You are missing what is (IMO) the most important reason to oppose renaming bases named after Confederates.
The Civil War was a war between brothers, a deep wound in our nation. And the surrender at Appottamox was the first step to healing the wound and rebuilding the Union. In peace, we would once again be all in it together as Americans.
Naming an American military base after a Confederate general is to make it plain that said general *was an American*. It’s a symbol of peace and reconciliation, as well as the unity (and therefore victory) of the Union.
Changing the name reopens the wound for no reason at all. It amounts to saying: “We don't care about reconciliation after all. The Confederates weren’t really Americans, they were foreign enemies. Their history isn’t American history. If your ancestors fought for the Confederacy, you should be ashamed of them.” A profoundly hostile, divisive, aggressive, and anti-peace move.
There are cities across the USA West named after Native Americans, including those who fought against the US military. Prominent examples that come to mind are the cities of Kamiakin, WA and Red Cloud, NE, as well as Mt. Tecumseh (little T, on Mt. Rainier). There’s also Pontiac, MI although this chief fought against British in Great Lakes region pre USA (1760’s). There are many (many) more Native American tribes who fought against the USA that are now name places.
Part of BLM and DEI (1619 project written by a journalist, not a historian) was to give a dishonest, overly stark view of US history to produce a grievance culture and divide people through a spirit of distrust, envy and vengeance. While there certainly were atrocities and crimes in US history, there were also positive interactions and comings together. The demonization of the South wholesale as racist and the idea that North invaded to free Blacks is letting the propaganda stand in as historical fact. The important consequence of the Civil War was not freeing slaves, though that was important and as a Catholic something I consider just and good, but transforming the US officially from a consent union of states to a compulsory one.
These base names for confederates were part of the effort to bring people together into one country again, even though it was after terrorism and force was applied. Removing them is part of the campaign to nourish old wounds and stir up resentment and vengeful feelings to weaken the shared heritage that is positive, our constitutional rights. The shredding of the foundation of even the good part of our society, such as demonizing George Washington as nothing but a slave-owner, is meant to serve the building global run technocracy that sees citizenship, human rights and the 1st amendment as impediments to their conquest.
Let us not help them. Let us become students of history with the truth being our North star. Let us embrace the Catholic values that The West flourished under in its highpoint leaving vengeance to God alone and seeing the image and likeness of God in every fellow human being.
Lol the policy to name bases after confederates is from 1917. Exactly what “reconciliation” was this supposed to effect. This is such lazy thinking. Fort Polk established in 1941, Fort Hill established 1941, Fort Lee 1917, Fort Hood 1942, Fort Gordon, Mr. KkK himself, 1941 and on, and on and on.
Exactly what part of your “family history” does naming these bases for men who upheld the most base of thinking (decades later!), protect id love to know.
@Zaid, lol I get your devils advocate or whatever position but this was lazy from you as well. The entire point is they shouldn’t have been named after these people in the first place. Remembering them through monuments doesn’t reconcile anything because there are no black civil war monuments. So where is the reconciliation for the folks the war was fought over, who after the war still were not equal and even after the creation of these reminders of slavery and the fight for freedom, got to see these reminders as they fought for basic rights.
Getting a draft going for an unpopular war against Germany, that's what. Also, there were plenty of Civil War veterans alive in 1917. The GAR (Grand Army of the Republic), the defunct equivalent of the American Legion and VFW from the Civil War, was still doing parades back then. The last veteran died in 1956, I believe. There's an old "What's My Line" from the 50s with him on it.
Let us also not forget that the Confederates were Americans too and millions of their descendants still live in the American South today. They are due the same respect of any other American veterans. It should also be noted the story of the Civil War is complicated by the service of Jews, people of color and immigrants in the Confederate Army and Navy. You will actually find many people of color as a matter of fact today who are members of the Sons of Confederate Veterans for example. It should also be noted the North was no racial utopia. Black Union soldiers were denied equal pay, couldn’t have black officers, were punished more harshly than white soldiers if accused or rape, and served in segregated units from white soldiers. Not to mention the 1863 New York City Draft Riots.
That sounds great. Now if only kids in red states were allowed to read books that discuss these shades of grey. But, oopsies, anything that doesn't indicate that the slaves were lucky, is banned!
People are flawed. If you want to name things after them, their warts should be exposed. Why not?
The last time I visited Mt. Vernon there was an exhibit that discussed Washington's 'complicated' relationship to slavery. At least there was some discussion. And we're all better for the truth.
I have to say, one of my takeaways from the Mt Vernon visit was how many slaves it took to run the place. It felt as much a monument to their memory as to Washington's.
I also found it amusing that the myth of how happy the slaves were was quite exposed with tales of the slaves begging the British ships to take them.
This is actually, amusingly, the same thing King County (where Seattle is located) in Washington State did ~30 years ago. It helped a bit, there, that Dr. King is probably much better known than the William Rufus Devane King (a slaveowner) that it was originally named after.
