Ron DeSantis is still committed to restoring the name a North Carolina fort to honor one of the worst generals in the Confederate Army.
During remarks in Eagle Pass, Texas, the Florida Governor doubled down on his assertion that the newly rechristened Fort Liberty should have its name changed back to honor Braxton Bragg, whose legacy as a rebel commander was undistinguished even by the markers of the rebel army.
“Here’s what I said with respect to Fort Bragg is, that’s an iconic base in this country. I didn’t even know it was a Civil War general,” said DeSantis, who graduated from Yale in 2001 with a B.A., magna cum laude in history.
“I don’t think most people knew it was a Civil War general. You just know you’ve been to Bragg, right? And they’re changing it for political correctness reasons. And so I don’t believe in doing it for political correctness reasons and that’s just kind of how we’re going to roll on it. And here’s the thing, you know, you learn from history, you don’t erase the history.”
Fort Bragg was renamed “Fort Liberty” earlier this month, on the recommendation of the Department of Defense’s Commission on the Naming of Items. The goal was to change the names of facilities “that commemorate the Confederate States of America or any person who served voluntarily with the Confederate States of America.”
Despite the limited scope of the DoD’s renaming, the Governor likened taking Bragg’s name off the fort to moves to “take Abraham Lincoln off the statue down in Boston … take Teddy Roosevelt down in New York City” and “remove George Washington’s name from schools in San Francisco.”
“And that’s not, I think, what I want to see. I mean, I think you can look back at anybody and you could find flaws. But at the end of the day, you know, we had people that have done great things for this country,” DeSantis said.
“I’m not in a position to say that somehow I’m so much better than any of this. It’s a different time. People make mistakes. There’s different parts of our society, we look back and can say was a mistake. But this idea that we’re going to erase history, I just think, is fundamentally wrong, and we’re not going to do that.”
The installation’s former name honors Gen. Bragg, a North Carolinian, who was known for owning slaves and losing key Civil War battles that contributed to the Confederacy’s downfall.
A native of Warrenton, North Carolina, Bragg was in his position until 1863, when after a defeat at Chattanooga, he was removed from that lead role at his request and became a military advisor for Confederate President Jefferson Davis.
Despite his relegation, he would go on to be the on-the-scene commander during Confederate defeats throughout the war, including a failed attempt to protect the port in Wilmington, North Carolina.
Rather than lead protection of the port, Bragg stayed behind at the fort away from the fray, to the consternation of the fort’s commander.
Beset by interpersonal conflicts throughout the war, the defeated Confederate would seem to be a poor namesake for an American fort in the 21st Century. However, as President, DeSantis would restore that ignominious name to glory.
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