- Societies often battle over who they honor just as surely as some grapple with what they remember.

Today's guest has been on the front lines of America's conflict over the presence of Confederate names on American military bases and the way we remember that history.

He's with Ty Seidule this week on "Story in the Public Square."

(lively thoughtful music) (lively thoughtful music continues) Hello and welcome to "Story in the Public Square," where storytelling meets public affairs.

I'm Jim Ludes from the Pell Center at Salve Regina University.

- And I'm G. Wayne Miller, also with Salve's Pell Center.

- And our guest this week is an old friend.

Ty Seidule served the U.S.

Army for more than three decades before retiring as a brigadier general.

He's a professor emeritus of history at West Point and teaches now at Hamilton College.

Brigadier General Seidule served as vice chair of the Congressional Naming Commission, tasked with redesignating Department of Defense assets which previously honored Confederates.

His new book is "A Promise Delivered: 10 American Heroes and the Successful Battle to Rename Our Nation's Military Bases."

Ty, it's great to have you back with us.

- Jim, great to be here.

Thank you so much for having me.

- You know, I gave a much longer bio for you here than I do for most of our guests because I thought it was important for the audience to be reminded about all of the things that you've done in your career.

Because what we're gonna talk about, I think, can produce an emotional response for different reasons in different people.

Specifically, we're talking about the use of Confederate names on American military bases.

Why, 160-plus years since the end of the Civil War, is that still so sensitive an issue?

- History's dangerous, Jim.

It's dangerous because it challenges our myths and our identity.

And when somebody goes after those myths, the reaction, as I found, can be ferocious.

And so many people don't realize that the Confederacy fought, committed treason, as designated by our Constitution, Article III, Section 3, which is levying war against the United States.

And their purpose in that treason was to create a slave republic.

They killed U.S.

Army soldiers, as Lincoln and Grant said, for slavery.

So they don't reflect the best of America.

On the other hand, they were named after these Confederates at a period of time when the U.S.

Army was segregated, when the South was a one-party racial police state.

So this idea that Confederates somehow are the good guys or somehow reflect America, I think, is just wrongheaded.

But because it's been around for so long, it is in our DNA to think of these Confederates as the same as the U.S.

Army and those who fought.

And that's just wrong.

- Well, we had you on a couple of years ago to talk about "Robert E. Lee and Me: A Southerner's Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause," which is a wonderful explanation of your own personal journey to come to grips with these issues.

And we're thrilled to have you on now to talk about "A Promise Delivered."

Give us a quick overview, and then we'll get into it in some detail.

- Well, so I served on the Naming Commission created by Congress to remove or modify every single thing that was in the Department of Defense that commemorated the Confederacy.

I was part of an eight-person commission, four selected by the Secretary of Defense, four by the House and Senate Armed Services Committees.

We had three Republicans, one Democrat, and four retired flag or general officers.

And we went about our business 'cause Congress told us to.

It was a law that did it.

President Trump vetoed that law, an almost $800 billion law, just because he did not wanna change the base names and gave us the mission to do it.

And so what the book does is say, here's who we are, here's the process that we did, and here are the 10 American heroes that we selected to reflect the genius and the beauty of America and the American Army.

And so that's what we did, and we renamed every one of those bases.

I might also add that we found 1,111 different things that commemorated Confederates in the Department of Defense, and only Department of Defense.

That was our remit, and we removed every one of those.

So we finished our commission on time, under budget, and with 100% of our recommendations accepted and implemented.

And the book really, though, it tells a little bit about the process, but it's really about these great American heroes who we selected with input from the American people, with input from the local communities.

We did really, I think, a great process of that.

But it was so wonderful for me to tell the stories of true American heroes.

Where my last book talked about those who chose treason to preserve slavery, this book, I got to choose real American heroes.

And my co-author and I, Connor Williams, then wrote about these amazing Americans.

- Hey, Ty, just a quick follow-up.

You said that President Trump had vetoed the legislation originally.

How did it become law then?

- Oh, thanks.

A great point, Jim.

So Congress overrode that veto, the only one they overrode in his first term.

And this was with a Democratically controlled Congress and a Republican-controlled Senate.

So the Senate, by a supermajority, overrode Trump's veto.

The thing is, the Department of Defense has got to be funded every year.

We're gonna get through this again sometime in December about whether we should fund the Department of Defense again.

