List of U.S. Army installations named for Confederate soldiers

Numerous military installations in the United States are named after general officers in the Confederate States Army. These are all U.S. Army or Army National Guard posts, named mostly following World War I and during the 1940s.[1][2]

Active installations

Active installations, all in the Southern United States, are:

Deactivated installations

Other 20th-century installations, now deactivated, named for Confederate Generals were:

Calls to rename

In June 2020, during nationwide protests over the killing of George Floyd by police officers, the U.S. military began rethinking its traditional connection to Confederate Army symbols, including base names. The use of confederate flags, and statues or memorials dedicated to Confederate Army officers, has been seen as part of racism in the country.

Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and Secretary of the Army Ryan McCarthy indicated they were "open to a bipartisan discussion", but President Donald Trump said his administration would "not even consider" renaming what he called "Magnificent and Fabled Military Installations" that "have become part of a Great American Heritage, a history of Winning, Victory, and Freedom." If Congress were to pass such legislation, said Trump's press secretary, the president would not sign it.[1] In July 2020, U.S. Army general Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a House Armed Services Committee hearing that prominent Army bases named for rebel generals are divisive and can be offensive to black people in uniform, noting that the Army is about 20% black. Soldiers on a base named after a Confederate general "can be reminded that that general fought for the institution of slavery that may have enslaved one of their ancestors," Milley said. He has recommended creating a commission to study the matter.[8]

Retired Army General David Petraeus said, "how strange it was that the leaders of the fight against the Union were more widely honored—with their names on federal forts, roads, barracks, gates, housing areas, etc.—than were those who fought for the country. And, of course, those fighting to secede were doing so to preserve the rights of their states to enslave others, with those 'others' now roughly 20 percent of the soldiers serving on those bases."[9] Mick Mulroy, the former deputy assistant secretary of defense for James Mattis and a retired Marine, said American soldiers "should serve on bases that are named after the heroes that have sacrificed and fought for our country, not against it" and suggested that they should be re-named after Medal of Honor recipients.[10]

On July 24, 2020, the U.S. Senate overwhelmingly passed (86 to 14 in favor) Senate Bill S.4049,[11] their version of the annual National Defense Authorization Act, which includes a provision that all 10 Army bases named after prominent Confederate military leaders be renamed.[12] The Senate bill still needs to be combined with the House version of the same bill in the United States congressional conference committee before it can be sent to President Trump for his signature or veto.

See also

References
  1. Burns, Robert (June 10, 2020). "Trump: No change at bases named for Confederate officers". Associated Press. Retrieved June 10, 2020.
  2. Grosvenor, Edwin S. (June 1, 2020). "Confederates Honored by the U.S. Army". American Heritage Magazine. 65:3 (June 2020).
  3. "Camp Beauregard, near Alexandria Louisiana in World War II". Alexandria-louisiana.com. Retrieved June 17, 2014.
  4. Rhea, Gordon (January 25, 2011). "Why Non-Slaveholding Southerners Fought". Civil War Trust. Civil War Trust. Archived from the original on March 21, 2011. Retrieved March 21, 2011.
  5. Benning, Henry L. (February 18, 1861). "Speech of Henry Benning to the Virginia Convention". Proceedings of the Virginia State Convention of 1861. pp. 62–75. Retrieved March 17, 2015.
  6. "Fort A.P. Hill History". U.S. Army. Retrieved March 18, 2013.
  7. Royston, Mark W. (2009). The Faces Behind the Bases: Brief Biographies of Those for Whom Our Military Bases Were Named. iUniverse Publishing. p. 28. ISBN 978-1-4401-3712-9. In 1917 it was announced that the camp would be named for General Robert E. Lee, CSA.
  8. Burns, Robert (July 9, 2020). "Milley: Confederate names on Army bases divide the military". Associated Press. Retrieved July 9, 2020.
  9. https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/06/confederate-bases-military-petraeus.html
  10. https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/reversal-army-now-open-conversation-renaming-bases-named/story?id=71151951
  11. "S.4049 - National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021". 116th Congress (2019-2020). July 23, 2020.
  12. Neuman, Scott (July 24, 2020). "Despite Trump's Veto Threat, Senate Approves Provision To Rename Military Bases". NPR.
  13. Seidule, Ty (June 16, 2020). "What to rename the Army bases that honor Confederate soldiers". The Washington Post. Retrieved July 1, 2020.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.