all of which are named after traitors, people who took up arms against the United States.
Here are the bases:
Camp Beauregard in Louisiana, named after General Pierre Beauregard, who was responsible for the shelling of Fort Sumter (and whose last name has been passed down through the family of Jefferson (for Davis) Beauregard Sessions III, our current Attorney General
Fort Benning in Georgia, named for Brigadier General Henry Benning, who in 1860 as a member of the legislature urged secession.
Fort Bragg in NC, named after Braxton Bragg,who actually was not all that respected as a commander.
Fort Gordon in Georgia, named after John Brown Gordon, one of Lee’s most trusted subordinates, and later a United States Senator. Of greater importance, he was head of the Ku Klux Klan
Fort A P Hill in Virginia, named for a man shot to death by a Union soldier in Peterburg VA shortly before the Civil War came to an end
Fort Hood in Texas, named for Kentuckian John Bell Hood, notably wounded at Gettysburg where he lost the use of an arm and a Chicamaugua where he lost a leg — again, in combat against the Army of the United States which has the world’s largest armored based named after him in a state which has little connection to him
Fort Lee in Virginia, named after “Marse” Bobby Lee, who did finally surrender at Appomattox Court House in 1865, but perhaps only because the train that was supposed to provide supplies for him to continue to fight by joining up with Joe Johsnson’s Army of Tennessee in NCd did not show up at Amelia Courthouse, and he could not obtain further provisions from the countryside nearby.
Fort Pickett in VA, named for the man whose “charge” across the open field at Gettysburg was perhaps the stupidest thing Lee ever ordered. It is a Virginia National Guard base. While some troops reached the Union lines, even Lee could apparently hear the taunts of “Fredericksburg” in memory of the Union Army’s similarly foolish charge up Marye’s Heights.
Fort Polk in Louisiana, named for a man who had been an Episcopal Bishop in North Carolina, Leonidas Polk, a subordinate to Braxton Bragg whose foolish raid on Columbus Kentucky caused that state — attempting to stay neutral — to appeal to Washington DC for help.
Fort Rucker in Alabama, named for Colonel Edmund Rucker, a native of Tennessee who became a leading industrialist in Birmingham Alabama after the war (and then got the nicknamed “General” although he never achieved that rank in service.
(I am drawing the background of these installations and the men they are named for from this Time.com piece)
Historians can argue over the justification that these men, many graduates of the USMA at West Point (where there is a barracks named for Robert E.Lee), used to rationalize taking up arms against the United States. There can be no doubt that Beauregard’s action at Fort Sumter were directly treasonous — at that point Lincoln had carefully avoided any aggressive action towards the states moving towards or even declaring secession.
Statues can be moved to museums which can explain their provenance (too often in a push back against rights for the former slaves, sometime in the 19th century, far too often — like the rearising of the battle flag as a symbol — in push back against Civil Rights in the 20th Century). I note that then Gov. Haley of SC took this position with the battle flag.
There is no justification for the names of US Military installations to be associated with men who took up arms against this country. It is not correct to honor them, to rationalize that on any grounds.
Slavery is America’s original sin.
Racism is its continued sin, from which flows other sinful -isms as well.
The Civil War was about the insistence of some of their right to own and treat as property other human beings on account of the color of their skin.
Those associated with that side should NOT be honored — not by local governments, not by state governments, and certainly NOT by the Army against which they took up arms.