And so this same issue's gonna come up then as well.

- [Jim] Wow.

- So, Ty, did you have any apprehension about doing this work?

We've already established that it's an emotional issue for many people on many sides of the aisle, so to speak.

Did you have any personal apprehension about doing this?

- Well, I did a video 10 years ago on the cause of the Civil War for Prager, a conservative organization, and I got death threats as an Army colonel for that.

I have to take my phone number off the Hamilton College website because I get so many crazies calling me.

On social media, I get doxxed all the time.

The latest nickname that they have for me is Taliban Ty.

So they certainly go after- (all laughing) - I don't mean to laugh, but there is some a bit of a clever and dark bad thing, but go ahead.

- It is.

'Cause, of course, the Taliban, you know, destroyed the Buddhist icons.

And I do go after the Confederate ones, but I'm not tearing anything down personally.

So certainly, I worried about that.

But I received a call while I was driving from the chief of staff for the Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin.

And she asked me whether I would serve on this.

And I learned the definition of a nanosecond, which was exactly how long it took me to say yes.

- Wow.

- Wow.

Who else served on this commission?

A few prominent names or names that people might recognize.

- Yeah, so our chair was Michelle Howard, the first woman to serve as a four-star admiral, the first Black woman to ever be a four-star in any service.

She was our chair and our magnificent leader.

I served as vice chair.

We had Robert Neller, who was a commandant of the Marine Corps.

We had Tom Bostick, retired lieutenant general in the Army, who was also head of the Army Corps of Engineers.

Kori Schake, a Republican defense intellectual.

We had Austin Scott, a member of Congress, Republican member of Congress.

Larry Romo, former director of the Selective Service.

So we had just an amazing group of eight of us who served.

We became first friends, then teammates, and we still keep in touch.

So I couldn't be more proud of the people that we served with to reflect both the diversity of the American people and the diversity of the American military.

- Ty, how did American bases come to be named for Confederate heroes in the first place?

- Right, and, you know, remember that three of those people who named after never served in the U.S.

Army.

Three of them were terrible generals, like Bragg, Polk.

Some of them were war criminals like Pickett, who executed 23 U.S.

Army soldiers sort of on a whim and skedaddled to Canada after the war.

So they were terrible.

So they were named in World War I and World War II in the American South.

But remember during this period, the Army was segregated, and the South was a one-party state led by the Democrats, who, to anything done in Congress, Roosevelt or Wilson or anyone, Wilson was pretty racist in his own right, had to accede to the local community.

Sometimes they were named just because they wanted a short name, like Hood in Texas.

So they weren't by happenstance; the War Department named them.

But the thing is that they don't reflect the Army today.

They didn't even reflect the Army then.

So it was a horrible time in our country, particularly when it comes to race relations.

And I think that was reflected in those names.

- So let's go through a few of the renamed bases, starting with Fort Barfoot, previously Fort Pickett.

Tell us about those two people.

- So Pickett, again, was famous for Pickett's Charge during the Battle of Gettysburg.

He survived the war but again summarily executed 23 U.S.

Army soldiers in 1864, skedaddled to Canada because he thought he was gonna be tried as a war criminal.

And so that was who it was named for.

He's a West Point graduate who renounced his commission to serve with an enemy force.

The new name was Van Barfoot, who was from Mississippi, a Choctaw Native American, the first time we'd ever named a base after a Native American, who served in Italy during World War II and received the Medal of Honor for incredible action against multiple machine gun bunkers.

He then retired to Virginia and served in the Virginia National Guard.

That base is often used by the Virginia National Guard.

So here's a base served by a Virginian, and this is who the Virginians that we talked to wanted that base to be named after.

So we reflected the will of Virginia, the will of the American people, and also were able to reflect the diversity of the American experience by naming it after Van Barfoot, a tremendous Medal of Honor recipient.

- How about Fort Gregg-Adams, previously Fort Lee?

- So Robert E. Lee, of course, killed more U.S.

Army soldiers than any other enemy in our history.

A fine general, but someone who renounced his commission.

There were nine U.S.

Army colonels from Virginia in 1861.

Eight stayed loyal to the United States of America.

One and only one went with the Confederacy.

And he was someone who his army captured free Black people in Pennsylvania in the Gettysburg campaign and took them back to Virginia for enslavement.

His army slaughtered Black prisoners of war during the Battle of the Crater in 1864.

