As the Senate prepares to debate renaming military bases, we called living family members of the generals. Here’s what they said.
For one group of Americans, the raging debate over the monuments and military bases honoring the men who fought to preserve slavery during the Civil War is uniquely personal: their descendants.
The dispute, which has become one of the most heated cultural and political flashpoints following protests over racial inequality, lands in Congress this week. The Senate is taking up bipartisan legislation to require the Pentagon to erase from every slab of granite and the gates of every garrison the names of Confederate officers, including the names of 10 Army bases that stretch across the South from Virginia to Texas.
President Donald Trump has said he opposes such a move, and several Republican senators have vowed to try to stop it—including one who declared that the effort “smacks of the cancel culture the left wants to impose on the nation.” On Tuesday night, Trump tweeted: “I will Veto the Defense Authorization Bill if the Elizabeth ‘Pocahontas’ Warren (of all people!) Amendment, which will lead to the renaming (plus other bad things!) of Fort Bragg, Fort Robert E. Lee, and many other Military Bases from which we won Two World Wars, is in the Bill!”