prominent most obelisks at arlington cemetery is fighting joe wheeler's obelisk below the lee mansion. , youted to ask you mentioned in your remarks that you reminded us that the common enemy here was the pigmentation , let us say, of the spanish. is there any evidence that part of this reunion between north and south was subliminally coming out of their common racism towards people of color, or at this time a shared protestant antipathy towards roman catholics? ms. janney: let me start with joseph wheeler and say the fact that wheeler is in arlington national cemetery is only because of his service in the spanish-american war. he was a u.s. veteran after that. there is a confederate section in arlington. that is a whole different story. the argument you ask about whether the north and the south came together over common issues of race, that has very much been a predominant argument in the recent years. historians have said white northerners and southerners came together, agreed to let bygones be bygones because of their common issues, their common ideas about race. while that is cert

the obelisk was intended to be 600 feet tall. dhe funds were ultimately raise from private subscriptions. no money was to be taken from the government. the government was solicited for a place to put it. the fallback position when they were not raising the $6 million that they needed was to build the obelisk and have the stepped pyramid leading up to the opening door. you see that on the right. in 1876 after the monument had rusticating for more than two decades, casey was put in charge of completing it. which he did between 1876 and 1884. changing the design of very little in introducing cast-iron in innovative ways. he was the master constructor among the corps of engineers officers in washington. the two other buildings that he completed after they were begun by architects supervising construction of their own holdings but running into trouble as private individuals were the state navy building designed by alfred mullet and the library of congress. they were german-americans who won a competition. mullet navy wasgned the state