On Hallowed Ground (17 page)

“In each case where a grave or trench was found unmarked, or where a temporary marker had become totally obliterated,” Rhodes
reported, his crews put up “a headboard with the words ‘Unknown United States Solider’ and the proper grave number, in order
to identify and preserve this spot as that of a grave.” When Rhodes finished his Cuban mission, he sailed on to Puerto Rico,
identified and marked graves there, and returned to Washington in October 1898 to await further orders.
²⁹

They arrived with the New Year. By early February 1899 Rhodes was bound south again to oversee the return of remains from
Cuba and Puerto Rico. Traveling with a team of forty-six undertakers, foremen, and laborers, Rhodes began disinterring warriors
from graves he had identified the previous autumn. When the dead had been cleaned, placed in new zinc-lined caskets, and loaded
onto army transports for the journey home, Rhodes sailed on to the Philippines, where he would direct disinterment operations
for another two years.
³⁰

When the repatriation program ended a few years later, the vast majority of those who died in the Spanish-American War were
reburied with their identities intact. Only one in seven from the Caribbean theater (13.6 percent) was unidentified—a great improvement over the Civil War record, in which 42.5 percent of all war dead went to their graves without names.
³¹
Virtually all of those recovered from the Pacific theater from 1899 through 1902 were identified, in part because Rhodes had by hard experience developed proficiency in the melancholy art of exhuming and identifying the dead. In 1901, for instance, when he shipped 1,073 Americans home from the Philippines, only 15 of them were unknowns; for each of these he prepared a careful report, including sketches and maps pinpointing not only the cemeteries from which they had been recovered but also the precise locations of individual graves.
³²
Rhodes improvised use of the “burial bottle” to preserve the identity of the dead through disinterments and transfers. His comrades wrote out the name, rank, and organization for each deceased serviceman, corked the paper in a bottle, and wrapped it into a blanket containing the remains to preserve the dead soldier’s identity.
³³

In the next war, Rhodes’s bottle would be replaced by a simple but revolutionary piece of equipment—the dog tag. Stamped with the name, rank, and serial number of its bearer, the metal tag would speed identification and reduce errors. The inspiration for the dog tag is usually credited to Charles C. Pierce, an Army chaplain who helped recover the dead from the Philippines during the time that Rhodes worked there. The two men, working under separate commands, did not always get along, but by trial and error they developed practices that would improve methods for honoring America’s dead.
³⁴

While Pierce and Rhodes sweltered in tropical morgues, President McKinley began a frantic campaign at home, where he was trying
to end the war which he had never much wanted to start. The Treaty of Paris, signed on December 10, 1898, spelled out formal
peace terms for Spain and the United States, but the agreement required Senate approval, along with a payment of twenty million
dollars for acquisition of the Philippines. Ratification was by no means certain; a formidable coalition of conservative Senate
Democrats and isolationist Republicans opposed the measure. To drum up crucial support for the treaty and to express his gratitude
to those who had helped win the recent war, McKinley boarded a special train in Washington and headed south for the Peace Jubilee, a victory tour he kicked off in Atlanta on December 14, 1898.
³⁵

How would this city of long memories, reduced to ashes by Gen. William T. Sherman, receive a president who was not only a
Republican but also a former Union major? The answer came roaring up from the Atlanta rail station on that biting cold morning
as McKinley’s train chugged into view, screeched to a stop, and thousands of citizens cheered their welcome. The cheers exploded
into thunder, punctuated by Rebel yells, when the first passenger bounded from the train and the crowd recognized the chipper
form of Fighting Joe Wheeler, back from the wars. He would remain at McKinley’s side, providing legitimacy for the visiting
President throughout his travels in Georgia.
³⁶

Saluted by cannons and flag-waving children, this incongruous pair—one lugubrious and heavy with dignity, the other fidgeting
like a terrier—made its way up the steps of the Georgia state house, where McKinley addressed a joint session of the legislature
that afternoon. The president stunned his audience with an unexpected promise: from now on, he pledged, the federal government
would take responsibility for the hundreds of neglected Confederate graves in northern states, long an irritant for the family
and friends of those who had died in faraway battles, prison camps, or enemy hospitals.
³⁷

And while when those graves were made we differed widely about the future of the government, these differences were long ago
settled by the arbitrament of arms—and the time has now come … when in the spirit of fraternity we should share with you
in the care of the graves of Confederate soldiers. The cordial feeling now happily existing between North and South prompts
this gracious act, and if it needed further justification, it is found in the gallant loyalty to the Union and the flag so
conspicuously shown in the year just passed by the sons and grandsons of these heroic dead … Sectional feeling no longer
holds back the love we feel for each other … The old flag again waves over us in peace with new glories.
³⁸

Here was proof that McKinley’s message of reconciliation was authentic, and its effect on those who heard him was electrifying.
“When the President referred to the care of the graves of the Confederate soldiers,” the
New York Times
reported,“a wild cheer went up from every throat in the … Southern audience, a cheer that echoed and reached through
the chamber until it was taken up by the crowds outside … One Confederate veteran, now a venerable legislator, had passed
forward until he was leaning against the Speaker’s desk, hanging on every word the President uttered. When the reference was
made to the Confederate dead this old man buried his head in his arms and, while cheers rang out, cried like a little child.”
³⁹