Sorry Zaid, normally I like you’re work but I don’t agree with this article at all. The Confederate names of these army bases should stay. This idea they thought up to try and dodge the issue in my view, is really stupid and misses the point. As George noted above, these forts were named for Confederate generals in the spirit of national reconciliation. A spirit we need to keep alive now more than ever with this nation torn apart by political polarization and tribalism. The history of the Civil War is definitely one of the those things the culture war is fought over. Here’s the thing, purging the Confederacy from our society be it flags, historical statues, license plates, on toys, on building names, etc. won’t help get rid of the Lost Cause, reduce racism or help a single person of color living today. All it accomplished to inflame the racial and political divisions that exist in our society and take us backwards. Furthermore, taking down these statues and renaming these bases for instance has set a bad precedent that we saw play out during the Summer of 2020 when feral mobs of radical leftists went around pulling down statues of and demanding the name be changed of any building with the name of, a historical figure who they felt didn’t conform with our modern moral values. Presentism, judging people from the past by our standards today is wrong and not a way to understand them. It should also be noted that while slavery was a factor in why the South fought the Civil War it was only one reason among many. It also wasn’t the only reason the Southern states succeeded. In fact if you look at the secession ordinances of the Southern states, most don’t cite slavery as their reason for doing so. The Confederates were not traitors but separatists who sought not to topple the U.S. government but succeed from it and start their own version of the United States. Also, the point that the Confederacy had slavery is a moot one because the C.S.A. was a typical society for its time. The United States, Great Britain, France, and Spain all had slavery too for instance. You can’t single out the Confederacy for a universal human sin that all almost every human society has practiced since time immemorial. Furthermore, many, many former Confederates served our country with honor after the war was over. They ran some of the most respected institutions in this country, founded universities including for women and African Americans, served in the military, and at Confederate veterans reunions would fly Old Glory right alongside the Dixie Cross. Here’s an excellent book on the topic: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1611217512/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?ie=UTF8&dib_tag=se&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.7LXr_QFMrYF4nnMASY06H-YksaAQPwVHkV8rcQAYI_2WS_2-sc59v5QFUpaUq8v1UXM_1iWp6zc2t43gwlP-j0nxOw4stBllYe2m0w6d_eSTIAyRd56xB4w6mvDCPN2oZuKtp_zDC6oPf8FQ637aSLaTW4YPa_GGdxyF8ha392zp3Ogh78vb_vxrEKlzKAFX4IIlyZsVKBJW_2y7TSWtVg.cCoTApM6sS8m1RettBTfOrvhBwEcU3MHewGO-iaYrio&qid=1739246084&sr=8-1
There was also a law passed by Congress saying it can't be named by a Confederate, probably should've included that. So their creative workaround was also law abiding.
In 2011 I met a girl who I sorta kinda liked. In June and July of that year, she had to go away for school. Over July 4th weekend, her toddler daughter and I flew to Richmond, rented a car, and for the first time ever, I drove through the front gate of Fort Lee.
As time went on, Confederate names, and monuments became more and more of an issue. I didn't want to see those symbols of our nations divide torn down. I think having the reminder of the horrible things we are capable of is a very good thing.
Fort Lee played a large role in my relationship with my wife. Every few years the Army will take her away for a couple of months for achool either to learn or to teach. Most times I'm able to visit her for a weekend, sometimes a bit longer. I have never been comfortable with that name.
I couldn't sort out why I was pro-monument, but anti-installation name. However, eventually the penny dropped. Our military has a very large African American population. These men and women, were being forced to live and work on military installations named in honor (perhaps that should be emphasized) NAMED IN HONOR of men who were willing to fight and die to keep them in chains.
No one should be placed in that situation.
In slightly less than a month, my wife will be leaving us for a couple of months, this time she's going to Fort Gregg-Adams, and I couldn't be happier.
This is just a test. Fort Bragg/Liberty was the only fort not renamed after a more contemporary hero.
The issue is not just that. It's about replacing the names of rebel generals in the service of slavery, some of them mediocrities, with some more contemporary real heroes, not all of them white.
So does this mean Hegseth et al are going to find some Benning, Gordon, Hood, Polk etc in the historical ranks to replace Hal Moore, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Sgt. William Johnson, Gen Cavazos?
There was a Master Sergeant Gary Gordon who posthumously received the Medal of Honor for actions at Mogadishu, but then you're removing Dwight D. Eisenhower, the most powerful and consequential general in US History from having a post named after him.
and you're going to find a Sergeant Benning who got a Bronze Star in the Korean War (hypothetical) to replace Lt. Gen. Hal Moore, Distinguished Service Cross holder and famous for We Were Soldiers Once?
or a Captain Polk who got a Silver Star in WW II to remove the name of Sgt. William Henry Johnson, who received the Medal of Honor posthumously for action in the Argonne Forest in WW I and one of the black soldiers.
