Bases and nearby streets named after Confederate generals

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IN THE SOUTH in the years before the Civil War, it would have been difficult to find a more zealous advocate for slavery than Henry Lewis Benning. He was a firebrand from Georgia and an early advocate of Southern secession. As his public stature rose, Benning became an increasingly ardent voice for the creation of a pro-slavery Southern republic. He helped draft Georgia’s ordinance of secession, which took the state out of the Union just before the Civil War.
Benning was such a powerful force for secession that Georgia sent him as the state’s representative to persuade Virginia to secede as well. In a speech in Virginia in early 1861, Benning revealed in unflinching terms his belief that secession was the only way to save slavery in the South. Georgia had seceded, he said, because of “a deep conviction on the part of Georgia that a separation from the North was the only thing that could prevent the abolition of her slavery. … If things are allowed to go on as they are, it is certain slavery is to be abolished. By the time the North shall have attained the power, the black race will be in a large majority, and then we will have black governors, black legislatures, black juries, black everything. Is it to be supposed that the white race will stand for that? It is not a supposable case. … War will break out everywhere like hidden fire from the earth.”

Virginia seceded, and Benning went on to become a general in the Confederate Army.

Today, Benning would be a long-forgotten footnote to the history of Southern white supremacy — if not for the U.S. Army. That’s because the Army honors Benning above almost any other military officer in American history. Fort Benning, in Georgia, one of the most important military installations in the United States, is named for him.

Benning’s qualifications for having one of America’s most iconic Army bases named after him? He was a Confederate and he was from Georgia.

monuments across the South, the U.S. Army has faced almost no resistance to its steadfast determination to keep those names in place.

Fort Benning is just one of 10 Army bases named for Confederates, a legacy of the Jim Crow era in the South, when many of today’s largest bases were built in rural Southern areas where the Army could accumulate large tracts of cheap land with the kind of terrain and climate needed for training.

Eager to expand rapidly during the periods around World War I and World War II, the Army placated white Southern community leaders by naming newly constructed bases after Confederates, usually generals with some local connection. The Army didn’t seem to care who the bases were named after as long as they won local cooperation to build them fast

In times of crisis, the Army was going to work with the local people who had power and influence, and they would go along with them on what to name the bases,” observed David Cecelski, a North Carolina historian who has written extensively about slavery and civil rights.

But today, 100 years after some of those bases were built, they retain their Confederate names. And in an era of protests against Confederate statues and monuments in cities and towns across the South, the U.S. Army has faced almost no resistance to its steadfast determination to keep those names in place.

There have been no significant protests targeting bases named for Confederates. Either protesters don’t realize who the bases are named for, or they are unwilling to confront such big, powerful targets.

In the aftermath of Charlottesville, the Army faced specific questions about the fact that two streets at Fort Hamilton, an old base in Brooklyn, were named for Confederates. Rep. Yvette Clarke, a Democrat who represents large swaths of central and south Brooklyn, asked the Army to change the names of Stonewall Jackson Drive and General Lee Avenue at Fort Hamilton.

“These monuments are deeply offensive to the hundreds of thousands of Brooklyn residents and members of the armed forces stationed at Fort Hamilton whose ancestors Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson fought to hold in slavery,” Clarke said in a statement at the time.

The Army refused, and an Army official wrote that renaming the streets would be “controversial and divisive.”

SINCE THE SKIRMISH over the street names at Fort Hamilton died down, the Confederate names of Army bases have received little public attention despite a surge in white supremacist violence this year, including the mass shooting in El Paso in August.

Congressional Democrats, who now control the House of Representatives, may take action on the issue this year, but it is not clear how forcefully they will push, especially at a time when impeachment is overshadowing everything else in the House. A spokesperson for Clarke said that she plans to introduce legislation soon that would mandate the renaming of military bases named for Confederates, similar to a measure she proposed in 2017.

Meanwhile, Rep. Adam Smith, a Washington state Democrat who is now chair of the House Armed Services Committee, which oversees the Pentagon, appears to be quietly pushing for changes in the process by which bases are named.

The Army’s current position that it is merely celebrating American soldiers and upholding tradition ignores the ugly truth: Many bases are named for Confederates who were ardent white supremacists in the South before, during, and after the Civil War.

