The Tomb of the Civil War Unknowns, Arlington’s first memorial to unidentified service members, was a precursor to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and holds the unidentified remains of over 2,000 Civil War soldiers.

Following the Civil War, the War Department began a large scale effort to locate, identify and rebury the remains of hundreds of thousands of U.S. soldiers scattered across battlefields. By the time the Federal Reburial Program ended in 1870, the bodies of nearly 300,000 U.S. dead were reinterred in national cemeteries, including Arlington. The program was unable to identify 42 percent of those bodies, which were placed in individual graves and marked as “Unknown.”

Many remains from battles fought in Virginia and elsewhere were not intact. To honor those service members, the Quartermaster General of the U.S. Army, Montgomery Meigs, ordered the construction of a crypt and monument—the Tomb of the Civil War Unknowns. This Tomb contains the partial and commingled remains of 2,111 unknown soldiers, mostly found in and around the fields of Manassas, Virginia, the site of two major campaigns. The rest were found at other battlefields within an approximate 25-mile radius of Washington, D.C.

Dedicated in September 1866, the Tomb of the Civil War Unknowns stands in Section 26, near Arlington House in what was once the estate’s famous rose garden.

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U.S. Army video by Vince Pecoraro / Arlington National Cemetery

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