A PROMISE DELIVERED

Well-crafted portraits of the heroes whose names recently replaced those of Confederates on numerous military installations.

Seidule, a retired general and emeritus West Point history professor, could not present stronger credentials to serve on a congressional commission to replace the names of Confederates on Southern military bases—Hood, Bragg, Benning, Lee, the list goes on—with those of true heroes. “Confederates, Congress emphatically declared, deserved no place among our military commemorations,” he writes. “The votes came from all parts of the country and all areas of the political spectrum.” Of the bases he highlights, three were named for Confederates who never served in the U.S. military, and three for incompetent officers who wouldn’t deserve the honor even if they were loyalists; another three, competent in warcraft, “used it to kill more US soldiers than any other enemy commanders ever have.” The Naming Commission found far more appropriate military personnel to honor: Fort Pickett, Virginia, formerly commemorating the feckless Gettysburg veteran, was renamed Fort Barfoot, honoring a Virginian who won the Medal of Honor in World War II; Fort Rucker, Alabama, named for a comrade of KKK founder Nathan Bedford Forrest, was renamed Fort Novosel for “an iconic army aviator” who flew 2,000 missions in Vietnam; Fort Benning, Georgia, named for an “ardent secessionist,” took the names of Hal and Julie Moore, the Vietnam hero and his wife, who “forced the hidebound army to take responsibility for casualty notification.” The renaming project met some initial resistance, Seidule allows, but most within the military and in local communities embraced the changes. One of Donald Trump’s earliest moves as president in 2025 was to order a reversion to the bases’ former names, though ostensibly to honor soldiers who just happened to share the names of those Confederates. “He chose surnames over service, stripping honors from ten true American heroes in the process,” writes Seidule. “Trump’s 2025 name switch does disservice to all those who serve.”

A sharp-edged argument for de-commemorating traitors.