A Note On Compulsion.

There seems to be a widespread belief in the United States that the government has never compelled people to do stuff that they'd rather not do, and that this is deeply ingrained in American history.

This is quite contrary to the truth.

The first muster of Colonial militia.  You were in it because you were a male sixteen years of age or older.  No conscientious objection.  No moral exceptions.  No exceptions at all.  If you were a man, you showed up.  Professionalism, in the depiction, probably exaggerated.  Cat. .  probably not.

Now, this obviously comes about due to the recent actions by the Biden Administration to compel wider vaccinations.  What you believe on the justice of that is up to you, and I'm not commenting on it. That's up to you.

Rather, I'm commenting on the myth, and it's a real fable, that the government, or more properly governments, cannot compel you to do something of this type, and never has before. That's wholly incorrect.

Indeed, even in the category of vaccinations and quarantines, the nation has a long history of government compulsion. At one point during the Revolutionary War George Washington issued an order compelling his soldiers to receive dangerous live small pox vaccinations.

Compelled them, that is.

And that vaccination method actually was dangerous. Some people contracted small pox from it and died.  He reasoned the danger to the health of the army outweighed the danger to anyone individual, and the soldiers were vaccinated.

And since that time there's been over two hundred years of the government compelling members of the military into various health regimes.  I myself have been vaccinated by the U.S. government twice for small pox and once for yellow fever, even they didn't ask my opinion on it at all.

Okay, you are likely saying, that's the military, and the military is subject to a separate provison of the constitution, but. . .

Well, all sorts of government bodies have compelled vaccinations of children for decades. Parents protested, but the vaccinations occurred anyhow.  This is why diphtheria, for example, doesn't really exist anymore.

And the government has compelled quarantine orders as well, up to and including simply imprisoning some infectious people for the balance of their lives.  Mary Mallon, aka "Typhoid Mary" provides one such example. She was employed as a cook until determined to be highly infections and then put in a sanitarium for the rest of her life.

And going back to the military, it's well established that the government can compel you to serve in the military even if it means you'll get killed.  Contrary to what people probably believe, the United States government has been much more muscular about that than other English-speaking countries.  The Australians and Canadians, for example, didn't conscript during World War One at all.  They both did during World War Two, but it was only at the very end of the war, when manpower needs exceeded those willing to volunteer for overseas service, that such soldiers were made to serve overseas.  The US, in contrast, conscripted right from the onset of World War One, something the British didn't even do at the onset of their involvement, and we conscripted prior to our entry in World War Two.

Registering for the draft, 1917.

Indeed, up until after the Civil War, every American male served, by compulsion, in their local state militia no matter what.  You had no choice.  You were in it. And if that meant they mobilized you to go fight the British, or the Mexicans, other Americans, or Indians, your opinion on it wasn't asked.

The government can, beyond that, compel you to provide other services.  Conscripting people right off the highway to fight forest fires, for example, is something that's within living memory of Americans today.  I personally know one person who was compelled to do just that.

Drilling rig crew in 1941, before OSHA required them to wear hardhats, steel toed boots, and fire resistant clothing.

And, right now, the government compels all sorts of people to wear hard hats, fire resistant clothing, and the like.  It compels children to receive some sort of education, no matter what their parents might think about it.  It compels everyone to pay for all sorts of things, from school lunch programs to nuclear arms, no matter what they think about that.

So why is this belief so common?

I don't really know, but part of it is that we don't know our own history.  Even regular histories often claim that the Civil War conscription act was the nation's first, totally ignoring that there was universal male compulsion to serve in the militia at the time, which is a type of conscription.

And part of it simply is that the current population is young enough to have forgotten all the various compulsory acts noted above.

When I was first a student in school, for example, we were vaccinated at school.  This was the late 60 and early 70s.  Since then this has just been rolled into regular health care provided by family doctors, so hardly anyone under their late 50s remembers a time when you were lined up and given shots at school, or a sugar cube with the polio vaccine. And it wasn't once either, it was more than once.

And you have to be my age as well to recall when people still really remembered the "draft" as a real thing.  I can recall the draft being eliminated in the early 70s, and Jimmy Carter restoring draft registration in the mid 70s.  People actually worried about being drafted, even though the Selective Service Act wasn't actually operating in that fashion.  It was a real thing.  Perhaps it was a real thing because so many of us had fathers, uncles or even older brothers who had been drafted.  An uncle, for example, "volunteered for the draft" in the late 1950s, serving in the Army just before I was born.  My father volunteered for the USAF in the early 50s, but he was subject to recall until the early 1970s when I recall his being released from the Individual Ready Reserve, something he'd been kept in for nearly 20 years.  When I served in the Guard, we were frequently told about how this worked in regard to our "obligor" period of six years, which every American male had, and also told that irrespective of our Guard service fulfilling our obligor duties, we were still subject to recall as veterans.

Indeed, the government doesn't really make us do much, directly, in terms of service anymore.  And that has a real impact on things.  Since the conservative Reagan administration of the late 70s and early 80s, there's been a really strong and growing societal belief in indivdiual liberty being predominant over collective needs.  We'll note the 60s below, but if we look at it over the long haul, collective security predmonated in the 10s, waned as a societal goal in the 20s, and then roared back from 1929 through the early 1960s.  This was all in response ot external threats, but it's very clear that Americans in most of the early 20th Century were pretty willing to have a strong government role in lots of things up to and including telling people what to do in order to meet a collective goal.  Starting in 1976 this really started to retreat and has been in retreat every since.  The current view of indivdiual liberty is much stronger than it was prior to that time.

What the government none the less still does does do is to make us serve in all  sorts of additional camouflaged ways, through taxes and regulations. 

The Great Depression had the impact of making the generations that lived through them really comfortable with both.  Tax rates were high all the way into the 1980s, and it wasn't until then that people really groused about it.  The regulatory state came in during the 1930s and has never gone away, but again it really wasn't until the 1980s that people complained about it.  By and large, Americans were really comfortable with big government and its role all the way up until the mid 1970s.  Something happened then.

