Tag Archives: confederate

WHY ARE U.S. MILITARY BASES NAMED FOR CONFEDERATE GENERALS?

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I have never understood why U.S. army bases are named for Confederate generals. They include Fort Lee, Fort Hood, Fort Pickett, Fort Benning, and many others. All of these bases are named for men who made war upon the United States army. But why? No country on Earth names their military bases for their enemies. I am pretty sure that there are no army bases in England, Germany, or Russia named for Napoleon Bonaparte. I am also pretty sure there are no army bases in China named for Hideki Tojo.

The Jackson-Lee Monument. I grew up in Baltimore. Maryland was a slave state, but it was also a Union state. Nevertheless, there was stuff all over Maryland named for Confederate generals. Of all the Confederate monuments in Baltimore, the biggest and most impressive was the Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee Monument in a park adjacent to Johns Hopkins University. It consisted of bronze statues of Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee on horseback on a large marble base. The inscription on the base read: ‘They were great generals and Christian warriors and waged war like gentlemen.’ The monument was dedicated with much fanfare by Mayor Tommy D’Alesandro (the father of Nancy Pelosi!) I used to look at this monument when I was a kid and wonder: “What is this thing doing in Baltimore? Maryland was a Union state.”

Was Robert E. Lee a Christian warrior who waged war like a gentleman?  No. During the Battle of the Crater in 1864, a large number of Union soldiers were trapped in a huge crater and surrendered. The white soldiers were sent to POW camps. The black soldiers who tried to surrender to Lee’s men were shot. This was not the first time something like this happened. General Grant wrote a letter to Lee demanding that he stop shooting unarmed black Union soldiers trying to surrender. Lee refused. Neo-Confederates often talk about Confederate generals as though they were Medieval knights or courteous gentlemen duelists, but it isn’t true. The Age of Chivalry, in which battles were fought by pious Christian knights, bound by a strict code of chivalry, came to an end long before the Civil War began. 

ABOUT DOG TAGS. The Civil War was the first war in which American soldiers wore dog tags. In World War 2, U.S. military dog tags began including a soldier’s service number and his religion so that if he was killed, he could get an appropriate grave marker. Soldiers had 3 choices: ‘P’ for Protestant, ‘C’ for Catholic, or ‘H’ for Hebrew. Today, soldiers can generally get whatever they want as their religious preference on their dog tags. Some have chosen Wiccan, Agnostic, Druid, Pagan, Jediist, and Presleytarian among other things.

MARYLAND, MY MARYLAND. The worst state song in the U.S.

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When I was a child, I could not understand why there were Confederate statues and monuments all over Baltimore, where I grew up. There were no statues of Union generals or of Lincoln. I knew that Maryland was a Union state, even though it was also a slave state. Most Marylanders who fought in the Civil War fought for the North. I also didn’t understand why the official state song was – and still is – ‘Maryland, My Maryland.’ The lyrics of this song are just Confederate propaganda. It was written during the Civil War by a Confederate naval officer. Most people in Maryland have never read or thought about the words to the state song, but maybe they should. ‘Maryland, My Maryland’ refers to Abraham Lincoln as a ‘tyrant’, ‘the despot’, and ‘the vandal’.  However, the nastiest line in this song refers to the United States Army as ‘Northern scum.’ Think about that. The United States Army is just ‘Northern scum’? When I was a kid, I was sometimes required to sing ‘Maryland, My Maryland’, but after a certain age, I just refused to sing it. There have been many efforts to revise or replace this song, but all efforts have failed. In 2016, some Maryland state legislators tried to get just the words ‘Northern scum’ removed from ‘Maryland, My Maryland’, but even that was voted down. In 2017, the University of Maryland marching band announced that they would no longer play ‘Maryland, My Maryland’. In 2018, the Maryland state legislature again voted against making any changes to ‘Maryland, My Maryland’. In February, 2020; the Maryland House of Delegates appointed a panel to “review suggestions for a new state song”, but the panel was disbanded due to the Covid epidemic. And remember – Maryland was a Union state!

BATTLE OF ANTIETAM.

The only major battle in the Civil War that was fought in Maryland was at Antietam. Most people think that Gettysburg was the most important battle in the war, but it was really Antietam. That’s because Antietam was the battle that doomed the Confederacy. Antietam was the bloodiest single day in the entire war. There were over 20,000 casualties. More importantly, Antietam changed the Civil War from a war to preserve the Union to a war to end slavery. A few days after the Battle of Antietam, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. Lincoln felt that too many men had been killed at Antietam to put the country back together just as it was before the war. After Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, it became politically impossible for Britain or France to enter the war on the South’s side, and that doomed the Confederacy.

HONORING CONFEDERATES ON COLLEGE CAMPUSES.

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The University of Nevada Rebels. Confederate statues are being removed from college campuses all over the United States, but what about their sports teams and mascots? Have you ever heard of Hey Reb? The official nickname of the University of Nevada Las Vegas (UNLV) is The Rebels, and the team’s mascot is Hey Reb. Whenever I go to Las Vegas, I see people wearing Hey Reb t-shirts. I also see them at gift shops at the airport and in hotels. Hey Reb is an old Confederate soldier with a huge white mustache. Hey Reb is often depicted carrying a Civil War era rifle. He sometimes also has a cannon. But why?! Nevada was a Union state, and slavery was never legal in Nevada. During the Civil War, Nevada Territory contributed significantly to the Union war effort. The 1860s was the height of the Comstock Lode, the biggest concentration of silver ever found in one place in all of history. The mines in and around Virginia City shipped hundreds of millions of dollars in silver back east to finance the Union war effort. Nevada was admitted into the Union in late October 1864, one week before the presidential election. There weren’t enough people living in Nevada at the time to qualify it for statehood, but Nevada was admitted into the Union anyway in order to give Lincoln a few more electoral votes. So, considering its history, why is the mascot of UNLV an old Confederate soldier? In 2016, after a mass shooting at a black church in Charleston, South Carolina; the UNLV student newspaper changed its name from ‘The Rebel Yell’ to ‘The Scarlet & Gray Free Press’, but that was as far as they were willing to go. The majority of the players on UNLV’s football team are black. What do you suppose those black football players are thinking when they win a game and then a guy runs out onto the field dressed up like an old white Confederate soldier to congratulate them and do a victory dance?

Update: The University of Nevada Las Vegas has just announced that they are considering replacing Hey Reb with a new mascot. Well, I have a suggestion. I think that their new mascot should be named Hey Sucker! Hey Sucker! would be a bankrupt gambler with his pockets out to show that there is nothing in them. Hey Sucker! could be of any race. Las Vegas casinos will accept the life savings of anyone, regardless of race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, or disability. They are very democratic about that. What do you think of my idea?