Same with Hood/Cavazos. Richard Cavazos was awarded the Medal of Honor as a First Lt. in the Korean War, rose to the rank of General and was a Texas native.
So we're now going to remove all these new names of real heroes?
True, although Eisenhower did not have a connection to Georgia. I wonder if they have a non-Confederate Gordon who does have a relationship to Georgia.
You raise some good points. The part that jumps out at me is the rebel generals who were either mediocrities, or completely unrepentant about slavery. I think we can discard them without a second thought. But there are other figures from that era that have legacies worth grappling with.
Lee was deeply conflicted over loyalty to the country vs. his home state, and made an effort to promote national reconciliation at Appomattox and during his retirement. Sherman displayed a moral clarity around freed slaves that was ahead of his time, and less than a decade later was saying “The only good Indian is a dead Indian”. People in the 19th Century used a moral calculus completely different from our own. That’s worth attempting to understand.
I’m a Yankee who believes slavery’s extirpation through the Civil War was a terrible but necessary step towards living up to the country’s founding ideals. It’s a crucial era in American history, and worth confronting on its own terms, as the people who lived through it understood it.
There is also the importance of remembering the Civil War, the most sacred event in our nation's history. Removing Confederate statues or the names of Confederate generals does not further that end, at least in my opinion. The more we and our children know about the Civil War in all of its dramatic particulars the better. I suspect Abraham Lincoln might have agreed.
I have to pat myself on the back as I was reprimanded multiple times by leadership for listing my location in my email signature as being "FT (Bruce) Lee" when I was a spirited young LT stationed at then-FT Lee outside of Richmond, VA. I made it clear to my command that whether it was named for General Lee or Osama bin Laden, I was opposed to any honor being granted to those who had taken up arms and led to the deaths of my ancestral and/or contemporaneous brothers- and sisters-in-arms.
And point of clarification for people here citing the naming of US installations for Confederates in the effort to "bring people together again." I think you what you really mean is that this gesture was intended to bring WHITE people together again, particularly White civilians who likely had no idea what it would be like to have lost comrades in sacrifice to defending this nation's values.
Actions have consequences and as Soldiers and military members, this is instilled in us early in our training. "Said general(s)" were not "American(s);" they freely made a choice to renounce their US citizenship and wage war against their former nation. The efforts to pretend otherwise or minimize such actions for the benefit of unity amongst White citizens was a farcical inversion of US military values.
Renaming the bases has nothing to do with the confederacy. It is part and parcel of assault by cultural Marxism. Its real intention is division. THAT’S WHY it is so unsettling. It is supposed to be. Renaming the Gulf of Mexico is the same thing with a twist. It is a symbolic distraction. It is throwing things back at the face of totalitarian leftists who wish to harm the foundation of America. Look how upset Democrats are over the changing of one name. There is deep meaning in language. And we all own it. Not a select few despot wannabes.
Like your work but this piece leaves much to be desired. No real effort to grapple with why these bases were named after these fellows in the first place. Don’t even agree with the renaming but if it they weren’t named after them in the first place there’d be nothing to hash out. There was no justification for creating monuments to traitors and cretins decades after a war they started ended. It’s like Israel building monuments to Hassan Nasrallah ten years from now.
In a long-term solution to the Israeli-Palestinian crisis that was resolved along a confederation or binational state you would absolutely see statues or monuments related to problematic people on both sides who have a loyal following...it's part of the resolution of a civil strife and not necessarily unique to America.
Have to disagree, using the UK/Ireland as an example, the Irish replaced many of the British monuments erected to signify British rule. In Poland and other former USSR states, Soviet era monuments were torn down.
It’s just not done. And again I am against tearing down statues and generally frown on the renaming. But they don’t deserved to be erected in the first place, decades after the war IMHO. There’s no reconciliatory factor and even those who erected them stated they did so largely as a backlash to what they saw.
In India, the INA (indian nationalists) are comparable in that they were revered by the native population and not the British ruling class. This is the closest comparison to what you describe but of course the circumstances are different.
In post colonial countries or colonial countries that fought civil wars, wars for independence, I concede you often see both sides memorialized. The difference being these sides are often understood to have been fighting for movements in favor of human freedom, not against.
traitors and cretins? Wow. My Appalachian area of Alabama, solidly South, but not a lot of plantations or plantation sympathers. The main gripe around here was over the quite integrated Choctaws & Cherokee being ripped out by Andrew Jackson - that was still a very raw and open wound, about a decade before the war .. a narrative backed by the fact my proud Confederate veteran ancestor named his 7 children after the Confederate States, to include not only Georgia, Mississippi, etc but also Cherokee (aka "Aunt Cherry" to my Mom). The last Confederate Army and General to surrender to the Union was that of Chief Stande Waite, the Cherokee Braves Division of the Five Civilized Tribes.
