Friday, June 26, 2015

Pentagon Not Changing Names of Bases

Pentagon: No Plans to Rename Bases Honoring Confederate Generals 
Military.com
by Richard Sisk
Jun 24, 2015
"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," the order read.

The U.S. Defense Department has no immediate plans to change the names of military bases honoring Confederate generals -- including some Ku Klux Klan supporters -- in response to the South Carolina church massacre, Pentagon officials said Wednesday.

"As of now, there's no discussion of adjusting our current naming policy," which now gives the naming responsibility to the service branches, said Army Col. Steve Warren, a Pentagon spokesman.

"The Department's position is that the services are ultimately responsible for naming their installations," he said. We have confidence in each of the services to appropriately name their facilities," he said. The services have not indicated any intention to change names, he said.

There was no immediate list available of military facilities with place names or other symbols honoring the South's role in the Civil War, but at least 10 Army bases are named for Confederate leaders, including Robert E. Lee, revered in the South as leader of the Army of Northern Virginia. Besides bases, there is the Lee Barracks at the U.S. Military Academy.

The issue of Confederate symbols and the names of Confederate leaders on public grounds came to a head on Monday when the Republican governor of South Carolina, Nikki Haley, called for the removal of the Confederate battle flag from the grounds of the state capitol in Columbia.
read more here

Here is the list from the article of bases
The 10 Army bases named for Southern officers are:
-- Fort Bragg, North Carolina, named for Gen. Braxton Bragg.
-- Fort Hood, Texas, named for Gen. John Bell Hood.
-- Fort Gordon, Georgia, named for Lt. Gen. John B. Gordon, who was reputed to be the leader of the Ku Klux Klan in Georgia after the war.
-- Fort Lee, Virginia, home of the Army's Quartermaster School and named for Gen. Robert E. Lee.
-- Fort Polk, Louisiana, named for the slave owner and ardent secessionist Gen. Leonidas Polk.
-- Fort Rucker, Alabama, named for Col. Edmund Rucker, who became a leading industrialist in Birmingham after the war.
-- Fort A.P. Hill, Virginia, named for Lt. Gen. A.P. Hill who was killed at the battle of Petersburg a week before the war ended.
-- Fort Picket, Virginia, named for Maj. Gen. George Pickett who was in command for "Pickett's charge" at Gettysburg. Pickett went to Canada for a year after the war, fearing he would be tried as a traitor.
-- Fort Benning, Georgia, named for Brig. Gen. Henry Benning, a slavery supporter and politician.
-- Camp Beauregard, Louisiana, named for Gen. Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard, whose troops fired the shots at Fort Sumter, S.C., that started the Civil War.


Some folks think that Fort Jackson in South Carolina was named after Thomas Jonathan "Stonewall" Jackson but it was named after Andrew Jackson,
Fort Jackson is a United States Army installation, which TRADOC operates on for Basic Combat Training (BCT), and is located in Columbia, South Carolina. This installation is named for Andrew Jackson, a United States Army General and seventh President of the United States of America (1829–1837) who was born in the border region of North and South Carolina.

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