As much as President Donald Trump enjoys talking about winning and winners, the Confederate generals he vows will not have their names removed from U.S. military bases were not only on the losing side of rebellion against the United States, some weren’t even considered good generals.
The 10 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.
Trump has dug in his heels on renaming, saying the bases that trained and deployed heroes for two World Wars “have become part of a Great American Heritage, a history of Winning, Victory, and Freedom.”
However, there is growing support in the GOP- led Senate to remove the Confederate names and from former U.S. military leaders such as retired 4-star general David Petraeus, who wrote last week that the bases are named ”for those who took up arms against the United States, and for the right to enslave others.”
Trump administration Housing Secretary Ben Carson, who is black, said Sunday that naming bases after Confederate generals was done in post-war reconciliation efforts and to change them now would have “exactly the opposite effect” — and that society needs to stop looking for history to be offended by.
“We have to recognize that we have a history and to try to hide that history is probably not a smart move,” Carson told Chris Wallace on “Fox News Sunday.”
Long revered in much of the South, Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee has often been a flashpoint for opponents of honoring Confederates who triggered a war that killed hundreds of thousands of Americans on U.S. soil in some of the bloodiest fighting ever seen.
Trump paid tribute to Lee as “a great general” in an impromptu Civil War history lesson during a 2018 rally in Lebanon, Ohio, saying Abraham Lincoln developed “a phobia” about trying to defeat Lee before turning to Gen. Ulysses S. Grant of nearby Point Pleasant, Ohio, for success.
While Lee’s early victories put the Union Army on the defensive, his failure at the decisive battle of Gettysburg in 1863, capped by the disastrous Pickett’s Charge into Union fire, was the turning point of the war.
Lee has been portrayed in the South as a gentlemanly hero, but he had been a slaveholder in his native Virginia and at least one of his former slaves testified that Lee had him whipped brutally.
Gen. Braxton Bragg, namesake for the famed North Carolina Army base, was also a slaveholder and an unpopular general who resigned his command after defeat in 1863 at Chattanooga.
On ABC’s “This Week” Sunday, George Stephanopoulos asked Sen. James Lankford, R-Oklahoma, if it’s time to stop having military bases named after Confederate generals like Bragg.
Lankford indicated agreement, comparing it to names of schools and saying that children should be able to have their school’s namesake as a role model.
“You would have that on a military base as well,” Lankford said. “So, if you have a military base that is named after someone that actually rebelled against the United States government, then you would want to be able to go back and look at that name. That should be a pretty basic principle.”
Gen. John Bell Hood, namesake of the Texas base, and his other commanders slept at Spring Hill, Tennessee, after a long day of mostly successful fighting in 1864, allowing Union soldiers to get away on a road so close to the sleeping Confederates that some reportedly used the rebels’ campfires to light their pipes. He followed with defeat at Franklin, Tennessee, and the late historian Shelby Foote wrote in “
Gen. A.P. Hill, namesake of a base in Virginia, was killed in battle in 1865 but is remembered for actions after the Battle of the Crater in 1864, where some rebel troops were enraged by the North’s use of black units. Some soldiers wrote letters describing rebels executing defenseless black soldiers. Historians say Hill ordered white Union prisoners to be mixed with black soldiers to be paraded through the city of Petersburg to hear racist jeers from the townspeople.
Virginia base namesake Gen. George Pickett, the big loser at Gettysburg, had 22 Union soldiers executed and later fled to Canada. Gen. John Brown Gordon, an effective commander, became governor of Georgia after the war but was suspected of being a Klan leader in the state.
Some scholars of the South, such as history professor Ted Ownby, say it’s not clear how renaming the bases would play politically. He said people in the communities around the bases might take offense, but that in today’s South, there’s not as much fascination or identification with Confederate leaders as in older generations.
“What Southern means and who Southerners are has expanded to be much more … that being Southern isn’t rooted in support or respect for the Confederacy,” said Ownby, of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture, at the University of Mississippi.
(AP)
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4 Responses
Hmmmm.
In DeBozo’s NYC, after close to four months of deliberation, the City of New York decided not to remove the plaque honoring French Nazi collaborator Henri Philippe Petain from the 13-block stretch on Broadway known as the “Canyon of Heroes.”
So i’s only white slaveholders that have to be removed but not Nazis?
No hypocrisy right?
There are congressional buildings named after segregationists.
