land for burials.
The offer was accepted instantly.
And the earliest Civil War dead began to arrive.
This cemetery opened nearly three years before Arlington, and it became the first national burial ground created specifically for the war.
Lincoln’s Summers in a Sanctuary of Sorrow
This place is tied directly—and powerfully—to Abraham Lincoln.
During the summers of 1862, 1863, and 1864, Lincoln and his family lived at Lincoln’s Cottage, a Gothic-revival home on the grounds of the Soldiers’ Home. From the cottage’s porch, he could look across these hills toward the cemetery.
His daily commute took him past contraband camps of formerly enslaved people seeking freedom… past wagons carrying the wounded… and past row upon row of fresh graves.
Imagine that weight:
the President riding to work each morning through the cost of his own decisions.
Historians believe that in this atmosphere—quiet refuge mixed with the unignorable presence of death—Lincoln shaped the thoughts that became the Emancipation Proclamation. On September 22, 1862, while living at the Soldiers’ Home, he issued its preliminary version.
The first national cemetery, and the first national step toward freedom, rose in the same place.
By 1864, this burial ground was nearly full. The war showed no sign of slowing. And so, on May 13, 1864, burials began at Arlington—marking the end of this cemetery’s original mission.
Where Memorial Day Was Born
The end of the war wasn’t the end of this cemetery’s story.
One of its most notable residents, Major General John A. Logan, changed the way America remembers its dead. As head of the Grand Army of the Republic, Logan issued General Order No. 11 in 1868, establishing May 30 as a national day to decorate the graves of fallen Union soldiers.
Decoration Day.
The day that eventually became Memorial Day.
The first large-scale observance under his order took place at Arlington… but the man who called the nation to remember is buried here, in a grand granite mausoleum near the cemetery entrance. A full circle of memory, resting in the soil that shaped him.
A Living Legacy
Today, the Soldiers’ and Airmen’s Home National Cemetery is the final resting place of over 14,000 veterans—from the Civil War to the present. Medal of Honor recipients lie here, including Buffalo Soldier Sergeant Thomas Boyne.
The cemetery’s Doric-columned gate bears names like Washington, Scott, and Grant, standing watch over the hillside.
And unlike Arlington, this cemetery now serves almost exclusively the residents of the neighboring Armed Forces Retirement Home—a quiet, intimate community of those who devoted their lives to service.
It remains one of only two national cemeteries maintained by the Department of the Army.
The other, of course, is Arlington.
Echo’s Corner
Whispers from the Archives
Did you know?
- This cemetery was one of the first to standardize rows and simple markers—a prototype for the national cemetery system we know today.
- Soldiers buried here came from at least 17 Union states, a reminder that the war’s earliest casualties were heartbreakingly far from home.
- The Confederate prisoners originally buried here were relocated in 1900 to Arlington’s Section 16, a site dedicated to reconciliation.
- The cemetery has one of the earliest examples of a “Soldiers’ Lodge,” a predecessor to modern visitor centers at military cemeteries.
Some places are quiet.
This one speaks in whispers.
If You Visit
Location:
21 Rock Creek Church Road NW
Washington, D.C.
Access Notes:
- The cemetery itself is open to the public during daylight hours.
- Surrounding grounds (Armed Forces Retirement Home) are restricted.
- Access may vary depending on staffing and gate availability.
Best For:
- Civil War history fans
- Visitors to President Lincoln’s Cottage
- Those interested in early national cemeteries
- Travelers tracing the origins of Memorial Day
Internal Links
You may also enjoy:
- President Lincoln’s Cottage — where Lincoln spent his summers and shaped the Emancipation Proclamation.
- The U.S. Soldiers’ Home — a tranquil refuge with a complicated history.
- Arlington National Cemetery — the successor this cemetery made possible.
- Clara Barton’s Missing Soldiers Office — another crucial chapter in Civil War remembrance.
- Scott’s Run Nature Preserve — a surprising wilderness tied to the region’s wartime past.
Final Thoughts
Arlington is the hallowed ground most people know.
But the story began here—in a place built from urgency, devotion, and sorrow.
This was the nation’s first prototype for remembrance.
The cradle of national cemeteries.
The unseen cornerstone of Memorial Day.
A quiet hill, often overlooked, that carried the first weight of a nation learning how to honor its fallen.
TMP Covert Ops — mission complete.
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