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Were US bases named after Confederate generals as gestures of post-Civil War reconciliation?

Sunday, June 21, 2020
By Eric Smith
NO

The Civil War ended in 1865. The first U.S. military installation named for a Confederate general was built in 1917. There is no record to suggest that reconciliation some five decades after the war's end was an important consideration. An official history of Fort Lee in Virginia notes that the 1917 decision to honor the Civil War general "followed the convention of the times," adding that "the presence of influential southern Democratic senators on the major committees in Congress was a significant factor."

Nine more Southern bases were named after Confederate war leaders. An Army history says that local public opinion and political influence "sometimes weighed heavily." Political influence in that era was wielded mostly by white Southerners, often in support of racial segregation policies.

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