What that something is, isn't clear, but the disastrous Vietnam War may have been part of it, combined with a  Baby Boomer generation that at first rebelled against the government telling it to do anything.  Indeed, the same basic impulse that lead the counterculture to assert that nobody could tell them what to do as it was contrary to "Freedom", as an extreme left wing ideology, isn't really very far from the same impulse on the far right.  They're basically the same concept.  If the government and the culture can't, for example, tell you not to smoke dope or drop LSD, well it can't tell you not to get vaccinated.  Kris Kristofferson was completely wrong when he wrote "freedom's just another word for nothing else to lose", but those lyrics as a counterculture anthem sung by Janis Joplin probably ring truer for the right, than the left, today.

As part of that, this is also the era in which Roe v. Wade became the Supreme Court imposed law of the land.  Roe represented an evolution of legal thinking, albeit a poorly drafted and intellectually muddy one, but one that held that a person had a certain sovereignty over their own body that couldn't be violated by the government.  This was really a wholly new, post World War Two concept, as prior to that the law really didn't have the view that being "secure in your person" extended to a sort of radical sovereignty over your own body.  Indeed, much of the law that existed prior to Roe in this regard still exists, which makes the reasoning of Roe all the weaker.

It can't be denied, however, that Roe opened up the floodgates to all sorts of "my body, my choice" type of arguments.  Prior to the mid 20th Century the law regulated all sorts of individual conduct in this area.  Cohabitation was generally illegal, if not widely enforced, there were considerably more restrictions on marrige than there are now, and we're not referencing the shocking racial ones of the time.  Many acts in thsi area, i.e., sexual acts, that are unaddressed by the law now, where then.  All of this was regarded as a perfectly valid topic for the law.  Radical sovereignty over ones own person is actually, therefore, a very new concept in American law and American's concepts of the law.

All of this creates an interesting situation in which it may simply be the case that American society reacted to decades of strong government influence at the same time that the Supreme Court started to have a liberal sense of libertarianism.  The law of unintended consequences is always at work, so the combination of the two brought about a rigth wing libertarianism that relied in part o a left wing judicial libertaranism, the latter of which never sought to to inspire the political former.

And, of course, the strong identification of the "individual" has always been there in American culture, even if it's very much a myth in a lot of ways.  Daniel Boone, braving the frontier, all by his lonesome, remains very much part of us, even if he didn't brave the frontier by his lonesome.

Now, again, I'm not telling people what to think in regard to vaccines here.  I'm not even telling people that they should submit to them or not.  Rather, what I'm trying to do, and likely failing at, is placing the argument in context.

It just isn't the case that it's an American thing to be free of the government telling you exactly what it demands of you in an emergency, at least it hasn't been for much of our history.  The government has been doing that since the time the Congress was the Continental Congress.  So that part of the debate shouldn't be in the debate at all, or if it is, what it should be the case is that it should be recognized as part of the societal revolution that came about in the 1960s and 1970s..  And if it is discussed in an historical context or a libertarian context, it should be remembered that such debates have wider impacts.  

That is, if it really is against something, either Natural Law or Constitutional Law, to tell you to get a vaccination, to what else does that apply and are we comfortable with that?  What else can the government not really tell you to do, and how much of what it is telling you to do now, can it really not?  Is this really a call for the application of traditional American concepts of liberty, or is it an advancement of libertarianism?  And do we want that.

Or should we be debating something else, or framing this debate differently.

Anyway its looked at, we may be seeing one of the great societal shifts in views at work.  After the Civil War the United States Supreme Court massively expanded the ability of the government to act in every aspect of American life, but then, following the end of Reconstruction, it went in the other direcdtion and restricted it.  It remained restrictive in its views until the Great Depression, when it went roaring in the other direction.  In the 1950s through the 1980s the Court became very liberal and acted to forciably expand what it argued were rights, and while sections of the public very much reacted to it, by and large that was accepted.  It nonetheless helped spawn the Tea Party movement and right wing populism and libertarianism which has been very much in the news recently.

But disasters tend to operate towards central governmental power.  There was early resistance to the expansioin of government power in the 1930s but by the 1940s that resistance had more or less evaporated.  The heat of the Great Depression and then World War Two caused that.  There was very little concern abotu the large role of the government in the 1950s and 1960s even as resistance to the Vietnam War occured in that latter decade.  The real reaction to long government expansion, as already noted, only came in the late 1970s and 1980s.

What about now?  The legislature is about to convene in a special session and lots of state attorney generals will be suing over the Biden orders.  Many individuals feel that the orders violate individual liberty, with many having concepts, as noted above, that really only date back a few decades.  At the same time, in some regions of the country, support for government action on all sorts of things is stronger than it has been at any point since the 1930s.

As we write this, the state legislature is getting ready to go into a special session.  A result of that special session will be to reinforce the widespread view that the Biden Administration is acting unconstitutionally.  History's example here, however, suggests caution.

The convening of legislatures following the 1860s election which sought to exercise state sovereignty over Federalism in reaction to Lincoln's eletion and the coming restrictions on the expansion of slavery brought about instead the Civil War and its immediate end.  I don't mean to suggest that vaccine requirements and slavery are in any way similiar, but the example of a state attempt to restrict Federal authority resulting in violence first and a massive expansion of government authority tells us something.

The same example could be given by way of the 1950s and 60s efforts to oppose Federal civil rights expansion, which resulted in a reaction in Southern states that was far from successful.

Opposition to Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal not only didn't succeed, but was effectively crushed with even the Supreme Court coming around to his views, providing another example.

Somebody should put a "Proceed With Caution" sign up in Cheyenne.   And a review of American history would be a good idea prior to October.

