Continuing the conversation about military bases named after generals who betrayed their country with TPM Reader EL …
Amplifying reader CH’s thoughts, I would encourage proponents of tackling the enshrinement of Confederate generals as the namesakes for US Army bases to consider carefully about what battles we want to pick.
You point out quite rightly that the recasting of the war as a “useful past” which set actual treason aside in favor of a shared memory of martial honor was–along with common embrace of white supremancy–an essential component of the post-Reconstruction sectional rapproachment.
Just as the common death of Jefferson and Adams on July 4, 1826 was embraced by an earlier generation to suppress concern over emerging sectional tensions over slavery in the west in favor of a more useful memory of a fading revolutionary past, so the post-Civil War rapproachment was symbolized by Confederate General Joe Johnston contracting his fatal illness after standing hatless in the rain at his adversary William Tecumseh Sherman’s funeral. Symbolically powerful stuff–two ambiguous moments of joint mortality which bookend the era of open conflict over slavery, freedom and race in nineteenth century America.
But the past is not even the past, especially in an institution as culturally conservative as the US Army. The postwar valorization of Southern arms reinforced longstanding martial traditions among Southern white manhood which continue to this day. The deep origins of this martial tradition–Scoth-Irish “borderland” values imported from the old world, a commitment to white honor as a means of bridging the gulf between prosperous planters and poor whites, among other hypotheses–remain disputed. But the effect is real, and it has the practical consequence of making the US Army officer corps even today disproportionately Southern in background and outlook. The end of the draft in favor of a volunteer force has accelerated and further concentrated this sectional overrepresentation.
Senator Jim Webb writes and speaks eloquently to the continued vitality of the Southern military tradition, from the perspective of one born into the lineage and honored to belong to it. You can see further evidence of the phenomenon in everything from Neil Simon’s Biloxi Blues to Andrew Exum’s memoir of his Afghanistan service. Any well-reported book or article on the US special warfare community can’t help but showcase the ersatz Southerness which is a common cultural currency no matter what the actual ethnic and regional background of the SF team members.
It follows that taking on the base name issue right now will be experienced as a frontal challenge to tribal identity in a wide swath of the US Army officer corps, at a time when the gulf between the military and civil society is arguably far too great. Agreed as I am with the proper historical assessment of the Confederate military in the country’s history, I have to ask if picking an open fight with the Senator Webbs of the world is really progressive America’s highest and best use of its political capital just now. In practice, despite its Southern tinge, the US Army is an engine of social mobility and equal opportunity compared to our society at large. Perhaps diversity in practice, even at a base named Fort Lee, is enough for now.
