Arlington National Cemetery started as a place to bury Civil War dead when Washington DC started to run out of places to put graves.
The land once belonged to George Washington Parke Custis, a grandson of Martha Washington and step-grandson of George Washington. The estate went to Mary Anna Randolph Curtis, who married US Army 2nd Lieutenant Robert E. Lee.
At the outset of the Civil War, the Lees had to leave the land, and it was used by the Union Army as a camp and headquarters, and then later as a burial ground.
The mansion on the property was lived in by the Curtis family, and then by General Lee and his wife.
This begs the question: when will someone demand that the mansion be destroyed?