Complex legacy: US military bases bearing Confederate names
One-hundred and forty miles from the Columbia, South Carolina capitol that could soon be stripped of its controversial Confederate flag, stands another nod to the breakaway republic: Fort Bragg.
The massive North Carolina Army base was named nearly a century ago for General Braxton Bragg, a native Tar Heel who served as military adviser to Confederate President Jefferson Davis.
It is one of 11 U.S. military installations bearing the names of Confederate leaders.
The others include Fort Benning in Georgia, named in 1918 for pro-slavery general and lawyer Henry L. Benning, and Fort Hood in Texas, named in 1942 for General John Bell Hood. His exploits ended with defeats in the battles of Atlanta, Franklin and Nashville.
The killings of eight worshippers and their pastor last Wednesday at the historic Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina revived the debate over the Confederacy’s place in modern America.
The suspect, 21-year-old Dylann Roof, posted a photograph on a website showing himself holding the familiar Confederate battle flag. He wrote of visiting slave plantations and the graves of Confederate soldiers.
A growing chorus of civil rights and political leaders called for the removal of the battle flag flying on the state capitol grounds and on Monday, Gov. Nikki Haley said she would call the legislature back into session if it did not take immediate action to remove the flag.
“A hundred and fifty years after the end of the Civil War, the time has come,” Haley said.
So far, the national focus has been limited to the flag, but the Confederacy’s roots run far deeper — especially in the south. The battle flag, with a star-filled blue St. Andrew’s cross on a red field, adorns bumper stickers and keychains. Some states, including North and South Carolina, offer the flag as an optional license plate icon. Statues of Confederate soldiers stand in town squares.
And military bases in Virginia, Alabama, Louisiana, Texas and North Carolina bear thy names.
The same government that transformed those states — and others once Confederate — with civil rights legislation and the forced desegregation of public schools and facilities, continues to pay homage to the leaders of the armed forces that killed thousands of Union soldiers in a fight for none of that.
The installations bearing Confederate names were built and christened between 1917-1942, in the rapid expansions of the military prior to World War I and World War II.
During that time, it was common for camps and forts to be named after local features or veterans with a regional connection, according to a defense department primer on base naming. In the southern states, they were frequently named after celebrated Confederate soldiers.
“Although naming forts and camps after distinguished military veterans from both the U.S. and Confederate Armies had become a common practice, it was not the official policy until the publication of a War Department memorandum dated 20 November 1939,” the military’s naming primer said.
“In the years 1939-1946, almost all military installations designated as forts or camps were named after distinguished military individuals, including veterans of the Confederate Army.”
Fort Bragg’s namesake graduated fifth in his class from West Point in 1837. His loss to Union forces led by Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman — the namesake of a defunct U.S. base in Panama — ended the Confederate resistance in North Carolina.
Fort Pickett — an Army National Guard Maneuver Training Center in Virginia — is named for General George Pickett, the namesake of the Confederate’s ill-fated Pickett’s Charge strategy at Gettysburg.
There’s Fort Lee, named for Robert E. Lee, in Virginia and Camp Beauregard, named for the brigadier general who ordered the shots at Fort Sumter, in Louisiana.
Camp Pendleton in Virginia is named for Lee’s artillery chief, William N. Pendleton. (Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton is named for U.S. Marine Major General Joseph Henry Pendleton).
Brigadier General Malcolm Frost, the Army’s chief of public affairs, said the bases were named “in the spirit of reconciliation, not division.”
“Every Army installation is named for a soldier who holds a place in our military history,” Frost said Wednesday. “Accordingly, these historic names represent individuals, not causes or ideologies.”
Neither President Obama, Defense Secretary Ash Carter nor Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey have addressed the issue.
Jamie Malanowski, an author of several books and articles on the Civil War, addressed the incongruity of retaining Confederate names on U.S. bases in a May 2013 essay for The New York Times, “Misplaced Honor.”
“The United States Army maintains bases named after generals who led soldiers who fought and killed United States Army soldiers,” he writes, “indeed, who may have killed such soldiers themselves.”