Just like … when Pelosi or AOC or Deblasio get rid of their police detail (DEFUND!) first, before they talk about getting rid of police…
Maybe congress should change names of things they control before requiring the administration to change things?! Ya think??
Some Southerners who should have bases named after them to replace the traitorous losers, most of whom were lousy generals anyway:
Lt. Gen. Winfield Scott, from Virginia. He had served in the War of 1812 and the Mexican-American War. He is the longest serving US general officer in history, and was the commanding officer at the beginning of the Civil War. He clashed with Lincoln on many issues but it was his “Anaconda” plan that ended up winning the war for the US and defeating the rebellion. He also tried to talk then Col. Robert E. Lee out of committing treason.
Rear Admiral Samuel Phillips Lee, also from Virginia. He was third cousin to Robert E. Lee and also tried to talk Col. Lee out of committing treason. He led blockades of the South during the Civil War. His father in law, Francis Preston Blair, was a major advisor to President Lincoln. His son Blair Lee would be the first person elected to the US Senate by popular vote after the 17th Amendment, his grandson E. Brooke Lee would be Speaker of the Maryland House of Delegates, and his great grandson Blair Lee III would serve as Lt. Governor of Maryland.
Major General Montgomery C. Meigs, from Georgia. He was Quartermaster General for the entire Civil War and his ability to supply and to transport the huge Union Army huge distances via rail, water, and land was essential to the successful victory of the Union. It is an accomplishment that has gone unnoticed by too many supposed Civil War buffs but not by people who understand war. As the saying goes, amateur generals talk strategy while real generals talk logistics.
Major General George H. Thomas, from Virginia. As a child, he and his family had survived Nat Turner’s famous unsuccessful slave revolt and he became an opponent of slavery for the rest of his life. He was one of the Union’s best generals, winning the Battle of Nashville which totally destroyed what remained of the Confederate Army in the West. He never got a major command because he refused to play politics and he died a few years after the war before getting a chance to write memoirs.
Admiral David Farragut, born in Tennessee and grew up in Louisiana. One of the few loyal southerners to receive some recognition, including a now closed naval facility and a postage stamp. The town closest to his place of birth is now named for him; that part of eastern Tennessee remained loyal to the Union. He had served in the War of 1812 and the Mexican-American War. He played a major role in the Union capture of New Orleans, Port Hudson, and led the Union forces at Mobile Bay, famously shouting “Damn the torpedoes.” He was the foster brother of Admiral David Dixon Porter.
Major General Robert Anderson, from Kentucky. He had served in the Black Hawk War, where one of the people he mustered into militia service as Abraham Lincoln, and in the Mexican-American War. He is best known for having been the leader of the Union garrison at Fort Sumter when it was attacked. There had been little sentiment in favor of fighting a war against the South until the South attacked Fort Sumter without provocation; then Major Anderson’s refusal to surrender at the point of a gun made him a national hero and electrified support for fighting to preserve the Union by force. While he was promoted to be a general officer he played little further role in the Civil War because of poor health, although he did return to Charleston to raise the US flag over Fort Sumter in April 1865.
Brigadier General William Terrill, from Virginia. He was killed at the Battle of Perryville. He had two brothers who fought for the Confederacy and were killed in action.
Rear Admiral John Ancrum Winslow, from North Carolina. However, he was from an old New England family and had ancestors on the Mayflower. He is most famous for having been the Captain of the USS Kearsarge when it sank the “commerce raider” CSS Alabama off the coast of France as both French and British vessels stood by. The wreck of the Alabama was discovered in 1984. There have been several USS Winslow ships in the US Navy named in his honor.
Finally, as we are about to read Parshat Shelach this coming week, one Southern Spy deserves mention: Elizabeth Van Lew, who despite being from Richmond VA was an abolitionist prior to secession. She cared for Union POWs and helped them escape, and she had contacts in the Confederate government that fed her information about the confederate military that she conveyed, partly through escaped prisoners, to the Union leaders. She was rewarded by President Grant by being named Postmaster of Richmond for eight years and she lived to the age of 81, dying in 1900, just before Virginia took voting rights away from blacks and poor whites.
“French Nazi collaborator Henri Philippe Petain”
I love to stomp on Petain’s name when I am in lower Manhattan. Also honored is Petain’s Vichy stooge Pierre Laval, whom the French themselves excecuted for treason after the war. Laval should also be blotted out.