The nation was reunited again, at least on the surface—a status that would soon manifest itself on Arlington’s green hills,
where Confederates from Washington’s scattered cemeteries would be gathered in, reburied, and celebrated. In the meantime, President McKinley continued his
tour, combining flattery for southern fighting spirit with an appeal for the Treaty of Paris. Only by ratifying the peace
accord, he argued, could the nation honor those who had fought in the recent war. His southern audiences listened attentively
and repaid McKinley’s goodwill. The president’s winter charm offensive, combined with strenuous lobbying and some well-aimed
promises of patronage, paid off in Washington: On February 4, 1899, the Treaty of Paris squeaked through the Senate on a vote of sixty-one to thirty-nine, just one more
than was needed to seal the peace. Last-minute conversions by Sens. Samuel D. McEnery of Louisiana and John L. McLaurin of
South Carolina clinched the deal.
⁴⁰

With government offices shuttered for the afternoon and flags lowered to half-staff throughout the city, the 4th Artillery
Band, brushed and buttoned into their best red coats, formed ranks on a high hill at Arlington just southwest of the Lee mansion
and launched into the first soothing strains of “Nearer, My God, to Thee,” welcoming home the warriors disinterred from Puerto
Rico and Cuba over the winter. Two newly opened acres, still fragrant of freshly turned earth, had been laid out in straight
trenches to receive the dead, their last stop on a long passage that had begun, for most, in high hopes and excitement the
previous spring.
⁴¹

President McKinley led his cabinet and ranking military officers to the graveside at two thirty p.m. that day. They stood
bareheaded as thousands of citizens crowded into the cemetery, some of them scrambling into Arlington’s trees for a better
look at the long, long rows of flag-covered boxes, arranged with military exactness and attended by an escort of cavalry troopers,
artillery units, marines, and infantry reservists, all with medals gleaming and uniforms ironed to a knife’s edge. Cannons
from nearby Fort Myer rumbled tribute every half hour. The parents of an infantryman named John O’Dowd pressed through the
multitude, broke into the open, placed a spray of roses on their son’s casket, and melted into the crowd again. A military
chaplain read the Episcopal service; a Catholic priest, trailed by three acolytes, blessed the raw, red earth; and silence
settled over Arlington. It was broken by a booming three-volley artillery salute; Taps quavered over the hills; army comrades
crumbled clods of dirt over each new grave; the president and his entourage put on their hats and departed the cemetery. As
dusk came down, Arlington’s laborers went to work, letting the heavy caskets down for the last time, a task that would take
them two or three days to finish.
⁴²

With minor variations, this ritual would be repeated at Arlington in successive months, which stretched into years, as hundreds
of soldiers, sailors, marines, and civilians found their way home from the scattered theaters of the Spanish-American War.
A new shipment of the dead arrived in May 1899, another in December of that year, more in 1900, still more in 1912.
⁴³

President McKinley and all of Washington turned out to greet 150 dead warriors from the wreck of the
Maine
, who arrived from Cuba on December 28, 1899. The capital was blanketed in snow when caissons met the funeral train and set
out for Arlington under cavalry escort. The fresh snow muffled the sound of horses’ hooves as the
Maine
men were conveyed to a new section of Arlington with a commanding view of the Lee mansion, the frosted pines fringing it,
and the broad Potomac beyond, swirling with chunks of ice. Only seventy-four of the new arrivals could be positively identified;
the other seventy-six went to their graves as unknowns. All were seen off by comrades and shipmates—a battalion of marines
in scarlet coats and spiked hats, cavalry from Fort Myer with winter capes flapping in the wind, sailors from the U.S.S.
Texas
, the
Maine
’s sister ship, in thick blue jackets. The
Maine
’s old commander, Capt. Charles D. Sigsbee, presided over the ceremonies at Arlington that day, assisted by the ship’s chaplain,
the Rev. John P. Chidwick, who had plucked many of his shattered and dying shipmates from Havana Harbor just the year before.
⁴⁴

“With head bared to the wintry blast, this best-beloved of naval priests read the memorial service of his faith, consigned
the dead, blessed the ground, repeated the Lord’s Prayer, and concluded with a fervent appeal for the repose of the souls
of the departed,” the Washington Post reported. When Chidwick was done and the last notes of Taps faded, as if on cue a pair of gray-haired women moved deliberately
down the line of flag-covered caskets, closely scrutinizing each one for a name. They told a reporter they were looking for
their sons. They never found them, and the unnamed women vanished that day, just as their boys had done.
⁴⁵

Thirteen years would pass before the rest of the
Maine
’s victims could be recovered from the wrecked ship and reunited at Arlington, where they were gathered in the shadow of
the vessel’s mainmast, salvaged from Havana Harbor. Brought to Washington, raised at Arlington, and recast as a war monument in 1915, the mast became the centerpiece of the U.S.S.
Maine
Memorial. The shrine, designed by architect Nathaniel Wyeth, son of the artist N. C. Wyeth, celebrated the individuals who
slept around it, as well as the event that led the United States to war.

President McKinley made good on his promise to assume the care of Confederate graves in the North, which closed the circle in his crusade for reconciliation.
⁴⁶
Even as the Spanish-American War dead were being repatriated through 1898 and 1899, Confederate veterans explored Civil War cemeteries around Washington to locate the graves of old comrades. They found Rebel tombs slumping, matted with weeds, and marked by rotting headboards, or by the same thin tombstones as those issued to former slaves and civilian employees of the quartermaster’s department.
⁴⁷
Veterans identified 128 Confederate graves at the Soldiers’ Home Cemetery in northwest Washington; another 136 were scattered through Arlington. All were teetering in a sad state of neglect—a sore point among those who had worn the gray.
⁴⁸

One of these, a Washington-area physician named Samuel Edwin Lewis, asked McKinley to have the Rebels disinterred and removed to a plot at Arlington,
where they would form the advance guard of a new Confederate section. Lewis argued that segregating former adversaries within
the national cemetery not only would be appropriate but “would doubtless also be gratifying to many good people of the North.”
McKinley promptly agreed, letting it be known that he would back legislation authorizing the initiative.
⁴⁹