Boston 1775: When and Why Johannes Hofer Wrote about “Nostalgia”

Boston 1775: When and Why Johannes Hofer Wrote about “Nostalgia”: Last month I gave a presentation about the first year of the Continental Army to the interpretive staff at Boston National Historical Park ...

Tragic, no doubt. But is it historically correct and comparatively of value?

Soldiers sick with the Spanish Flu at Ft. Riley, Kansas during World War One.  Ft. Riley is where the Spanish Flu first demonstrably broke out.

Yesterday, we posted this item:

Lex Anteinternet: 500,000. Governor Gordon Orders Flags Be Flown at ...

500,000. Governor Gordon Orders Flags Be Flown at Half-Staff Statewide Through February 26 in Memory of Americans lost to COVID-19

 

Governor Gordon Orders Flags Be Flown at Half-Staff Statewide Through February 26

in Memory of Americans lost to COVID-19 

CHEYENNE, Wyo. - Governor Mark Gordon, pursuant to President Joe Biden's Proclamation remembering the 500,000 Americans lost to COVID-19, has ordered both the U.S. and State of Wyoming flags be flown at half-staff statewide until sunset February 26.

The Presidential Proclamation follows: 

REMEMBERING THE 500,000 AMERICANS LOST TO COVID-19
- - - - - - -

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

A PROCLAMATION

As of this week during the dark winter of the COVID-19 pandemic, more than 500,000 Americans have now died from the virus. That is more Americans who have died in a single year of this pandemic than in World War I, World War II, and the Vietnam War combined. On this solemn occasion, we reflect on their loss and on their loved ones left behind. We, as a Nation, must remember them so we can begin to heal, to unite, and find purpose as one Nation to defeat this pandemic.

In their memory, the First Lady and I will be joined by the Vice President and the Second Gentleman for a moment of silence at the White House this evening. I ask all Americans to join us as we remember the more than 500,000 of our fellow Americans lost to COVID19 and to observe a moment of silence at sunset. I also hereby order, by the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States, that the flag of the United States shall be flown at half-staff at the White House and on all public buildings and grounds, at all military posts and naval stations, and on all naval vessels of the Federal Government in the District of Columbia and throughout the United States and its Territories and possessions until sunset February 26, 2021. I also direct that the flag shall be flown at half-staff for the same period at all United States embassies, legations, consular offices, and other facilities abroad, including all military facilities and naval vessels and stations.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this twenty-second day of February, in the year of our Lord two thousand twenty-one, and of the Independence of the United States of America the

two hundred and forty-fifth.

JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR. 

--END--

First of all, let us note that this is a grim and tragic marker.  500,000 lives cut short, and we're not out of the woods yet.  Not by a long shot.

But breaking this down, what does it mean, and is it actually accurate?

First, let me note that what I did was to link in the state's endorsement of President Biden's proclamation. So that we can be sure we're reading it correctly, let's first link in the actual proclamation:

A Proclamation on Remembering the 500,000 Americans Lost to COVID-19

FEBRUARY 22, 2021 • PRESIDENTIAL ACTIONS

As of this week during the dark winter of the COVID-19 pandemic, more than 500,000 Americans have now died from the virus.  That is more Americans who have died in a single year of this pandemic than in World War I, World War II, and the Vietnam War combined.  On this solemn occasion, we reflect on their loss and on their loved ones left behind.  We, as a Nation, must remember them so we can begin to heal, to unite, and find purpose as one Nation to defeat this pandemic.

In their memory, the First Lady and I will be joined by the Vice President and the Second Gentleman for a moment of silence at the White House this evening.  I ask all Americans to join us as we remember the more than 500,000 of our fellow Americans lost to COVID-19 and to observe a moment of silence at sunset.  I also hereby order, by the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States, that the flag of the United States shall be flown at half-staff at the White House and on all public buildings and grounds, at all military posts and naval stations, and on all naval vessels of the Federal Government in the District of Columbia and throughout the United States and its Territories and possessions until sunset February 26, 2021.  I also direct that the flag shall be flown at half-staff for the same period at all United States embassies, legations, consular offices, and other facilities abroad, including all military facilities and naval vessels and stations.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this twenty-second day of February, in the year of our Lord two thousand twenty-one, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and forty-fifth.              

JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR.

And, as can be seen, the linked in text was in fact correctly quoted by the Governor.  I know that linking that in is pedantic, but we want to be quoting correctly.

And I'm not faulting Governor Gordon or President Biden for the half mast order.  Indeed, I think it may be a useful reminder to the living that this isn't over yet and precautions are still needed.  We certainly don't want to hit the 1,000,000 mark.

None the less, can deaths due to disease really be compared to combat deaths?

Let's start with this, is it correct that the 500,000 tragic deaths amount to "more Americans who have died . .  than in World War I, World War II and the Vietnam War combined"?

116,516 Americans are officially listed as having died in World War I.

405,399 Americans officially lost their lives due to World War Two, although some figures will add in another 2,000.

58,209 Americans were lost in the Vietnam War.

You don't need the aid of a calculator to realize that President Biden is wrong.  500,000 Americans is a lot of lost lives, and it is tragic, but the combined totals of the three wars noted exceed 500,000.  Perhaps not grossly, but they do exceed them.  That's 580,124 lives lost in combat in the three wars noted.*

Or do they?

President Biden here correctly mourns and laments those who have died due to SARS-CoV-2 during this pandemic, but those are lives lost to a viral agent.  I.e., something loose in nature.  Lives lost in war are those lost due to the direct killing action of other men, in one fashion or another.  Now, I don't want to get into the "yeah, but if so and so had done something earlier. . . " type argument here, which just goes down a rat hole and looses point of this.  The point is, that death by infectious disease is inherently incomparable to death due to war.

Indeed, in human experience, death due to lethal pandemic often grossly exceeds death due to war, even if it occurs in the same time frame.

