On this day in 1864, the US government turned a Confederate general's front yard into a graveyard, and the cruelty was the point. The land belonged to Robert E. Lee's family through his wife, a descendant of Martha Washington. Quartermaster General Montgomery Meigs, furious at Lee for the war, deliberately ordered Union dead buried right up against the mansion so the family could never comfortably return. It worked. They never lived there again. Today more than 400,000 American service members rest at Arlington National Cemetery, on the grounds of the home of the man who fought against them. Few acts of spite in history aged into something so sacred.