We ended up naming it after Arthur Gregg, the highest-ranking Black officer when he retired.

He's somebody who was in the logistics branch.

When we renamed that post, he was there.

The first time in living memory that we've renamed a post while that person was alive.

He's since passed, but was just an incredible icon.

Went in in a segregated army and then thrived in an integrated army.

Charity Adams, there was recently a Netflix movie about her, "The Six Triple Eight," the highest-ranking Black woman in World War II, led a postal directory battalion that unscrewed the mail in Europe and ensured that every soldier had the mail that they needed.

It turns out to be a hero; there are lots of different ways to serve.

Fort Lee, now Fort Gregg-Adams, now Fort Lee again, is the home of Army Logistics, and we wanted to reflect the mission of that post, and we did by naming it after Gregg and Adams.

- So what about Fort Cavazos, if I'm pronouncing that correctly, formerly Fort Hood?

- Yeah, Fort Hood.

So John Bell Hood was from Kentucky, but left to go to command Texans because Kentucky did not secede quickly enough, said some of the most outrageously racist things during and after the war.

And then was absolutely crushed by both Sherman and Thomas during the war.

And we renamed it after Richard Cavazos, a seventh-generation Texan.

So the folks in Texas wanted us to name someone who had been a Texan, and that's where Fort Hood is.

It's also the home of the U.S.

Army Armored Force.

And we wanted someone who had served in that, and he had.

Cavazos was the first time we've named a base after a Latino.

But he was a Medal of Honor recipient in Korea and then a Distinguished Service Cross, that's the second highest, in Vietnam.

And he was mentioned both the memoirs of both Colin Powell and Norm Schwarzkopf, who was the great hero of the Gulf War, for being the one who was the greatest mentor of his generation.

He was beloved by his men and, at one time, commanded all the forces at Fort Hood.

Just an amazing soldier and amazing human.

- So, Ty, we're not gonna run through all of these bases, but there are a couple more that I do wanna make sure that we hit.

Fort Moore, previously Fort Benning.

- Thank you for bringing that one up, Jim.

So Benning never served in the U.S.

Army and gave a speech in 1861 trying to get Virginia to secede.

And when he did that, he said, "I would rather have pestilence and famine than end slavery."

Just not a very good person.

And then worked to create the Jim Crow laws after that in Georgia.

And Moore's, I love this one because we named it after a family.

It had never been done before.

Hal Moore, famous for the Mel Gibson movie "We Were Soldiers," was at the first major battle of Vietnam and received the Distinguished Service Cross.

But his wife, Julie, was the daughter of a soldier who fought in World War II, and sent her husband off to war, and then sent her sons off to war.

But particularly in 1965, when Hal was gone, first, it used to be that wives had to move off post when their husband went to war.

So she had to move her family from 3,500-square-foot on Fort Benning to a 1,000-square-foot home off Fort Benning with five kids.

And then she realized that all the casualties coming back, that they were notified, the women were notified by a taxi cab driver with a telegram.

And she said, "This is wrong."

So she would follow the cab drivers to provide help to those women who had heard the worst news possible.

And then she forced the Army to create the Casualty Assistance Program.

One of the amazing women.

She said, and what we wanted to realize, what people realize is, it takes a family to serve the nation.

And that's what she did.

- So that brings us to Fort Bragg, which the commission recommended changing to Fort Liberty.

Why not honor another American hero here?

- Well, that's a great question, Wayne.

In fact, I wanted to, but the local community really rallied around that.

It was a Gold Star Mother, and a Gold Star Mother is someone who lost a child in combat.

And the woman who did this said, "Listen, our base is too big to name it after just one person.

We should instead name it for what we fight for."

Additionally, it's home to the 82nd Airborne Division.

One of the great divisions.

I served in combat with the 82nd.

And their line of their song is, "We are the soldiers of liberty."

It's also the home to Army Special Forces, that's the Green Berets.

And their motto, it has in there "against oppression of liberty."

So we named it after "Liberty" because that's what the local community wanted, and that was our remit from Congress: listen to local sensitivities.

So we actually went and visited in the COVID summer of '21, went to every one of these bases.

Then we put up a website where we found 33,000 names of Americans of what Americans thought we should name it after.

And some of them were funny.

The number one name for Fort Benning was actually Fort Sherman, named after William Tecumseh, (hosts laughing) who, you both know, led the march through Georgia.

