Commanding the Military District of Washington was a unique experience for me in many ways. MDW was home to the Army’s only authorized horse unit which was stationed at Fort Myer, Virginia. The platoon provides the matched black and white horses that pull the funeral caissons at Arlington National Cemetery. The Caisson Platoon’s red brick stables are among the cleanest and best maintained in the world.

On this particular day the last sting of winter was departing. As always, spring in Arlington County, Virginia was striking and the valleys had turned a lush emerald green. Fruit trees were breaking out into redolent pink and white wafer-like blossoms. Hungry insects were crawling from their winter hiding places and long deprived birds, hoping to add spice to a boring winter’s diet, marked the insect resurrection with keen interest.

It was the spring of 1983 and my deputy, Colonel Don Bills and I were riding our horses along the north wall of ANC. Don was a dignified, lean, serious officer, a first-rate cavalryman and one of the Army officer corps’ finest gentlemen. He and made it a point to inspect the cemetery on horseback weekly and we thought we knew every inch of the grounds, but this day we were in for a surprise.

Just inside the north wall, across from the Netherlands Carillon I noticed a grave marker stone I had never seen before. It had the words “Jubal Diggs, A Citizen” chiseled into it.

“Why the inscription, ‘A Citizen,’ Don?” I asked reining in my mount Travis. Isn’t everyone buried here a citizen?”

Turning the head of his horse toward me, Don replied, “I’ve no idea. Tomorrow I’ll ask the cemetery’s historian to dig into the archives and see what he can find.” And find he did, a fragment of American history long since forgotten that turned out to be quite different than I expected.

The story begins with President George Washington who, unable to have children of his own, adopted his wife Mary’s grandson as his own son.  Washington renamed the boy George Washington Parke Custis. When Major Custis, as he was later known, got married he inherited Washington’s farm in Arlington County, Virginia, that Washington had willed to him as a wedding present. That farm is now called Arlington National Cemetery and the manor house on it is called the Custis-Lee Mansion.

Before his death in 1799, President Washington decreed that all of the slaves working at his Mount Vernon estate were to be given their freedom after he and his wife had died. But when Washington died Mary did not wait for hear own death to carry out his orders; she freed the slaves that very same year.

Major Custis and his wife only had one child, a daughter who they also named Mary. Mary married General Robert E. Lee of Civil War fame. Custis died in 1857 and his will followed the spirit of President Washington’s example. In it he directed that all of the slaves of the Arlington Plantation be given their freedom within five years of his death. He also directed that each slave be given a 50 dollar “present.”

But the Civil War began before the five years had passed. So before General Lee rode south to Richmond to fight for slavery and the Confederacy, his last action at Arlington was to honor Major Custis’ wishes and free all of the Arlington Plantation slaves. Unfortunately, he couldn’t afford to pay them their 50 dollar present.

During the war Lee’s farm was confiscated by the Union and turned into Arlington National Cemetery. Part of the cemetery’s land was used to build a “Freedman’s Village,” a home for free blacks and runaway slaves. It extended from the east side of the cemetery through Section 27 north to the area of the Tomb of the Unknowns.

Now back to, “Jubal Diggs, A Citizen.” The words “A Citizen” were chiseled into a gravestone to proclaim to the world that those “Colored” soldiers buried in the graves in ANC were no longer slaves, but full-fledged American Citizens.

Buried in this area of Section 27, along with Jubal Diggs, are more than 5,000 “Colored Troops” who were killed in combat during the Civil War, as well as some civilian dead from the Freedman’s Village. They are a permanent reminder to all of us that our history and heritage as Americans includes people of all colors, and that we are all created equal and endowed by our Creator with the inalienable rights of life liberty and the pursuit of happiness.