For example, 116,516 Americans died due to combat during World War One.  675,000 Americans died during the same time period due to the Spanish Flu.

Now, that's a useful statistic.  The Spanish Flu Epidemic and the Coronavirus Pandemic are in fact directly comparable as they're both viral pandemics, save for perhaps the argument that the Spanish Flu Pandemic was made worse by World War One, and perhaps caused by World War One. The first argument is undoubtedly correct.

Indeed, for that reason, although we won't develop it here, you could argue that the 116,516 lives lost due to the Great War need to be added to the 675,000 lost due to the Spanish Flu to get a full scale of lives lost due to the global disaster that was the Great War.  And that argument would in fact make a lot of sense.  We have a ways to go, thankfully, before we reach that mark, although we may very well reach it.  That figure is over 719,000 lives lost.

Be that as it may, we also have to keep in mind that the American population was 92,000,000 in the 1910s.  Lets' say it was 100,000,000, even though we were not there yet.

Looked at that way, the 675,000 would be the equivalent of about 2,000,000 deaths today.  For that matter, the World War One combat deaths, which I didn't add into that, would be equivalent to over 300,000 now.

We're not anywhere close to 2,000,000 deaths, thankfully, and hopefully we will have this in check before we are.

Going back more than a century starts becoming really problematic in such analysis, although it is tempting to do so.  Indeed, it can be argued that even going back a century is not a valid comparison as it was before modern medicine to a significant degree.   There were no effective antibiotics at the time, for example, and while antibiotics do absolutely nothing in regard to a virus, it can help keep a viral infection from developing into something else which is lethal.  For example, we just read the other day of the death of George Gipp, who was infected by strep throat that rapidly killed him. Today, that wouldn't occur. And indeed, there were no effective anti virals either.  No wonder the 1918-1919 Spanish Flu was such a killer.

Indeed, we just passed the 75th anniversary of the discovery of penicillin, the great anti biotic.

Still, we can recognize the 1918-19 Flu as there are those still among us, small in number though they are, who are still with us.  Many families retain some memories of the flu (ours does) and its impact.  And our current society is a direct evolution of that one, even though much has changed.  And of course our governments were highly developed at the time, particularly given that the 1918-19 Flu occurred during a time of war, and therefore mass societal mobilization.

For this reason, going back further, is problematic.  For example, what became the United States lost 6,800 men to death by combat during the American Revolution.  17,000 Americans died of disease, however, although its significant that the majority of them were prisoners of war at the time.  The population, however, was a shade under 3,000,000 (and growing incredibly rapidly) which would mean that the equivalent loss, in modern terms, would have been about 680,000 combat deaths and 1,700,000 deaths due to disease in contemporary terms, or about the same disease loss, oddly enough, as the Spanish Flu had in the Great War period in the United States.  But as noted, these figures would be of questionable utility.

So, what does all this tell us?

500,000 deaths is a terrible tragedy, but the frequent comparison to war, while inevitable, really isn't historically or statically valuable except as a loose measuring stick. What that probably tells us, more than anything else, is that as a species we're geared toward understanding loses due to war, so we use those figures as its easy for us to do it, even though that doesn't really tell us anything.  We are, that is, psychologically geared toward thinking about fighting an invading enemy.  We are apparently less psychologically geared towards thinking about fighting an invading virus.

Indeed, the oppose may in fact be true. We've always lived with killer diseases, but we haven't always really understood them very well, and overall the evidence suggest we really still don't quite, on a day to day personal basis. During the 1918-19 pandemic we really didn't get a handle on it.  When inoculations first were introduced some societies around the globe believed all sorts of fanciful scary tales about it.  Some religions eschew them today for reasons that have very little to do with what is found in any faith.  Folk medicines remain just as popular as ever, and included in that are a collection of myths about vaccinations in general and this one in particular.  We remain pretty willing to line up for uniforms when wars come, but much less so to the wearing of uniform masks in times of pandemic.

Footnotes.

*It's interesting how the Korean War, which had a loss of life comparable to Vietnam's, is skipped, as usual, even though the lives lost in that war occurred in a much shorter period of time.

Blog Mirror: Boston 1775: How I Zoomed My Summer Vacation

Boston 1775: How I Zoomed My Summer Vacation: It’s the part of August in New England when the sky is overcast, the air has a chill, and hurricanes sometimes pass by. Back when I was gr...

Military Installation Names. What they were, and are, and how they got there. Part 3.

We've just done two posts in this three part series on the naming of military posts, starting off with the controversy, although there doesn't seem to be that much of of a controversy, over the suggestion that military posts in the South named after Confederate generals ought to be renamed.

We eclectically started off our post on Southern Posts with this entry, which wasn't in the South.

Camp Cody, New Mexico. This camp was named after a figure associated with Wyoming, but not from Wyoming, Buffalo Bill Cody.  It operated from 1917 to 1919.

Why did we do that?

Well, at that time this series was conceived of as a single post.  But by the time we had all the text we were interested in posting, the post was so long, as Part 2 no doubt shows, that it no longer made much sense to do so. But it still makes sense to ask the questions we intended to, and those had to do with why posts were named what they were.

It probably shouldn't surprise anyone, but there are Army Regulations. . . now, for  naming posts. The more surprising things is that this hasn't always been the case.  The Army's Center For Military History sums up the story, which they likely are asked about a fair amount, particularly now, this way:

Naming Army Installations 

The naming of posts started as a tradition when the Army was young. In the Continental Army, many posts and camps were named by the commander or supervising engineer for high ranking officers, including those still living; for example, Fort Washington on the New York and Fort Lee on the New Jersey sides of the Hudson in 1776, Fort Putnam at West Point, or Fort Mifflin below Philadelphia on the Pennsylvania side of the Delaware. Forts were also named for fallen heroes, such as Fort Mercer, built in 1777, on the New Jersey side of the Delaware opposite Fort Mifflin, named in honor of Brig. Gen. Hugh Mercer who fell at Princeton in January of that year. 

