(January 12, 2020) As this New York Times article documents, Southerners are more likely to volunteer for military service. Those “who sign up overwhelmingly come from counties in the South and a scattering of communities” close to military bases like Colorado Springs. “The South . . . produces 20 percent more recruits than would be expected, based on its youth population. The states in the Northeast . . . produce 20 percent fewer. Fayetteville, N.C. . . . provided more than twice as many military enlistment contracts as Manhattan, even though Manhattan has eight times as many people.” Contrary to the politically correct expectations “African-Americans are [only] slightly more likely to serve.” Since the draft was abolished in the 1970s, Southerners have been more likely to volunteer. Their eagerness to defend America despite having ancestors in the Confederate Army may be one reason that the Army retains the names of ten military bases after Confederate generals.
Perhaps because she comes from the volunteer-deficient Northeast, Democrat New York Congresswoman Yvette Clarke introduced a bill in 2017 to require the Defense Department to change all ten names. Co-sponsor Congresswoman Grace Meng is also a New York Democrat. During a 2012 television interview, Clarke said that if she had a magic wish and could go back in time to 1898 she would have abolished slavery in Brooklyn. She apparently did no realize that American slavery had ended thirty-three years earlier. During her initial congressional election in 2006, Clarke claimed to be an Oberlin College graduate, but newspaper investigators discovered that she never graduated. Nonetheless, she got 90% of the vote against her Republican opponent.
Carlos Hathcock
Since today’s Army is disproportionately dependent upon the South for volunteers, the congressladies might consider the advantages of retaining the names to inspire enlistments in the region. According to Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Peters, Confederate solders merit such inspiration.
The myth of Johnny Reb as the greatest infantryman happens to be true. Not only the courage and combat skill, but the sheer endurance of the Confederate foot soldier may have been equaled in a few other armies over the millennia, but none could claim the least superiority. . . [T]he physical toughness, fighting ability and raw determination of those men remains astonishing.
The Confederate battle flag is a symbol of bravery, not slavery. I’m a Yankee, born and bred, and my personal sympathies lie with the Northern cause . . . To me, though, that red flag with the blue St. Andrews cross strewn with white stars does not symbolize slavery—that’s nonsense—but the stunning bravery of those who fought beneath it.”
Confederate soldiers may have inspired Southerner volunteers in twentieth century wars. Tennessee’s Alvin York was America’s most famous infantryman in World War I. Although his grandfather was a Union deserter, two of his grand-uncles sided with the Confederacy. Texan Audie Murphy was the most decorated soldier of World War II. In Vietnam, Arkansas sniper Carlos Hathcock killed more enemy than anyone and even put a bullet in the eye of an opposing sniper through the foe’s telescopic sight. (Steven Spielberg theatrically copied this in his Saving Private Ryan movie.) Each man was born into the grinding poverty that typified much of the South for a century after the Civil War. As boys they hunted game for food, not sport.
During World War II, the first American flag to fly over the captured Japanese fortress at Okinawa was a Confederate Battle Flag. A marine company put it there to honor their commander—who happened to be a South Carolinian—that suffered a paralyzing wound in the victorious assault. Some of the tank crews that freed prisoners from German concentration camps also flew the Confederate Battle Flag.
Perhaps readers can see the merits of retaining Confederate memorials in America, unlike The Washington Post that wants them destroyed while seeking to protect Iranian cultural sites regardless of that country’s future conduct.
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The Confederacy at Flood Tide by Philip Leigh
Trading With the Enemy by Philip Leigh
Lee’s Lost Dispatch & Other Civil War Controversies by Philip Leigh
Southern Reconstruction by Philip Leigh
U. S. Grant’s Failed Presidency by Philip Leigh
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Leave them alone and all the other statues and monuments. It is history. Some people would like to erase history but it shouldn’t happen. I served my time in the Navy during Vietnam. That war is not a good memory but it happened. It’s history.
I agree.
LEAVE BASE NAMES AS THEY ARE .
I served 21 years in the military retiring from the US Army. Those names should absolutely be changed because every single one of those people were traitors to the United States. Some never even served in the US Army, or any branch of the US military. They weren’t even good military leaders because they lost.
Having bases named after the war of rebellion (the official name the US Army uses) military leaders is like having a base named after Benedict Arnold.