History is written by the winners. If the South had won, it would today be celebrated as the humanitarian War to End the Indian genocide. A genocide that accelerated after General Sherman turned his attention and Atlanta-burning tactics Westward.
Your proud state of Alabama is no different. In their letter justifying cessation Alabama held that it was necessary to secede to” prevent the degradation and ruin of southern men as a consequence of race mixing.” They condemned the Republican Party for opposing slavery and stated “the question of slavery is the rock upon which Old Government is split” you can revise based on your grandfathers narrative all you want. But the evidence is clear and overwhelming. Alabama also hung pro-union/abolionists.
Upon seceding, Alabama’s new constitution OPPOSED emancipation by the state and “any other country.”
Native American troops comprised less than 0.73% of troops in the civil war so Whooptie Doo for the guy who didn’t surrender cause he probably didn’t know the war was over.
Sorry not sorry, the war was about slavery. Your ancestor may have fought to keep his land out of Union hands, but he was also fighting to keep blacks from owning any part of that same promise.
Ehh I don’t really see how this supports your argument? Are we supposed to ignore what people say during war times? Or are you saying that the south’s pro-slavery ouvre was all propaganda? Genuinely asking.
Also please take my “barbs” with a heavy dose of snark and acerbity. No fighting necessary
Actually I was referring to the reductionist propaganda depictions of Southerners .. the racist yahoo pointy-hat hillbilly caricarures that has stuck around far longer after the was than did that of the buck-toothed Jap. My great-great grandfather was one of the 100 men of Walker County Alabama who formed a Union Army Cavalry unit. He wore his Cavalry Sabre to a nub using it as a walking stick on his postwar hike from the North. A different grandfather from the more southern Appalachian county of Tuscaloosa named a daughter “Cherokee” for the same reason he fought so hard against the oppressive, family ripping, soveriegn invading North. The trauma of the Trail of Tears was a much bigger deal than is remembered. To the Appalachian South, the meta-conflict between the Yankee Engkish Oligarch and Plantation English, fought on the field by poor Scots-Irish (see “Gangs of New York”) was not the reason they so passionately fought. An aside, what Walker County (and Appallachia) did not unite against the North until the bad experience of Reconstruction. When the Great Depression hit the nation, it was hardly noticed in the Deep South .. and as my grandma used to tell, the cotton-picking and after cotton-picking back porch jam sessions of which she as a child partook were quite bi-racial (as evidenced by the almost any country/blues recordings you can find before it was all discovered and divided up into marketable genres by New York publishers and record companies. The more accurate depictions of post-War integrated cotton-pickers having been scrubbed from the get-go for both racist and anti-racist reasons. Especially by Hollywoid.
I get what you’re saying, but missing from your poetic description of your ancestors struggles is any description of that same time period for the blacks and enslaved folks living in Alabama and the Appalachian South.
The Trail of Tears is an understated horror story absolutely, but it isn’t a story about southerners sticking up for Indians. That oppressive family ripping trauma, that was everyday life in the south. Even after the war and sometimes especially so, being told you’re free only to be tied down with the shackles of government.
Sharecropping was also a white occupation absolutely, but now you’re making it seem as if they were both equal. It’s widely documented that the treatment received by blacks was not solely at the hands of landowners or elites but everyday normal and poor people. People who took out the frustrations of their lives on others simply because of the color of their skin.
Reconstruction and the period leading into the Great Depression are when many of the confederate statues popped up. And the reasons given and words spoken by southerners in support of these statues lets us know where their aims lay. The most violent period for the KKK and other white hate groups was during the period you speak of. So again, your family stories are nice, they do not speak to the actions of the region. And I’d encourage you if you can to investigate the attitudes and actions of your hometown with more scrutiny and less nostalgia.
Hegseth did not invent that solution. King County in western Washington - encompassing Seattle and its suburbs - was named originally after James Buchanan's vice-president William R King, until that was changed in honor of MLK in 2005.
You are missing what is (IMO) the most important reason to oppose renaming bases named after Confederates.
The Civil War was a war between brothers, a deep wound in our nation. And the surrender at Appottamox was the first step to healing the wound and rebuilding the Union. In peace, we would once again be all in it together as Americans.
Naming an American military base after a Confederate general is to make it plain that said general *was an American*. It’s a symbol of peace and reconciliation, as well as the unity (and therefore victory) of the Union.
Changing the name reopens the wound for no reason at all. It amounts to saying: “We don't care about reconciliation after all. The Confederates weren’t really Americans, they were foreign enemies. Their history isn’t American history. If your ancestors fought for the Confederacy, you should be ashamed of them.” A profoundly hostile, divisive, aggressive, and anti-peace move.
I don't disagree it may have served that purpose at one point.
For this same reason, I think it would be a good idea to name a few things after Native American leaders who fought against the US.
