One of the dangers of researching a topic for one of my columns is that it will turn out that there is not enough information to warrant writing it up, or that it does not, in fact, have any relation to the Hill, even such a tenuous one as did last week’s. In either of those cases, I have to either give up and find something else or, as I show in today’s episode, plow right on.
Arlington Cemetery is an important part of any tour of Washington D.C., and no stop there is complete without a visit to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldiers, which honors those soldiers who lost not only their lives, but their names, in the first and second world wars, as well as the Korean War. There is another tomb, well-known, but not as frequented, which holds the remains of some 2,111 dead from both sides of the Civil War.
There is also a monument to some of dead of the War of 1812. The story as it is usually told is that the remains of fourteen soldiers who died during that war were found in 1905 during work excavating in or near the Navy Yard, and that their remains were immediately re-buried across the river. A stone was added in 1976 to mark their final resting spot, as well as to be a symbol ‘of all who made the supreme sacrifice in that war.’
Most books that reference this monument mention only the general area of their initial burial, with none explicating more accurately where in the Navy Yard this might have happened, or how they came to be found. The reason for this is clear when returning one of the few original accounts of the rediscovery in 1905. The Washington Times of June 10, 1905, in an article entitled “Workmen Find Bones of Soldiers of 1812” describes what really happened:
Workmen engaged in excavating at the Washington Barracks made a gruesome find the other day.
They dug up the skeletons of fourteen soldiers who are supposed to have been members of the United States army that served in the war of 1912. This fact was established by a number of buttons which were unearthed with the remains.
The article continues on in explaining the exact nature of the buttons, as well as the fragments of wood, presumably from coffins, that complete the items found with the remains. There is also the question as to why they were buried in there, which while a part of what is today Fort McNair, was back then actually outside the Arsenal. The building that they were found near (actually the building in which the Lincoln conspirators were tried) was not added to the Arsenal grounds until the Civil War. Furthermore, no troops were stationed at the Arsenal, and those that were in charge had fled long before the British arrived (and blew up the place)
Outside view of the penitentiary during the Lincoln assassination trial. The soldiers were found just west of this building (LOC)
Finally, the real problem is that any records that might have helped determine who these men were went up in smoke when the British torched the War Records Office at about the same time that they died.
In short, the only thing that can be said with certainty is that the remains of 14 United States soldiers are buried under this stone in Arlington. Who they were or how – or even when – they came to be buried where they originally were will probably never be known.