For much of the Army's history in the 19th Century, the naming of posts was still mainly a local prerogative. For example, War Department General Order Number 79, dated 8 November 1878, left the naming of installations to the commander of the regional Military Division in which the installation was located. Although not always, the names of installations usually reflected a local influence, such as Fort Apache in Arizona, established in 1871, and the Chickamauga Post in Georgia, established in 1902. In the 1890s, the then Quartermaster General, Maj. Gen. Richard N. Batchelder, recommended that the War Department assume responsibility for naming installations, but that did not become policy until World War I when the massive general mobilization saw the establishment of numerous installations of various sizes and functions. The names usually, but not always, reflected some regional connection to its location, and usually with a historic military figure significant to the area: for example, Camp Lee near Richmond, Virginia, and changing the name of the Chickamauga Post in Georgia to Fort Oglethorpe. 

In the years between the World Wars, it became the common practice for the War Department to entertain recommended names for posts from installation commanders, corps and branch commanders, and the Historical Section Army War College, as well as from outside the Army. Public opinion and political Influence sometime weighed heavily on the decisions. For an example of the latter, when in 1928 the Army renamed Fort George G. Meade in Maryland as Fort Leonard Wood, the Pennsylvania delegation in Congress held up the Army's appropriation bill until the service agreed to restore the name of the Pennsylvania-born general. The regional connection, however, cannot be overemphasized. Fort Monmouth in New Jersey, for example, was originally named Camp Alfred Vail, in honor of the Army's then chief Signal Officer, when the installation was established as a Signal Corps training facility in 1917, but changed to Fort Monmouth, for the 1778 battle fought nearby, when it became a permanent installation in the 1920s. 

The War Department better defined the criteria when it established the policy for "naming military reservations in honor of deceased distinguished officers regardless of the arm or service in which they have served" in a memorandum dated 20 November 1939. 

Shortly after World War II, in 1946, the Army established the Army Memorialization Board. Governed by Army Regulation (AR) 15-190, Boards, Commissions, and Committees: Department of the Army Memorialization Board, it assumed responsibility for deciding on the names of posts and other memorial programs and the criteria for naming them. The regulation stated that all those individuals memorialized must be deceased and fall within one of five categories: 

(1) a national hero of absolute preeminence by virtue of high position,
(2) an individual who held a position of high and extensive responsibility (Army and above) and whose death was a result of battle wounds,
(3) an individual who held a position of high and extensive responsibility and whose death was not a result of battle wounds,
(4) an individual who performed an act of heroism or who held a position of high responsibility and whose death was a result of battle wounds, and
(5) an individual who performed an act of heroism or who held a position of high responsibility and whose death was not a result of battle wounds.

On 8 December 1958 , AR 1-30, Administration: Department of the Army Memorialization Program superseded AR 15-190 , and removed responsibility for naming installations from the Memorialization Board and transferred it to Headquarters, Department of the Army. In turn, AR 1-33, Administration: Memorial Programs superseded AR 1-30 on 1 February 1972. This revision retained the same memorialization criteria and categories as the previous regulation, but added a list of appropriate memorialization projects for each category. For example, it would be appropriate to name a large military installation after a person in category two, while it would be appropriate to name a building or a street after a person in category five. The final decision on naming a post was still made by the Headquarters, Department of the Army. The 15 January 1981 revision of AR 1-33 named the Army Chief of Staff as the responsible individual for the naming of installations. 

The current AR 1-33 became effective on 30 June 2006, and redefined and expanded the categories of individuals to be memorialized, and listed appropriate memorialization programs for each category. The naming of installations is now the responsibility of the Assistant Secretary of Army (Manpower and Reserve Affairs). The Director of the Installation Management Agency is responsible for the naming of streets, buildings, and facilities on all military installations except medical installations, where the Commander of the U.S. Army Medical Command has the approval authority, and on the United States Military Academy, where the Superintendent of the United States Military Academy has the approval authority.

This post here, of course, started off with the topic of the Confederate named posts, and the Congressional Research Service recently issued this short synopsis of the Confederate posts and military installation names in general, about which it must have been receiving inquiries from members of Congress.

Confederate Names and Military Installations  

Updated June 16, 2020  

On June 8, 2020, an Army spokesperson made a statement that the Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and the Secretary of the Army Ryan D. McCarthy are “open to a bi-partisan discussion” on renaming the Army's 10 installations named after Confederate leaders. This statement follows the Commandant of the Marine Corps Gen. David Berger’s message (MARADMIN 331/20) on June 5, 2020, instructing commanders to “identify and remove” displays of the Confederate battle flag on Marine bases. Gen. Berger's order was signed following a House Armed Services subcommittee hearing on February 11 regarding the rise of white supremacy in the ranks. A 2019 Military Times survey found that “36 percent of troops who responded have seen evidence of white supremacist and racist ideologies in the military, a significant rise from the year before, when only 22 percent reported the same in the 2018 poll.” In addition to some Department of Defense (DOD) officials, certain Members of Congress have expressed interest in renaming military installations named after Confederate leaders. There is also interest in the DOD’s selection and approval process for naming military installations.  

U.S. Military Bases Named in Honor of Confederate Military Leaders  

There are 10 major military installations named after Confederate Civil War commanders located in the former states of the Confederacy. These installations are all owned by the U.S. Army. They are: Fort Rucker (after Col. Edmund W. Rucker, who was given the honorary title of “General”) in Alabama; Fort Benning (Brig. Gen. Henry L. Benning) and Fort Gordon (Maj. Gen. John Brown Gordon) in Georgia; Camp Beauregard (Gen. Pierre Gustave Toutant “P.G.T.” Beauregard) and Fort Polk (Gen. Leonidas Polk) in Louisiana; Fort Bragg (Gen. Braxton Bragg) in North Carolina; Fort Hood (Lt. Gen. John Bell Hood) in Texas; and Fort A.P. Hill (Lt. Gen. Ambrose Powell “A.P.” Hill), Fort Lee (Gen. Robert E. Lee) and Fort Pickett (Maj. Gen. George Edward Pickett) in Virginia. 

