Montgomery Meigs and Robert Lee were fellow officers who worked closely together before the American Civil War. But while Lee resigned his commission to lead the armies of the Confederacy, Meigs stayed loyal to the Union. He watched in anger as Lee's armies filled up Union cemeteries with dead. And every day he could see Lee's prewar mansion mocking him from a hillside high above Washington.
Meigs found the perfect way to punish Lee. He had Lee's longtime home turned into a national cemetery, and personally supervised the burial of 26 soldiers in Mary Lee's beloved rose garden. By the end of 1864, more than 7,000 soldiers were buried in the cemetery. Mary Lee was devastated to find that the house was "surrounded by the graves of those who aided to bring all this ruin on the children and the country".
Today Arlington cemetery is the closet thing there is to hallowed ground in America. And it might not exist but for a soldier's anger at an old comrade.
美國南北戰爭之前，蒙哥馬利．梅格斯和羅勃特．李同任軍官，頗多合作。但李後來辭職，投南部邦聯，統領其軍隊；梅格斯則仍效忠北部的聯邦，眼看死於李軍手下者，漸漸填滿北部的墳場，悲憤不已，而他每天還看到華盛頓高處的山腰上，矗立着戰前李氏的大宅，似在向他嘲諷。
梅格斯想到懲罰李氏的最好辦法。他把李氏居住多年的這棟大宅改為國家墳場，還親自督工，看着二十六個將士的遺骸，下葬在瑪麗．李心愛的玫瑰園中。到一八六四年底，墳場已埋葬七千多名將士。瑪麗．李知道故居被「為患下一代和國家者的墳墓包圍」，不勝苦惱。
今天，阿靈頓公墓幾乎是美國唯一的聖地。不是梅格斯對舊同袍之恨，美國未必有這公墓。