U.S. Army bases and installations in the South named to honor Confederate generals include slaveholders and generals who failed on the battlefield
The U.S. Army has 10 posts named after Confederate generals across the South, including major installations at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, Fort Benning in Georgia and Fort Hood in Texas.
Experts told Vox that they believe the Army has dragged its feet on this issue for years regarding why those 10 facilities haven’t had their names changed for three primary reasons: 1) the pervasiveness of the Lost Cause myth in Army culture, 2) bureaucratic inertia and competing problems, and 3) courting controversy
These installations–three in Virginia, two in Louisiana, two in Georgia, and one each in Alabama, North Carolina, and Texas–tended to be named after local rebel generals— either by the local community or by the U.S. Army, which appeared to believe that traitorous Confederate Army history was a part of its own history.
The Confederate generals, whose names should be removed from U.S. military bases, were not only on the losing side of the secession and rebellion against the United States, some weren’t even considered good generals and don’t appear to deserve celebration.
The 10 Confederate generals include some who made costly battlefield blunders; others mistreated captured Union soldiers, some were slaveholders and one was linked to the Ku Klux Klan after the war.
Several retired Army generals support name changes.
Retired Army General David Petraeus, U.S. Army, Retired, wrote in The Atlantic that the names should be changed. “These bases are, after all, federal installations, home to soldiers who swear an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States,” Petraeus wrote. “The irony of training at bases named for those who took up arms against the United States, and for the right to enslave others, is inescapable to anyone paying attention.”
“Most of the Confederate generals for whom our bases are named were undistinguished, if not incompetent, battlefield commanders,” Petraeus wrote.
References:
- https://www.armytimes.com/news/your-army/2017/08/16/there-are-10-posts-named-after-confederates-should-the-army-re-name-them/
- https://www.armytimes.com/news/your-army/2020/06/14/military-base-namesakes-include-slaveholders-failed-generals/?utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=Socialflow+MIL&utm_source=facebook.com
- https://time.com/3932914/army-bases-confederate/
- https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/take-confederate-names-off-our-army-bases/612832/
- https://www.vox.com/2020/6/9/21285097/army-base-name-change-confederacy-marines-navy
- https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/06/the-myth-of-the-kindly-general-lee/529038/
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