There are cities across the USA West named after Native Americans, including those who fought against the US military. Prominent examples that come to mind are the cities of Kamiakin, WA and Red Cloud, NE, as well as Mt. Tecumseh (little T, on Mt. Rainier). There’s also Pontiac, MI although this chief fought against British in Great Lakes region pre USA (1760’s). There are many (many) more Native American tribes who fought against the USA that are now name places.
The base names should be restored.
Part of BLM and DEI (1619 project written by a journalist, not a historian) was to give a dishonest, overly stark view of US history to produce a grievance culture and divide people through a spirit of distrust, envy and vengeance. While there certainly were atrocities and crimes in US history, there were also positive interactions and comings together. The demonization of the South wholesale as racist and the idea that North invaded to free Blacks is letting the propaganda stand in as historical fact. The important consequence of the Civil War was not freeing slaves, though that was important and as a Catholic something I consider just and good, but transforming the US officially from a consent union of states to a compulsory one.
These base names for confederates were part of the effort to bring people together into one country again, even though it was after terrorism and force was applied. Removing them is part of the campaign to nourish old wounds and stir up resentment and vengeful feelings to weaken the shared heritage that is positive, our constitutional rights. The shredding of the foundation of even the good part of our society, such as demonizing George Washington as nothing but a slave-owner, is meant to serve the building global run technocracy that sees citizenship, human rights and the 1st amendment as impediments to their conquest.
Let us not help them. Let us become students of history with the truth being our North star. Let us embrace the Catholic values that The West flourished under in its highpoint leaving vengeance to God alone and seeing the image and likeness of God in every fellow human being.
Lol the policy to name bases after confederates is from 1917. Exactly what “reconciliation” was this supposed to effect. This is such lazy thinking. Fort Polk established in 1941, Fort Hill established 1941, Fort Lee 1917, Fort Hood 1942, Fort Gordon, Mr. KkK himself, 1941 and on, and on and on.
Exactly what part of your “family history” does naming these bases for men who upheld the most base of thinking (decades later!), protect id love to know.
@Zaid, lol I get your devils advocate or whatever position but this was lazy from you as well. The entire point is they shouldn’t have been named after these people in the first place. Remembering them through monuments doesn’t reconcile anything because there are no black civil war monuments. So where is the reconciliation for the folks the war was fought over, who after the war still were not equal and even after the creation of these reminders of slavery and the fight for freedom, got to see these reminders as they fought for basic rights.
Getting a draft going for an unpopular war against Germany, that's what. Also, there were plenty of Civil War veterans alive in 1917. The GAR (Grand Army of the Republic), the defunct equivalent of the American Legion and VFW from the Civil War, was still doing parades back then. The last veteran died in 1956, I believe. There's an old "What's My Line" from the 50s with him on it.
> there are no black civil war monuments.
Yes there are? https://www.nps.gov/afam/index.htm
That was a bit facetious there are actually about 20 or so I believe compared to the 1500> confederate memorials.
There are 1500 because the UDC and SCV raised funds for and/or politically pressured for them. You can probably see where I am going here.
I don’t know which re-naming I like better. Fort Bragg or Gulf of America? Too much winning.
Gulf of America has the same problem though, most people are not going to use that name when they're used to the old one.
You might be right. I grew up with Mt. McKinley and still refer to it that way.
The word Denali means "the high one" in the native Athabaskan language and refers to the mountain itself. Long before President McKinley.
Glad the name remains "Denali National Park and Preserve" ...
and again, what a waste of taxpayer dollars to change names on maps.
But hopefully all this naming and renaming will result in curiosity and lively discussions.
Let's hope nobody uses it.
What a waste of taxpayer dollars to revise maps. This is a priority?
Eye roll.
Great. Lets talk about REAL tax payer waste!
Let us also not forget that the Confederates were Americans too and millions of their descendants still live in the American South today. They are due the same respect of any other American veterans. It should also be noted the story of the Civil War is complicated by the service of Jews, people of color and immigrants in the Confederate Army and Navy. You will actually find many people of color as a matter of fact today who are members of the Sons of Confederate Veterans for example. It should also be noted the North was no racial utopia. Black Union soldiers were denied equal pay, couldn’t have black officers, were punished more harshly than white soldiers if accused or rape, and served in segregated units from white soldiers. Not to mention the 1863 New York City Draft Riots.
Does this lower the price of eggs?
That sounds great. Now if only kids in red states were allowed to read books that discuss these shades of grey. But, oopsies, anything that doesn't indicate that the slaves were lucky, is banned!
People are flawed. If you want to name things after them, their warts should be exposed. Why not?
The last time I visited Mt. Vernon there was an exhibit that discussed Washington's 'complicated' relationship to slavery. At least there was some discussion. And we're all better for the truth.
I have to say, one of my takeaways from the Mt Vernon visit was how many slaves it took to run the place. It felt as much a monument to their memory as to Washington's.
I also found it amusing that the myth of how happy the slaves were was quite exposed with tales of the slaves begging the British ships to take them.