Naming Policy by Military Service  

Currently, DOD does not have a department-wide review process to evaluate the naming of military installations. Each military service has its own naming criteria and approval process summarized below.  

Army 

In general, the naming of Army installations is the responsibility of the Assistant Secretary of Army for Manpower and Reserve Affairs (ASA (M&RA)), However, the Secretary of the Army retains final approval authority for the Army Memorial Program—a program that oversees the naming of all Army real property. For the Army, the naming of a U.S. Army installation after a deceased individual is considered a memorialization, while naming an installation after a living individual is termed a dedication. The Army maintains separate criteria for memorialization and dedication of Army real property. The regulation that sets these criteria is Army Regulation (AR) 1-33, The Army Memorial Program (October 2018). In addition to dedicating and memorializing installations after people, the Army can also name an installation after an event. AR 1-33 provides a separate set of criteria for this “naming” and is defined as “the non-permanent naming of Army real property after famous battles and events.”  

Navy

OPNAV INSTRUCTION 5030.12H(October 2017) explains the U.S. Navy’s policy and procedures for the naming of streets, facilities and structures. According to this instruction, “names selected should honor deceased members of the Navy.” It may also be appropriate to honor deceased persons other than Navy personnel who have made significant contributions to the benefit of the Navy. This instruction is applicable to naming a structure or building that is identified by a real property unique identifier or a street. Naming designations of internal portions of buildings or spaces can be assigned at the discretion of the local installation commander. The spokesman for the Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike Gilday announced on June 9, that Adm. Gilday directed his staff to draft an order that will ban the Confederate battle flag from all public spaces and work areas on Navy bases, ships, subs, and aircraft.  

Marine Corps 

The Manual for the Marine Corps Historical Program addresses the Commemorative Naming Program and specifies that “property may be named for individuals highly regarded within the Marine Corps and/or local communities. Names of deceased Marines, or members of other military organizations who died while serving with or in support of Marine Corps units, will be considered first.”A Marine Corps Installations Command Policy Letter 3-15 offers guidance for Marine Corps Installations Command. 

Air Force Air Force

 Manual 36-2806, Awards and Memorialization Program (2019), sets Air Force policy for the Air Force’s memorialization program. The manual states “The memorialization program is designed to provide enduring honor and tribute to living and deceased military members and civilians with records of outstanding and honorable service through the naming of Air Force installations, streets, buildings, and interior spaces of buildings.” Chapter 4 of the manual provides naming criteria and approval authorities for Air Force installations, and states: “When naming an Air Force installation ensure only the most deserving individuals are selected for memorialization. Selections should bring honor to the Air Force and reflect the goodwill of the local community.”  

Author Information 

Barbara Salazar Torreon Senior Research Librarian

Well, there you have it. From that you can take it to be the case that the Army wouldn't be naming any posts after Confederate rebels today as they wouldn't meet the first two criteria.  I.e., no Confederate figure is a "national hero", in spite of what some in the South may have viewed over the last century about figures like Robert E. Lee, and in spite of the treatment those same figures were given by the Army in the early and mid 20th Century, and the second criteria implicitly presumes that they were in the U.S. service, which none of the Confederate figures was at the time of their famous or infamous service.

Camp Wheeler, Georgia, named after Joseph Wheeler and which was used in World War One and World War Two.  The land was returned to its owners following the Second World War.  Camp Wheeler is arguably the only former military post that would meet the current rules, as while Wheeler had been a Confederate General in the Civil War, he was also a Maj. Gen. in the U.S. Army during the Spanish American War.  Wheeler is associated with Georgia, but was actually from Connecticut.

None of which means that the post would be, or should be, renamed, although we addressed that topic in our first post in which we concluded that they  largely should be.

As the Army's Center for Military History item notes, early on posts were named as a matter of local prerogative.  When we looked at the Wyoming posts names, an interesting added part of the picture comes to light.  When the U.S. first established any military presence in Wyoming at all, it was acquiring existing facilities and simply keeping their names. Ft. Laramie was the first permanent U.S. post in what would become Wyoming and the Army simply bought Ft. Laramie and kept the name.  Jaques LaRamy wasn't an American military figure and wasn't an American at all.   This didn't seem to figure into the Army's naming conventions at all at the time.  Other forts occupied prior to the Civil War went the same way, in part.

Having said that, on some occasions the office establishing a camp was naming it after himself, or in quite a few instances, a commander who was up his chain of command.  A person can look at that more than one way, rather obviously, but both were common.

When the Civil War hit, in Wyoming, the 11th Ohio and 11th Kansas came into the state, and they established the practice of occupying established "stations" of a civilian nature and building posts at them.  Sometimes they observed the pre war naming convention, but more often they simply named the station after where they were.  

The Civil War was a great national shock and following it hte officer corps of the Army was made up of veterans of that war, many of whom had held much higher ranks during the ar than they did after it.  Even as the war was raging the Army started to name new posts after U.S. Army senior officer who had lost their lives during the war or, in some cases, very soon after it.  Wyoming posts like Ft. Buford and Ft. Sanders (the same post) or Ft. Phil Kearny provide such examples.

During the Civil War the Indian Wars heated up massively as Indians tribes, either intentionally or due to circumstances engaged non Indians with increasing frequency.  At the time, and for many years thereafter, this was attributed to Indian opportunism but a careful look at the era would lead a person to question that.*  The war resulted in the withdrawal of the Army from the Frontier to a large extent, although it should be noted that the military presence on the Frontier was very small to start with and the distance between the prewar Frontier forts was massive in extent, so the extent to which that alone was responsible for the uptick in conflicts, as some have asserted, is questionable.

