Don't want to Bragg, but ...

The latest battleground in the effort to obliterate all reminders of slavery and slave owners apparently will be the names of U.S. Army bases, many of which are named after Confederate generals.

That is a distinction at which I have often marveled. Why name Army bases after people who fought against the U.S. Army? The answer apparently is that when new Army bases were established in the 20th century, Confederate heroes were still popular among local officials in the South, and the Army gave local officials naming rights for the new bases that engulfed millions of acres of land.

One Army base's name has a bit of irony. Fort Bragg near Fayetteville, N.C., is named after Braxton Bragg, who is widely regarded as probably the worst general in the Confederacy. He might be one of the worst generals in history! Activists who want to purge Bragg's name from the huge Army base might want to think twice. Yes, Bragg was loyal to the Confederacy, and he was a slave owner (as nearly all wealthy individuals in the Old South were), but his bumbling and ignorance of strategy and tactics probably shortened the Civil War by several months and saved many thousands of lives, North and South. His incompetence was especially noted at Chattanooga and Franklin, Tennessee.

If Southern defenders of the Confederacy took a moment to learn more about Bragg, they might be less interested in defending the Bragg name. Yankees wanting to erase Confederate names from American soil might want to reconsider and make Bragg an honorary Union general. After all, he probably did far more from the Union cause that he did for the Confederate cause.