This is actually, amusingly, the same thing King County (where Seattle is located) in Washington State did ~30 years ago. It helped a bit, there, that Dr. King is probably much better known than the William Rufus Devane King (a slaveowner) that it was originally named after.
Sorry Zaid, normally I like you’re work but I don’t agree with this article at all. The Confederate names of these army bases should stay. This idea they thought up to try and dodge the issue in my view, is really stupid and misses the point. As George noted above, these forts were named for Confederate generals in the spirit of national reconciliation. A spirit we need to keep alive now more than ever with this nation torn apart by political polarization and tribalism. The history of the Civil War is definitely one of the those things the culture war is fought over. Here’s the thing, purging the Confederacy from our society be it flags, historical statues, license plates, on toys, on building names, etc. won’t help get rid of the Lost Cause, reduce racism or help a single person of color living today. All it accomplished to inflame the racial and political divisions that exist in our society and take us backwards. Furthermore, taking down these statues and renaming these bases for instance has set a bad precedent that we saw play out during the Summer of 2020 when feral mobs of radical leftists went around pulling down statues of and demanding the name be changed of any building with the name of, a historical figure who they felt didn’t conform with our modern moral values. Presentism, judging people from the past by our standards today is wrong and not a way to understand them. It should also be noted that while slavery was a factor in why the South fought the Civil War it was only one reason among many. It also wasn’t the only reason the Southern states succeeded. In fact if you look at the secession ordinances of the Southern states, most don’t cite slavery as their reason for doing so. The Confederates were not traitors but separatists who sought not to topple the U.S. government but succeed from it and start their own version of the United States. Also, the point that the Confederacy had slavery is a moot one because the C.S.A. was a typical society for its time. The United States, Great Britain, France, and Spain all had slavery too for instance. You can’t single out the Confederacy for a universal human sin that all almost every human society has practiced since time immemorial. Furthermore, many, many former Confederates served our country with honor after the war was over. They ran some of the most respected institutions in this country, founded universities including for women and African Americans, served in the military, and at Confederate veterans reunions would fly Old Glory right alongside the Dixie Cross. Here’s an excellent book on the topic: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1611217512/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?ie=UTF8&dib_tag=se&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.7LXr_QFMrYF4nnMASY06H-YksaAQPwVHkV8rcQAYI_2WS_2-sc59v5QFUpaUq8v1UXM_1iWp6zc2t43gwlP-j0nxOw4stBllYe2m0w6d_eSTIAyRd56xB4w6mvDCPN2oZuKtp_zDC6oPf8FQ637aSLaTW4YPa_GGdxyF8ha392zp3Ogh78vb_vxrEKlzKAFX4IIlyZsVKBJW_2y7TSWtVg.cCoTApM6sS8m1RettBTfOrvhBwEcU3MHewGO-iaYrio&qid=1739246084&sr=8-1
There was also a law passed by Congress saying it can't be named by a Confederate, probably should've included that. So their creative workaround was also law abiding.
I see they were working around an established law. Now that makes more sense. Still, I don’t think it’s the way to go.
They could pass a new law, although the original law was bipartisan.
In 2011 I met a girl who I sorta kinda liked. In June and July of that year, she had to go away for school. Over July 4th weekend, her toddler daughter and I flew to Richmond, rented a car, and for the first time ever, I drove through the front gate of Fort Lee.
As time went on, Confederate names, and monuments became more and more of an issue. I didn't want to see those symbols of our nations divide torn down. I think having the reminder of the horrible things we are capable of is a very good thing.
Fort Lee played a large role in my relationship with my wife. Every few years the Army will take her away for a couple of months for achool either to learn or to teach. Most times I'm able to visit her for a weekend, sometimes a bit longer. I have never been comfortable with that name.
I couldn't sort out why I was pro-monument, but anti-installation name. However, eventually the penny dropped. Our military has a very large African American population. These men and women, were being forced to live and work on military installations named in honor (perhaps that should be emphasized) NAMED IN HONOR of men who were willing to fight and die to keep them in chains.
No one should be placed in that situation.
In slightly less than a month, my wife will be leaving us for a couple of months, this time she's going to Fort Gregg-Adams, and I couldn't be happier.
This is just a test. Fort Bragg/Liberty was the only fort not renamed after a more contemporary hero.
The issue is not just that. It's about replacing the names of rebel generals in the service of slavery, some of them mediocrities, with some more contemporary real heroes, not all of them white.
So does this mean Hegseth et al are going to find some Benning, Gordon, Hood, Polk etc in the historical ranks to replace Hal Moore, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Sgt. William Johnson, Gen Cavazos?