The war directly caused a big upswing in European migration on the transcontinental trails across the West which arrived at the same time in which Indians tribes noticed and became increasingly concerned over the character of European American presence in the upper West.  Prior European Americans had been small in number and were often fairly feral in their nature.  The new migrants were largely passing through but they were also largely of the yeomanry class whose view of hte land was markedly different, and they were also descendant in large numbers of prior American populations that had a history of conflict with Indians.  Simultaneously miners began to penetrate the West in numbers for the first time. Towns, and even cities, began to be built which was a notable and dangerous new development for Indians and finally the railroad began to penetrate as well.  All of this made an already touchy situation explosive.

As did events like the Sand Creek Massacre on November 29, 1864 during which Colorado militia attacked a Cheyenne band with no real cause. This put the Cheyenne to flight and also to war, with that war spreading north very rapidly into Wyoming.  In turn, Sioux bands allied with the Cheyenne could not help but note was occurring generally.

All of this meant that even as the Civil War was being fought the Plains Indians Wars were igniting, meaning that as early as 1865, if not earlier, the Army was naming posts after Army figures who had been killed in combat with Indians.  Ft. Caspar was one of the first such examples, but it would soon be joined by Ft. Fetterman and Ft. Brown.  Civil War figures were not replaced by Indian War figures, however, with the seminal name of Abraham Lincoln being given to the post of that name in 1872.**

This loose practice kept up as the Army approached World War One.  Camp Cody, featured above, was named for example at the time of the Punitive Expedition.  Other posts incorporated varied names.

Camp Furlong, Columbus, New Mexico.  1916.  I don't know who this post was named for, as there's little easy to find information on that.  However, it's worth noting that this post in 1912 was established at time at which Wesley J. Furlong, a black recipient of the Medal of Honor from the Civil War, was still living.

Camp Stewart, not Stuart.  I'm not sure which military figure this post was named for, but it was not J. E. B. Stuart. It may have been named for Brig. Gen. Daniel Stewart, whom Ft. Stewart, Georgia, was also named for. That Stewat was a general in the Revolutionary War. Of note, teh Amy chose not to retain this name with this post 

When the US ran up to entry in the Great War, the naming conventions, but not regulations, tighted up considerable.  As the CMH item notes, the practice became to name military posts after generals of historical importance and preferentially with a connection to the region of the post.  Unnamed as a policy, it very clearly became the practice to name Southern posts after Confederate generals even to the extent of naming some after figures of some infamy or who were even of questionable military competence.***

The fact that even figures who were not only rebels, but in some occasions associated with the worst of the Confederate cause and also those who were not bright shining military lights really tells us something about the extent to which the Lost Cause mythology had seized and altered the common historical understanding of the Civil War.  It also says something about the extent to which the Army, faced with the largest war it had been in since the Civil War, looked back on that war for guidance.  Seemingly it was also the only thing that compared to what it was now in.

It was the only thing that it had been in for nearly eighty years in which Southern military figures, save for Joseph Wheeler, had really shined in an obvious fashion. There's been a lot of notable figures of the Indian Wars since 1865 and the Spanish American War contributed additional names to the Army's heroic list. These names were not forgotten, but the policy of local attribution meant that they largely were absent from the South. They were used, and sometimes more than once.  Frederick Funston, only recently departed and expected to have lead the American Army in France if war came, was a hero of the Spanish American War who died shortly before the war. Two Camp Funston's were named for him thereafter, for example.

Camp Funston, Leon Springs, Texas.

Camp Funston, Kansas.

In Michigan, which was his home, George Armstrong Custer of Little Big Horn fame, or infamy, found his name attached to the World War One training post there, Camp Custer, which survives today as Ft. Custer, a Michigan National Guard training range.

Camp Custer, 1918.  This post remained in service after the war and was designated a permanent base and therefore a "fort" in 1940.  After World War Two it went into use as a Marine Corps and Navy Reserve post but reverted to the Army at the start of the Korean War.  It was turned over to the state of Michigan as a National Guard training range in 1968, but interestingly it still sees some Navy Reserve use.

So the naming conventions remained loose during the Great War but there was obviously an unofficial policy of naming posts after a military figure with a local connection, and in the case of the South, that meant, in the minds of Army leaders, picking Confederate generals' names.  To put it fairly, however, they didn't seem to be under any mental reservation about that.  Indeed, during the war the widow of at least one Confederate general, and one of the problematic ones at that, was honored, and therefore the general himself vicariously honored, at the post.

The 82nd Division  honoring the widow of John Brown Gordon at the first Camp Gordon.

What black soldiers thought of this seems unrecorded, or at least I haven't run across their thoughts. They were obviously aware of it and indeed as many black soldiers hailed from the South they saw service in some of these posts.  Indeed, it's worth noting that black combat soldiers were more likely, as a class, to see combat in World War One than World War Two.  While the services were segregated at the time, save for the Marine Corps which didn't allow blacks to enter their service at all until mid World War Two, the Great War did not see an effort to preclude black troops from the front lines to the same extent that was done in the Second World War and there were a variety of black National Guard units that saw service in the war.****  Some of those units would have trained at these posts.

National Guardsmen of the 370th Infantry of Illinois, which had black officers and enlisted men.  Black officers were very unusual, but once again this was a feature of a few such units in World War One.  The 370th had an all black officer corps, the only such unit to have that feature.

