Military base namesakes include slaveholders, failed generals

Thank you my friend COL Charles Williams for posting a distinctly biased perspective from ArmyTimes.com. It is not surprising to me that Army Times is taking this perspective.
I have studied history for over 50 years - the folks at Army Times have rarely showed an understanding of history.

Edit [I updated this with a lengthy quote on the naming process for military forts, with regulatory background - focused on Army installations]

Those of you in favor of renaming real estate may want to count the cost of what renaming a military installation actually entails.
Those of you whose ancestors owned slaves in this nation, or sold captured Africans in Africa to slave-traders, may want to change your last name as well :-)

With the significant issues facing the nation, the benighted are focused on historical revisionism and spending money to tear down historical reminders and rename bases, followed by cities and towns. Based on the lack of logic, New York should be reverted back to New Amsterdam to eliminate reference to the house of York and San Francisco should be renamed to take away the sigma of Francisco :-)

1. Historical revisionism gains traction in this nation periodically from reimagining the Biblical texts 19 and 19th century, stripping dead-white mails fro literature class, black Athena and pan -African history revisionism, etc.

2. What is glaringly missing from this article is that the officers whose names are linked to military bases served with distinction as junior officers in the Indian Wars including the Second Seminole War and the Mexican–American War.
a. Braxton Bragg [USMA class of 1837 with Joseph Hooker and John Early] was an American army officer during the Second Seminole War and Mexican–American War with three brevet promotions in the Second Seminole War and a brevet promotion to LTC.
b. John Bell Hood [USMA class of 1853 with classmates James B. McPherson and John M. Schofield].
He was wounded while "commanding a reconnaissance patrol from Fort Mason on July 20, 1857, Hood sustained the first of many wounds that marked his lifetime in military service— an arrow through his left hand during action against the Comanches at Devil's River, Texas."
"John Bell Hood holds the distinction of being one of the most rapidly promoted leaders in the Confederate military forces during the Civil War." …. "Hood distinguished himself as commander of what had come to be known as the "Texas Brigade" during the Peninsula Campaign, firmly establishing his reputation as an aggressive commander who was willing and even eager to personally lead his troops into combat." [From National Park Service]
c. Robert Edward Lee was arguably the best General officer on either side of forces in the Civil War [He graduated with the USMA class of 1829] During the 1846 war with Mexico, he served as a member of General Winfield Scott's staff. Lee distinguished himself, earning three brevets for gallantry, and emerging from the conflict with the rank of colonel.
d. Ambrose Powell Hill [USMA class of 1847] He "served in a cavalry company during the final months of the Mexican–American War, but fought in no major battles. After some garrison assignments along the Atlantic seaboard, he served in the Seminole Wars, again arriving near the end of the war and fighting various minor skirmishes." He was killed in action on "April 2, 1865 (during the Union breakthrough in the Third Battle of Petersburg, just seven days before Lee's surrender at Appomattox Court House), he was shot dead by a Union soldier, Corporal John W. Mauck of the 138th Pennsylvania, as he rode to the front of the Petersburg lines, accompanied by one staff officer. They called upon the Union soldiers to surrender.The soldiers refused the demands and Hill was shot through the chest with a rifle. The bullet went through his heart, came out the other side of his chest, and sliced off his left thumb. Hill fell to the ground and died within moments. His body was recovered by the Confederates shortly afterward."
e. "Camp Benning was named in honor of Confederate brigadier general Henry L. Benning, who had commanded a Georgia brigade in General John Hood's division of the Army of Northern Virginia. Benning, who fought with General Robert E. Lee, earned the nickname "Old Rock" because of his coolness in battle. As a young man Benning moved from Harris County to Columbus, and after the Civil War he practiced law there until his death in 1875 at the age of sixty-one." Background from {[https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/government-politics/fort-benning]}

3. Fort Lee and Fort A.P. Hill are in the home states of the meme those posts were named for. Arlington National Cemetery is on the grounds of a former estate from the Lee family [Light-Horse Harry Lee was his father.]

4. Those leading this charge would no doubt strip Pancho Villa from history in Mexico and Napoleon Bonaparte from France since they were losers who were responsible for the deaths of millions. Soviet Union did that to much of Stalin's legacy they are totalitarian after all.