There was a Master Sergeant Gary Gordon who posthumously received the Medal of Honor for actions at Mogadishu, but then you're removing Dwight D. Eisenhower, the most powerful and consequential general in US History from having a post named after him.
and you're going to find a Sergeant Benning who got a Bronze Star in the Korean War (hypothetical) to replace Lt. Gen. Hal Moore, Distinguished Service Cross holder and famous for We Were Soldiers Once?
or a Captain Polk who got a Silver Star in WW II to remove the name of Sgt. William Henry Johnson, who received the Medal of Honor posthumously for action in the Argonne Forest in WW I and one of the black soldiers.
Same with Hood/Cavazos. Richard Cavazos was awarded the Medal of Honor as a First Lt. in the Korean War, rose to the rank of General and was a Texas native.
So we're now going to remove all these new names of real heroes?
True, although Eisenhower did not have a connection to Georgia. I wonder if they have a non-Confederate Gordon who does have a relationship to Georgia.
State origin was not a factor in Hegseth's renaming of Bragg.
The "new" Bragg, PFC Roland Bragg of WW II, was from Maine.
He was a paratrooper like most of Bragg's soldiers now.
You raise some good points. The part that jumps out at me is the rebel generals who were either mediocrities, or completely unrepentant about slavery. I think we can discard them without a second thought. But there are other figures from that era that have legacies worth grappling with.
Lee was deeply conflicted over loyalty to the country vs. his home state, and made an effort to promote national reconciliation at Appomattox and during his retirement. Sherman displayed a moral clarity around freed slaves that was ahead of his time, and less than a decade later was saying “The only good Indian is a dead Indian”. People in the 19th Century used a moral calculus completely different from our own. That’s worth attempting to understand.
I’m a Yankee who believes slavery’s extirpation through the Civil War was a terrible but necessary step towards living up to the country’s founding ideals. It’s a crucial era in American history, and worth confronting on its own terms, as the people who lived through it understood it.
There is also the importance of remembering the Civil War, the most sacred event in our nation's history. Removing Confederate statues or the names of Confederate generals does not further that end, at least in my opinion. The more we and our children know about the Civil War in all of its dramatic particulars the better. I suspect Abraham Lincoln might have agreed.
I have to pat myself on the back as I was reprimanded multiple times by leadership for listing my location in my email signature as being "FT (Bruce) Lee" when I was a spirited young LT stationed at then-FT Lee outside of Richmond, VA. I made it clear to my command that whether it was named for General Lee or Osama bin Laden, I was opposed to any honor being granted to those who had taken up arms and led to the deaths of my ancestral and/or contemporaneous brothers- and sisters-in-arms.
And point of clarification for people here citing the naming of US installations for Confederates in the effort to "bring people together again." I think you what you really mean is that this gesture was intended to bring WHITE people together again, particularly White civilians who likely had no idea what it would be like to have lost comrades in sacrifice to defending this nation's values.
Actions have consequences and as Soldiers and military members, this is instilled in us early in our training. "Said general(s)" were not "American(s);" they freely made a choice to renounce their US citizenship and wage war against their former nation. The efforts to pretend otherwise or minimize such actions for the benefit of unity amongst White citizens was a farcical inversion of US military values.
Lincoln spoke of ‘With malice towards none...’ for a reason. Renaming military bases 150 years after the war ended seems like malice.
Renaming the bases has nothing to do with the confederacy. It is part and parcel of assault by cultural Marxism. Its real intention is division. THAT’S WHY it is so unsettling. It is supposed to be. Renaming the Gulf of Mexico is the same thing with a twist. It is a symbolic distraction. It is throwing things back at the face of totalitarian leftists who wish to harm the foundation of America. Look how upset Democrats are over the changing of one name. There is deep meaning in language. And we all own it. Not a select few despot wannabes.
Thanks for this .. there are countless of us Army brats for whom these are our HOMETOWNS!
Funny!
Like your work but this piece leaves much to be desired. No real effort to grapple with why these bases were named after these fellows in the first place. Don’t even agree with the renaming but if it they weren’t named after them in the first place there’d be nothing to hash out. There was no justification for creating monuments to traitors and cretins decades after a war they started ended. It’s like Israel building monuments to Hassan Nasrallah ten years from now.
In a long-term solution to the Israeli-Palestinian crisis that was resolved along a confederation or binational state you would absolutely see statues or monuments related to problematic people on both sides who have a loyal following...it's part of the resolution of a civil strife and not necessarily unique to America.
Have to disagree, using the UK/Ireland as an example, the Irish replaced many of the British monuments erected to signify British rule. In Poland and other former USSR states, Soviet era monuments were torn down.
It’s just not done. And again I am against tearing down statues and generally frown on the renaming. But they don’t deserved to be erected in the first place, decades after the war IMHO. There’s no reconciliatory factor and even those who erected them stated they did so largely as a backlash to what they saw.
In India, the INA (indian nationalists) are comparable in that they were revered by the native population and not the British ruling class. This is the closest comparison to what you describe but of course the circumstances are different.