Fort Bragg, in North Carolina, is a good example. Built in 1918, the base is named for Braxton Bragg, a Confederate general. Not only was Bragg considered to have been one of the most incompetent generals in the Civil War, he was also a major slaveowner.

Then there’s Fort Gordon, in Georgia, built in 1941 and named for John Brown Gordon, a Confederate general who is widely believed to have been the head of the secretive Ku Klux Klan in Georgia following the Civil War. After he was elected to the U.S. Senate, Gordon helped forge an infamous political deal in which white Southern politicians agreed to break a prolonged deadlock over the outcome of the 1876 presidential election by not blocking the Republican candidate, Rutherford B. Hayes, from assuming office. In return, the Republicans agreed that they would remove federal troops from Southern states, effectively ending Reconstruction.

Fort Rucker, in Alabama, is named for Edmund Rucker, who served the Confederacy as an officer under Nathan Bedford Forrest. Forrest’s cavalry was responsible for the massacre of 300 Union soldiers, most of them black, at Fort Pillow in Tennessee in 1864, which today is considered one of the worst atrocities of the Civil War. After the war, Forrest became the first grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan and also went into business with Rucker in a railroad-building project, according to a recent biography of Rucker.

Why is the Army Still Honoring Confederate Generals?

I believe they still have something in Fort Hamilton, Brooklyn, which commemorates some Confederate general.

Stonewall Jackson Drive and General Lee Avenue are on the Fort Hamilton military base near Bay Ridge in Brooklyn. The street names honor pro-slavery Confederate Army Generals. Jackson and Lee both were stationed at the base in the 1840s prior to the Civil War. They also both violated the 1789 military oath of allegiance to “support the constitution of the United States” and to serve “honestly and faithfully” against “enemies or opposers.”

Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson graduated from West Point and served in the U.S Army during the Mexican-American War (1846-1848). He later took up arms against the United States during the Civil War, leading Confederate forces at the battles of Bull Run, Antietam, and Fredericksburg. He died of complications from wounds in 1863. Not only was Jackson a traitor, he was also a slaveholder.

Robert E. Lee was also a West Point graduate and a veteran of the Mexican-American War. He later served as superintendent of the military academy and Lincoln offered him command of the U.S. army at the outbreak of the Civil War. Lee refused the offer and instead became commander of the army of Northern Virginia and later the Confederate General-in-Chief, leading Southern forces at Antietam and Gettysburg

Brooklyn Congressional Representatives Yvette Clarke, Jerrold Nadler, Nydia Velazquez and Hakeem Jeffries are demanding that the names of these streets be changed

An army spokesperson responded that “historic names represent individuals, not causes or ideologies” and that “the naming occurred in the spirit of reconciliation, not division.” However, in 2000 the army did rename a street at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, that honored Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest, a founder of the Ku Klux Klan.

Because Fort Hamilton is a federal facility, New Yorkers can only petition the military to have the street names changed. But there are other actions that can be taken by local authorities. Stuyvesant High School and Stuyvesant Town in Manhattan are named after Peter Stuyvesant, the last of director-general New Amsterdam. Stuyvesant was a virulent anti-Semite and the largest private slaveholder in the Dutch colony. Francis Lewis High School and boulevard in Queens are named after a signer of the Declaration of Independence who was also a slave trader. Citi Field in Queens and and Barclays Center in Brooklyn bear the names of banks involved in financing the trans-Atlantic slave trade. John Mullaly Park near Yankee Stadium in the Bronx is named after an avoid racist who incited anti-Black race riots during the Civil War. The Central Park statue honoring James Marion Sims honors a doctor who conducted experimental gynecological operations on enslaved African women without the benefit of anesthesia or antiseptics.

On a more positive note, Metro Tech Plaza in Brooklyn is the location where free Blacks, escaped slaves, and abolitionist allies awaited and celebrated the Emancipation Proclamation on New Year’s Eve 1863. It should be renamed Grand Emancipation Jubilee Plaza.

I'll have to research whether General Lee was actually pro-slavery...

We have a Slattery Plaza here in Queens.

There is a street in Lake Havasu City, Arizona called Broomrape Lane. And that’s where all the “nice” houses are.

My stance on Confederate street names, statues, et al, is that the decisions should be left to the property owners.

Streets, and statues (always located in city parks), are never private property. They are always owned by the local government, or municipality.

So saying "its up to the property owner" is nonsense.

You could argue that "it's up to the local voters" though.