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There is much the United States
should commemorate about the
American Civil War.
The Civil War turned a slaveholding republic into
a champion ofliberty, equality and freedom, and
our nation has continually expanded its defini-
tion and defense of those values ever since - both between
its shores and throughout the world. Through the cou-
rageous service and sacrifice of more than two million
United States Soldiers from 1861 to 1865, what could
have been our nation's end became, instead, our second
American Revolution. It made our
Union more perfect. The Amer- The A
ican Civil War was, as Abraham claimed more
Lincoln immortalized at Gettys-
burg, "a new birth of freedom."
Yet this rebirth and revolution
came at a terrible price. Between the America
those fighting for the United States the War
and those fighting against them, the Mexican -
an estimated 620,000 Americans the Spanish-
died in the conflict, and the war's World
total casualties numbered around Word,
1.5 million. The conflict was the Kori
deadly, devastating, and destruc- a
tive: on a per capita basis, the Civ-to the Ve
il War was eight times more lethal
for Soldiers and 10 times deadlier
for all Americans than World War
II. In absolute numbers, the Civil
War killed more Americans than the Revolutionary War,
the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War, the Span-
ish-American War, World War I, World War II, the Ko-
rean War, and all other conflicts before the Vietnam War
combined.
The Civil War impoverished Confederate lands and
bankrupted its treasury. The defeated Confederates lived
in the literal ruins of the slave society they had fought
to perpetuate. While the United States government took
forceful steps to end the causes of slavery and subordi-
nation through Constitutional Amendments and direct
interventions, the destruction caused by their triumph
in the war also led it on a path of clemency and mer-
cy towards former Confederates. To some extent, this
binding of the nation's wounds was inevitable, as it was
the only way to prevent a long-lasting, immensely dif-
ficult, and perhaps logistically impossible occupation of
the defeated and devastated Confederacy. While the his-
torical facts of the Civil War remained unchanged over
the last 160 years, our nation's memory of that war has
transformed dramatically over that time. Most impor-
tantly, during the end of the nineteenth century and the
start of the twentieth century, the South and much of
the nation came to live under a mistaken understanding
of the Civil War known as the "Lost Cause." As part
of the "Lost Cause," across the nation, champions of
that memory built monuments
Civil War to Confederate leaders and to the
Confederacy, including on many
sthn. Department of Defense assets. In
t every instance and every aspect,
these names and memorials have far
revolution, more to do with the culture under
which they were named than they
1erican War, have with any historical acts actu-
a a ally committed by their namesakes.
ar I, The origins of the naming of
ar II, these nine Army bases are both hap-
hazard and historical. During both
World Wars, the U.S. Army opened
nf Wa r dozens of new training camps and
supply depots throughout the na-
tion to train and equip close to 20
million military personnel. Approx-
imately four million men and wom-
en served in and around World War I, and more than 15
million served in and around World War II. Although
summoned into existence by these wars, and formed by
the particular needs of the nation's military, the bases were
ultimately placed and named largely due to regional and
political considerations.
Pressed for time while arming against immense op-
ponents and global threats, the Army often deferred to
local sensitivities and regional connections of a name-
sake while naming them. Timing and culture mattered;
the "Lost Cause" and Jim Crow were prevalent through-
out the South and contributed to the hasty naming of
bases. When the military asked local leaders for input,
PART I: UNITED STATES ARMY BASES 3 PREFACE