It should have been noted that there were ways around naming posts after Confederate officers, if the Army had chosen to do them.  For one thing, they could simply have been named for their locations, which would have been easy enough. As has been already pointed out in Part 2 of this series, that's exactly how Wyoming's two National Guard training ranges were named, even though by the time the second one, Camp Guernsey, was being established, there was clearly a Wyoming personality, Jay L. Torrey, whose name was available for use.*****Another option, in some instances, would have been to use the names of Southern figures from the Revolution or the War of 1812, although that would have perhaps simply served to remind Southerners that names of Confederate generals were being excluded.  Finally, while it would be controversial today, names of Indian War figures were available, but that would have had to have been done without regard to their place of origin and, as odd as it may seem, the Plains Indian Wars were closer in time to World War One for the most part than the Civil War such that many of the participants in those wars remained alive, with some Army officers, such as Pershing, having served in them.

Whatever the situation may have been during World War One, it's harder to justify the ongoing practice of naming Southern posts after Confederate figures after 1918.  By that time, the new war had produced more than its share of well known national heroic figures.  Nonetheless, the practice continued all the way through World War Two. The reason it did is truly an example of institutional racism.  By that time, no matter what the majority view of the country may have been, the Army basically accepted the Lost Cause thesis and had made up, in its mind, with the rebellious Southern officers of the 1860s and accepted them as their own.  Indeed, as an example of that, John J. Pershing and his aid, George Marshall, visited the tomb of J. E. B. Stuart at VMI in 1920, honoring the rebel cavalryman by their presence.  During the same time frame the Army actually became more prejudiced in its view towards its black soldiers, not less, and when the Second World War Came the Army acted to exclude existing black Regular Army formations from combat in spite of their World War One examples.  Half of the Army posts now subject to controversial Confederate names were named during the Second World War, not the First.

Segregation in the Army came to an end in the Truman Administration and it was Missouri born Truman who first used the Regular Army in support of desegregation in the South.  Blacks were conscripted in a fashion roughly analogous with whites during the Korean War and combat units in that war were desegregated.  This has been true, of course, ever since.  Also under Truman, official naming conventions in the Army, already set out above, but repeated here, came into existance in 1946, providing:

(1) a national hero of absolute preeminence by virtue of high position,(2) an individual who held a position of high and extensive responsibility (Army and above) and whose death was a result of battle wounds,(3) an individual who held a position of high and extensive responsibility and whose death was not a result of battle wounds,(4) an individual who performed an act of heroism or who held a position of high responsibility and whose death was a result of battle wounds, and(5) an individual who performed an act of heroism or who held a position of high responsibility and whose death was not a result of battle wounds.

And that is where we are now.

As noted above, none of the Southern posts named after Confederates would meet these criteria now, but then not all of the remaining posts named after others would as well.  At least Michigan's Fort Custer is probably named after an individual who is as despised by a significant number of Americans as the Southern posts are.  So renaming them merely because they don't meet the current criteria likely wouldn't be in order.  Renaming them because of who they are named after, however, very well might be.

_________________________________________________________________________________

Prior posts in this series:

Military Installation Names. What they were, and are, and how they got there. Part 1. Named for Confederate Generals

Military Installation Names. What they were, and are, and how they got there. Part 2. Posts in Wyoming

*I'm not saying that such a careful look has in fact taken place.

**Ft. Abraham Lincoln, North Dakota, was the location from which the 7th Cavalry dispatched in 1876 in their message to gather the Sioux from the plains. The campaign would result in the Battle of the Little Big Horn.

***The universal military quality of Southern officers is a myth of the Lost Cause Era.  In truth, the South has an inordinate number of marginal or even incompetent officers.

****The story of segregation in the Armed Forces is a little more complicated than it might at first seem, and has been dealt with here in earlier posts, specifically:

Blacks in the Army. Segregation and Desegregation

That post deals with the Army and the Navy, in spite of its caption.

As noted in that post, during the Revolution blacks were actually common in the Continental Army and it wasn't until after the Revolution that Congress banned their entry into the Army.  Even with an official prohibition, actually enforcing the ban seems to have been loosely enforced at first.  Only as the 19th Century progressed towards the Civil War were blacks actually excluded from the Army, but that day did arrive. During the Civil War the ban was reversed and the segregated Army came in, which remained all the way until just prior to the Korean War.

The Navy in contrast wasn't segregated until the late 19th Century, reflecting the fact that the Navy recruited from ports in the wood and sail era.  During that time it was more concerned about bringing in experienced sailors than anything else and it accordingly disregarded race and even nationality in recruiting enlisted men.  Only when the steel Navy came in post Civil War did that change and the Navy officially segregated in 1893, although officially enforcing that policy on a preexisting structure also took some time.  This change reflected a change in recruitment in which mechanical and technical skills now took precedence over sailing skills, and the Navy was now recruiting largely from the interior of the country.

The Marine Corps had barred entry of blacks from the very beginning as it strictly limited its recruiting to whites.  This was for a peculiar reason, however.  The logic of its first commanders was focused on the mutiny suppression role that Marines fulfilled and they therefore tried to make the makeup of the Marine Corps reflect the largest national demographic out of a fear that allowing in minorities would cause conflicts in loyalties should mutinies occur.  Interestingly enough, the one real mutiny, although it is not called that, which the Navy experienced didn't occur until the early 1970s at which time the black commanding officer of the vessel had to be ordered to stand down in his plan to arm his Marines and storm the parts of the ship held by protesting black sailors so, while the event occured two centuries later, ethnic loyalties did't play a part in that event when it really came.  The Marine Corps allowed blacks into the service during World War Two and was integrated along with the Army and Navy in 1948. The Air Force had already taken the step in 1946 upon its coming into existence and was never officially segregated, although as it was formed out of the segregated Army, it took it until 1949 to really desegregate.

*****Torrey was a legislator and rancher who had lead the formation and recruitment of the 2nd Volunteer Cavalry during the Spanish American War.  That unit failed to see action, but it was sufficiently well remembered that a Rough Rider was adopted as the unit patch for Wyoming National Guardsmen at some point and while different patches have come in, in recent years, for some units, it's still the default patch for the Wyoming Army National Guard.  It's fairly surprising that Camp Guernsey wasn't named Camp Torrey.