In post colonial countries or colonial countries that fought civil wars, wars for independence, I concede you often see both sides memorialized. The difference being these sides are often understood to have been fighting for movements in favor of human freedom, not against.
traitors and cretins? Wow. My Appalachian area of Alabama, solidly South, but not a lot of plantations or plantation sympathers. The main gripe around here was over the quite integrated Choctaws & Cherokee being ripped out by Andrew Jackson - that was still a very raw and open wound, about a decade before the war .. a narrative backed by the fact my proud Confederate veteran ancestor named his 7 children after the Confederate States, to include not only Georgia, Mississippi, etc but also Cherokee (aka "Aunt Cherry" to my Mom). The last Confederate Army and General to surrender to the Union was that of Chief Stande Waite, the Cherokee Braves Division of the Five Civilized Tribes.
History is written by the winners. If the South had won, it would today be celebrated as the humanitarian War to End the Indian genocide. A genocide that accelerated after General Sherman turned his attention and Atlanta-burning tactics Westward.
Your proud state of Alabama is no different. In their letter justifying cessation Alabama held that it was necessary to secede to” prevent the degradation and ruin of southern men as a consequence of race mixing.” They condemned the Republican Party for opposing slavery and stated “the question of slavery is the rock upon which Old Government is split” you can revise based on your grandfathers narrative all you want. But the evidence is clear and overwhelming. Alabama also hung pro-union/abolionists.
Upon seceding, Alabama’s new constitution OPPOSED emancipation by the state and “any other country.”
Native American troops comprised less than 0.73% of troops in the civil war so Whooptie Doo for the guy who didn’t surrender cause he probably didn’t know the war was over.
Sorry not sorry, the war was about slavery. Your ancestor may have fought to keep his land out of Union hands, but he was also fighting to keep blacks from owning any part of that same promise.
Those are fighting words. And pulling from the most vile war-time political propaganda is a real low. Do you really want to resume it.
https://www.reddit.com/r/PropagandaPosters/comments/16qw54i/you_can_slap_a_jap_action_comics1943/
Ehh I don’t really see how this supports your argument? Are we supposed to ignore what people say during war times? Or are you saying that the south’s pro-slavery ouvre was all propaganda? Genuinely asking.
Also please take my “barbs” with a heavy dose of snark and acerbity. No fighting necessary
Actually I was referring to the reductionist propaganda depictions of Southerners .. the racist yahoo pointy-hat hillbilly caricarures that has stuck around far longer after the was than did that of the buck-toothed Jap. My great-great grandfather was one of the 100 men of Walker County Alabama who formed a Union Army Cavalry unit. He wore his Cavalry Sabre to a nub using it as a walking stick on his postwar hike from the North. A different grandfather from the more southern Appalachian county of Tuscaloosa named a daughter “Cherokee” for the same reason he fought so hard against the oppressive, family ripping, soveriegn invading North. The trauma of the Trail of Tears was a much bigger deal than is remembered. To the Appalachian South, the meta-conflict between the Yankee Engkish Oligarch and Plantation English, fought on the field by poor Scots-Irish (see “Gangs of New York”) was not the reason they so passionately fought. An aside, what Walker County (and Appallachia) did not unite against the North until the bad experience of Reconstruction. When the Great Depression hit the nation, it was hardly noticed in the Deep South .. and as my grandma used to tell, the cotton-picking and after cotton-picking back porch jam sessions of which she as a child partook were quite bi-racial (as evidenced by the almost any country/blues recordings you can find before it was all discovered and divided up into marketable genres by New York publishers and record companies. The more accurate depictions of post-War integrated cotton-pickers having been scrubbed from the get-go for both racist and anti-racist reasons. Especially by Hollywoid.
I get what you’re saying, but missing from your poetic description of your ancestors struggles is any description of that same time period for the blacks and enslaved folks living in Alabama and the Appalachian South.
The Trail of Tears is an understated horror story absolutely, but it isn’t a story about southerners sticking up for Indians. That oppressive family ripping trauma, that was everyday life in the south. Even after the war and sometimes especially so, being told you’re free only to be tied down with the shackles of government.
Sharecropping was also a white occupation absolutely, but now you’re making it seem as if they were both equal. It’s widely documented that the treatment received by blacks was not solely at the hands of landowners or elites but everyday normal and poor people. People who took out the frustrations of their lives on others simply because of the color of their skin.
Reconstruction and the period leading into the Great Depression are when many of the confederate statues popped up. And the reasons given and words spoken by southerners in support of these statues lets us know where their aims lay. The most violent period for the KKK and other white hate groups was during the period you speak of. So again, your family stories are nice, they do not speak to the actions of the region. And I’d encourage you if you can to investigate the attitudes and actions of your hometown with more scrutiny and less nostalgia.
It wasn’t so nostalgic for everyone.
Hegseth did not invent that solution. King County in western Washington - encompassing Seattle and its suburbs - was named originally after James Buchanan's vice-president William R King, until that was changed in honor of MLK in 2005.