His record as Quartermaster General was regarded as outstanding, both in effectiveness and in ethical probity, and Secretary of State William H. Seward viewed Meigs' leadership and contributions as key factors in the Union victory in the war.

[3] Montgomery Meigs' mother, Mary, was the granddaughter of a Scottish family from Brigend with somewhat distant claims to a baronetcy, which emigrated to America in 1701.

Charles Meigs received his medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in 1817, and that summer he moved his family, which then included a one-year-old Montgomery, to Philadelphia and established a practice there.

[6] Meigs had an extremely good memory,[7] and his father instilled in him a sense of duty and a desire to pursue honorable causes.

Within a few days of each other, in late March 1853, Meigs became responsible for supervising both the building of the Washington Aqueduct and the enlargement of the United States Capitol.

In the fall of 1860, as a result of a disagreement over procurement contracts, Meigs incurred the ill will of the Secretary of War, John B. Floyd, and was banished to Tortugas in the Gulf of Mexico to construct fortifications there and at Key West, including Fort Jefferson, Florida.

[18] Just before the outbreak of the Civil War, Meigs and Lt. Col. Erasmus D. Keyes were quietly charged by President Abraham Lincoln and Secretary of State William H. Seward with drawing up a plan for the relief of Fort Pickens in Florida, by means of a secret expedition.

He was one of the first to fully appreciate the importance of logistical preparations in military planning, and under his leadership, supplies moved forward and troops were transported over long distances with ever-greater efficiency.

Secretary of State William H. Seward's estimated that "without the services of this eminent soldier the national cause must have been lost or deeply imperiled."

During that time Colonel Charles Thomas acted in his stead back in Washington, D.C.[19] Meigs' field services during the Civil War included command of Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant's base of supplies at Fredericksburg and Belle Plain, Virginia (1864); command of a division of War Department employees in the defense of Washington at the time of Jubal A.

On July 16, 1862, Congress passed legislation authorizing the U.S. federal government to purchase land for national cemeteries for military dead, and put the U.S. Army Quartermaster General in charge of this program.

Meigs ordered that an examination of eligible sites be made for the establishment for a large new national military cemetery.

[20] The property was high and free from floods (which might unearth graves), it had a view of the District of Columbia, and it was aesthetically pleasing.

The purchase of goods and services through contracts supervised by the quartermasters accounted for most of federal military expenditures, apart from the wages of the soldiers.

The quartermasters supervised their own soldiers, and cooperated closely with state officials, manufacturers and wholesalers trying to sell directly to the army; and representatives of civilian workers looking for higher pay at government factories.

The complex system was closely monitored by congressmen anxious to ensure that their districts won their share of contracts.

[26] In October 1864, his son, 1st Lieutenant John Rodgers Meigs, was killed at Swift Run Gap in Virginia and was buried at a Georgetown Cemetery.

During Lincoln's funeral procession in the city five days later, Meigs rode at the head of two battalions of quartermaster corps soldiers.

[32] Meigs played a critical role in developing Arlington National Cemetery, both during the Civil War and afterward.

Brigadier General René Edward De Russy was living in Arlington House at the time and opposed the burial of bodies close to his quarters, forcing new interments to occur far to the west (in what is now Section 1 of the cemetery).

[36] In 1865, for example, Meigs decided to build a monument to Civil War dead in the center of a grove of trees west of the Lee's flower garden.

[37] Meigs designed[41] a 6-foot (1.8 m) tall, 12-foot (3.7 m) long, 4-foot (1.2 m) wide grey granite and concrete cenotaph to rest on top of the burial vault.

On the west face was an inscription describing the number of dead in the vault below, and honoring the "unknowns of the Civil War".

Located just west of the intersection of what is today McClellan and Eisenhower Drives, this was originally Arlington National Cemetery's main gate.

Meigs ordered that stone columns, pediments, and entablatures which had been saved from the Patent Office be used to construct the Temple of Fame.

The Temple was a round, Greek Revival, temple-like structure with Doric columns supporting a central dome.

Inscribed on the pediment supporting the dome were the names of great Americans such as George Washington, Ulysses S. Grant, Abraham Lincoln, and David Farragut.

Following the end of the Civil War, the US Congress passed legislation that greatly extended the scope of pension coverage for both veterans and their survivors and dependents, notably their widows and orphans.

The sculpture includes infantry, navy, artillery, cavalry, and medical components, as well as a good deal of the supply and quartermaster functions.

General orders issued at the time of his death declared, "the Army has rarely possessed an officer ... who was entrusted by the government with a great variety of weighty responsibilities, or who proved himself more worthy of confidence.