Even though America lost the Vietnam War, I don’t believe that our soldiers failed to be good fighters meriting honor, although I recognize others may have a different opinion merely because they lost.
That fact that they lost pails in comparison to the fact that they were traitors. For instance, let’s look at Robert E. Lee. He was one of only 8 Colonels from the south in the US Army but the only one to resign and then bear arms against his country. His own cousin Rear Admiral Samuel Philips Lee hasd this to say when asked about his loyalty to the US
“When I find the word Virginia in my commission I will join the Confederacy.”( Adolph A. Hoehling (1993). Thunder at Hampton Roads. Da Capo Press. p. 6.)
This clearly shows that many southern born American military members understood that their loyalty was to the United States.
Lee himself states in a letter to his son that secession is nothing more than rebellion. So he, at some level, must of understood he was a traitor to his country.
“But I can anticipate no greater calamity for the country than a dissolution of the Union. It would be an accumulation of all the evils we complain of, and I am willing to sacrifice every- thing but honor for its preservation. I hope, therefore, that all constitutional means will be exhausted before there is a resort to force. Secession is nothing but revolution. The framers of our Constitution never exhausted so much labor, wisdom, and forbearance in its formation, and surrounded it with so many guards and securities, if it was intended to be broken by every member of the Confederacy at will. It was intended for “per- petual union,” so expressed in the preamble, and for the estab- lishment of a government, not a compact, which can only be dissolved by revolution, or the consent of all the people in convention assembled.” Robert E. Lee letter to his son January 23, 1861.
Let us rename these bases but keep them named after true southern heroes like Rear Admiral Lee and Maj General George Henry Thompson. These Americans stayed true to their oaths and the red, white, and blue.
First, you condemned Confederates because they are “losers” until I pointed out that American also lost the Vietnam War and left you speechless to condemn those “losers.” Second, you condemn Confederate because they were traitors, but nearly all were pardoned by men who had much more reason than you to withhold pardons. President Eisenhower, for example, kept a portrait of General Lee in his White House Office.
I reality I think your hostility toward Confederates reveals the ancient wisdom: “To speak ill of others is a dishonest way of praising ourselves.”
Go forth and praise thyself to your heart’s content. But do it elsewhere.
Spent twenty years in the military and was never in a unit where the majority came from the south. I also grew up in the northeast and everybody that grows up in the actual northeast, which is all rural knows that New York City is in the east not in the northeast. We consider New York city part of the south.
Yes, I realized later that I chose a bad headline. As you can see I changed it the following day but by that time article had propagated through FaceBook with the original headline.
I *meant* to convey the point that the South, as a single region, provides most of the military volunteers as compared to the other regions—not the rest of the entire country.
Nonetheless, the South provides 44% of those serving in the military as compared to having only 36% of the nation’s population. It’s not a majority, but not far from it either.
For Goodness Sake, leave the monuments and don’t change the names. They represent real history whether we like it or not. You don’t see people crying to take down Beuchenwald do you? These people are dead and bad ideas need to be remembered, too
It is also good to leaven them as is because they can symbolize the courage and devotion to duty of the Confederate soldier. Our country may yet again need such inspiration.
I am an American Born and Bred by a family of Southerners. My Father was an Army Air Corps in Korea and WWII. My Grandfather served in the Navy during WWI, His Father fought under Teddy Roosevelt at San Juan Hill and yes all four quarters of my family fought in the Civil War for the Confederacy. I fought in the Army during Vietnam and the Persian Gulf War. We all volunteered. We did it because our Country is family and we protect that with our full measure of devotion. We instill in each generation love of God, Country, and family.
We can’t understand why every man does not serve the USA in whatever capacity they can. Our politicians are ripping this country apart. They pit us against our ancestors. Removing their memory from our social identity. Why? Because when State’s Rights are abolished America is no longer what our forefathers envisioned. The document that should hold our country together will be ignored and The UNITED STATES of America will be no more.
Yet Southerners will still continue to volunteer to fight for America, because that is who we are.
Do you think the Army bases named for Confederate generals should keep those names, or should they be forced to change them as Congresswomen Clark and Meng advocate along the The Washington Post and nearly all of the mainstream media?