What suggestions do you have for renaming DoD installations honoring Confederate officers?

How about Fort Forgotten History. It is history not hatred. Those that don't study/understand history are destined to repeat it.

CPT Chris McGowan is obviously one of those who thinks that if you repeat a lie often enough, it will become true, especially if you shout down any opposition. Notice how he gives no facts, no references, no quotes in trying to beat his OPINION into your head. He loves to throw around that term, traitor. Yet that’s what the Tories called the heroes of the American Revolution. Robert E. Lee was no more a traitor than Nathan Hale. John Bell Hood was no more a traitor than Paul Revere.

Do you know why the Constitution could not have been signed without the Bill of Rights being signed at the SAME TIME? Because 4 of the original 13 colonies, would not have signed without a document to specifically restrain the Federalists, those who wanted the Federal government to have more power. And which colony was a leader in this demand to restrain the power of the Federal government? New York, which along with Illinois was a big recipient of taxes taken from the South to support their industrial growth.

Have you read the Declaration of Independence? Did you know that it claimed the colonies were free and independent states? That they had the rights of any other nation?

Certainly slavery was a cause, but not the sole cause. Certainly some of those who fought for the Confederacy were flawed, for example General Hood was a White Supremacist. But that doesn’t mean everything he did in his life was wrong, especially defending the SAME rights to fair taxation that caused the American Revolution in the first place. That is why I don’t want Fort Hood renamed. It’s a reminder that the government should be accountable to the people. It’s a reminder that when the government assumes the guise and makes policy that mirrors King George III, that there are people who are willing to resist, even to their lives in a lost cause.

Look back into the Roman empire. A common price (in spite of Hollyweird moves) for a slave was about 1/5th the cost of a horse. It's nice to have someone drive your carriage, saddle your horse, sweep your floors, and so on, but you have to house and feed slaves. Now we call Uber when we want a ride, or get a Roomba to sweep our floors, and save the expense of having slaves. Mechanical reapers, the cotton gin, and similar improvements would have made slavery uneconomical. That doesn't make slavery less evil, but it could have died of its own accord and saved us 650,000 lives. (Plus a whole lot of animosity from people who need to refight the Civil War daily to force their view on everyone else.)

And I think the lives lost is the real point. It's easy to say, "Lets go to war to stop slavery." As a 38 year veteran of the Army, with 7 of those years spent in combat zones, I have always been willing to fight for what is right. But about 1 Union soldier died for every 10 slaves freed. I think you'd be hard pressed to find 400,000 people willing to die today to free 4 million slaves. Maybe we should have looked for a better and less bloody solution.

And that's just the Northern side. In the South, only about 1 person in 6 owned slaves. The vast majority were owned by the 25,000 or so plantation owners. Can you really imagine 250,000 Confederate soldiers dying for someone else's slaves? The South fought because the North had been conducting economic warfare against the South, and had been for decades. There are more lessons we need to learn.

And although I will post this a few times in response to CPT Chris McGowan, I won’t do it every time. Just often enough to make the point that truth is not determined by how often a lie is shouted.

If you are willing to at least consider whether anything I said above is true or not, I suggest you Google:

Tariff of 1816
Tariff of 1828
Force Act of 1833
Morrill Tariff of 1861

“The Northern onslaught upon slavery was no more than a piece of specious humbug designed to conceal its desire for economic control of the Southern states.” – Charles Dickens

Here is a FACT, CPT Chris McGowan is an IDIOT.

CPT Chris McGowan - I realize it's a waste of time to try and give you facts that don't support your prejudices, but I'm going to try anyway.

The US PRIOR to the Civil War was more of a Confederacy (which doesn't mean it was the same as the Confederacy established at the start of the war.) The first document which united the 13 states together was the Articles of Confederation, which acknowledged that each state was an independent nation, bound together in common cause. The Declaration likewise say this clearly, to anyone not blinded by their own interpretation of history.

So when Robert E. Lee said he could not raise his sword against Virginia, he was standing by his oath, not betraying it. Virginia was Lee's nation, not the federal government which had been waging economic war on the South for more than 40 years. That is your lie, and perpetuating it without any consideration for the facts I have listed here and above is why you are a serial liar attempting to shout your "truth" without any consideration of the facts.

And even if you don't agree with that (and you won't) you ought to at least consider the concept that HE believed that and acted in an appropriate manner according to his conscience and sense of honor. You are not God and your interpretation of why people did anything is not holy writ. Wake up and accept that people do things for honorable reasons that you just don't happen to like.

CPT Chris McGowan - And that's why you aren't worth spending any more time on. You quote no documents, which means you as speaking out of your a$$, only your opinion, with no regard for history, documentation, or truth. (Yes, you can list all the publications you want which support your view, but picking only the sources you agree with is dishonest. A true researcher forms a hypothesis and then tries to DISPROVE it. This is called the Scientific Method, something you have very little use for.)

It doesn't matter what anyone else thinks. It only matter that you are right, in your own mind. And this pigheaded stubbornness is part and parcel of the problems we have with our government today. There is no compromise. There is no attempt to understand what the other person is saying. There's only, "My way or the highway."

I feel sorry for people so limited in their intelligence to think there is only one cause for anything. Sure, the secession documents are about slavery. But that doesn't mean friction between the North and the South had not been building for decades. Too bad you aren't smart enough to understand that almost nothing happens because of a single and exclusive cause.

It obviously makes you happy to be unable to get along with people you can't browbeat into agreeing with you. I'm glad I never had to serve under a schmuck like you.