Update Background from {[https://history.army.mil/faq/base_name.htm]}
The earliest official policy on the naming of posts and forts is found in War Department General Order Number 11, dated 8 February 1832. The order stated, “All new posts which may be hereafter established, will receive their names from the War Department, and be announced in General Orders from the Headquarters of the Army.”
At that time, both cantonment and camp designated a temporary location, while the term fort designated a permanent installation. The term post was used for any type of installation. The designation of an installation as a fort or camp was left to the discretion of division commanders (at that time the term division was used to denote a regional command such as the Division of the Pacific, the Division of the Missouri, or the Division of the Atlantic). War Department General Order Number 79, dated 8 November 1878, stated, “As the practice of designating military posts varies in the several Military Divisions, and in order to secure uniformity in this respect, Division commanders are authorized, at their discretion, to name and style all posts permanently occupied by troops, or the occupation of which is likely to be permanent, ‘Forts,’ and to style all points occupied temporarily ‘Camps’.” Additionally, the Secretary of War often delegated the authority for the actual naming of forts and camps to division and installation commanders.
The 1893 “Report of the Quartermaster-General” by Brigadier General Richard Napoleon Batchelder, Quartermaster General of the Army, suggested that the Secretary of War take responsibility for both the naming of posts and for the designation of posts as forts or camps. He deplored the use of terms such as barracks and felt that military installations should be named only after military heroes, not geographical features, Indian tribes, cities, or non-military individuals.
War Department documents indicate that the Secretary of War had assumed complete responsibility for the naming of posts by World War I. During the inter-war years, it was common for the Secretary of War to solicit recommendations for names for new posts from installation commanders; corps and branch commanders; as well as the Chief, Historical Section, Army War College. Unsolicited suggestions for names were also submitted from sources outside the military establishment, and political pressure and public opinion often influenced the naming decision. As a result, it was common for camps and forts to be named after local features or veterans with a regional connection. 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. This memorandum stated that “The War Department has enunciated a policy of naming military reservations in honor of deceased distinguished officers regardless of the arm or service in which they have served.” 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. Brigadier General Batchelder’s 1893 vision of naming posts after military heroes had become a reality.
Following World War II, a study was conducted by order of General of the Army Dwight D. Eisenhower regarding the procedures governing the memorialization of individuals with distinguished military records. The result of this study was the establishment of the Department of the Army Memorialization Board in 1946. The board was governed by Army Regulation (AR) 15-190, Boards, Commissions, and Committees: Department of the Army Memorialization Board and was given responsibility of deciding on the names of military posts and other memorial programs. AR 15-190 specified memorialization criteria, including the criterion that only deceased persons will be memorialized. It also provided five categories of individuals to be memorialized: a national hero of absolute preeminence by virtue of high position, an individual who held a position of high and extensive responsibility (Army and above) and whose death was a result of battle wounds, an individual who held a position of high and extensive responsibility and whose death was not a result of battle wounds, an individual who performed an act of heroism or who held a position of high responsibility and whose death was a result of battle wounds, and an individual who performed an act of heroism or who held a position of high responsibility and whose death was not a result of battle wounds.
Additionally, the regulation assigned the responsibility of naming Army Reserve armories to major reserve commanders without reference to the Department of the Army; the naming of a facility, building, group of buildings, street, or driveway to the installation commander; and the naming of temporary installations to commanders of major commands.
AR 15-190 was superseded on 8 December 1958 by AR 1-30, Administration: Department of the Army Memorialization Program. The biggest change in this regulation is that it removes the responsibility for naming installations from the Memorialization Board and assigns it to Headquarters, Department of the Army.
AR 1-30 was superseded on 1 February 1972 by AR 1-33, Administration: Memorial Programs. This revision retained essentially the same memorialization criteria and the same categories for memorialization, but added a list of appropriate memorialization projects for each category. For example, it would be appropriate to name a large military installation after a person in category two, while it would be appropriate to name a building or a street after a person in category five. The final decision on naming a post was still made by the Headquarters, Department of the Army. In the 15 January 1981 revision of AR 1-33, the person responsible for the naming of installations was listed as the Army Chief of Staff."


FYI COL Mikel J. Burroughs LTC (Join to see) [Maj Bill Smith, Ph.D. Maj Robert Thornton CPT Paul Whitmer Maj William W. 'Bill' Price SMSgt Lawrence McCarter MSgt Robert "Rock" Aldi SP5 Mark Kuzinski MAJ Lee Goehl SGT Jim Arnold SP5 Mark Kuzinski Alan K. SGT Steve McFarland SPC Chris Bayner-Cwik SPC Margaret Higgins SGT (Join to see)

An inconvenient truth:

If you weren't worried about race relations, police brutality, and the names of Army installations two weeks ago, you're not REALLY worried about it this week.

Those who virtue-signal think the rest of us don't realize what's really going on...

Do the names Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe and Jackson to mention a few, ring any bells? Do we change everything on a political whim or do we embrace our past, learn from our mistakes and keep America as the greatest nation on earth? Does anyone out there really want to change the names of our Capital or tear down the monument?