We wisely chose not to use that.

Another name that came up was Fort Spears, not after the wooden lance, but after Britney Spears.

- Oh, geez.

- Oh, no!

(laughs) - [Jim] Yeah.

No.

- We found the Americans who had a sense of humor.

- You know, in the first five months of the Trump administration, the second Trump administration, the president issued executive orders reverting these name changes back to their original name.

But instead of referring back to the Confederate heroes that they originally honored, the Confederate names that they originally honored, they instead found people with the same last names and adopted those names.

So, for example, Fort Pickett in Virginia, briefly renamed Fort Barfoot, is now going to honor Distinguished Service Cross recipient First Lieutenant Vernon W. Pickett, who served in World War II.

Fort Hood in Texas, briefly renamed Fort Cavazos, now honors Distinguished Service Cross recipient Colonel Robert B. Hood, who served in World War I. Fort Lee in Virginia, briefly renamed Fort Gregg-Adams, now commemorates Medal of Honor recipient Private Fitz Lee, who served during the Spanish-American War.

We can go through all of these.

What have we just done?

What's the purpose of all this?

- Well, I think President Trump said it when he was at Fort Bragg, which is, he didn't like the fact that we renamed these.

In fact, this was the one thing, one of the major defeats he had in his first term, was that veto of the defense bill because of that.

So he was determined to rename them.

The law says that you can't rename them after Confederates.

Well, it started out that way, and I think they thought that there'd be some sort of pushback.

Now, they have returned much of the Confederate commemoration, particularly at West Point and other places.

But what they did was choose surname over service.

And many of these people, they fought for their country that he chose.

Some of it's just sort of crazy.

There is a Fort A.P.

Hill named after a Confederate, so they chose three names to get to A.P.

Hill.

And I mean, just sort of craziness.

But let me tell you that it's not over yet.

So Congress, in its latest defense authorization bill, the Senate version, returns the three bases in Virginia.

And the House, with Republican votes, says, "Maybe you should put all of them back to the naming commission."

I think what I've found from this is is that history is never over.

We just never know what's gonna happen next.

And so this fight, the battle that we fought, is just not over yet.

And even though Trump tried this by saying that somehow these traitors, because even though he named it after that, he said at Fort Bragg, "I wanna name it after Robert E.

Lee."

And so I think that's what he's trying to do, is surname over service.

But I gotta tell you, Jim, I don't think it's gonna work.

And I think the idea that they're gonna stay that way, of the names that are there and not go back, I think we gotta look at the long run here, and the battle is still waging.

- So America has long been divided from its establishment.

Obviously, the Civil War, we're still divided today.

Do we see any resolution for that?

And not just in the naming of bases, but politically in general?

- Wayne, I think you've got it right.

We have never been... We have always fought.

I mean, think about the election of 1800, where they were calling each other Satan.

They each had their own newspapers.

I mean, this is as American as apple pie.

And unfortunately, political violence is also as American as apple pie.

I mean, I hate it, but it's been there a long time.

So we're gonna continue to argue over these things.

But I do think that there is one change, and that is that many more people today realize that the Confederates killed U.S.

Army soldiers to try to create a slave republic.

And their values do not reflect the values of today.

And when the Secretary of Defense says, "We're about unity," and, in fact, says that diversity is not our strength, I think he forgets e pluribus unum.

And that is the motto of this great country, which is on our currency: "Out of many, one."

So the idea that we can have many different types of Americans, but all believe in democracy, believe in the values of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, that I think we can become better on.

But I don't think that some members of this administration believe in that.

- Ty, one of the other pieces that the Secretary of Defense opted to restore was the Arlington Confederate Monument, which the commission had recommended that should be removed.

Tell us about that monument and what the decision to restore it suggests.

- Right.

So I wrote about this in "Robert E. Lee and Me."

I think it's the cruelest, most racist monument in the country I've ever seen.

It has an overweight, enslaved woman, a Black woman with a tear in her eye, grasping the child of her Confederate enslaver, who's in a uniform, to show that the enslaved supported the Confederate war.

There's another enslaved figure on the other side, and it says... There's a picture of the Constitution on there saying that the white Southerners, and remember, sometimes when we say Southerners, we forget that we really mean white Southerners, that the white South went to war to protect the Constitution, when, in fact, they went to destroy it.

And it's a pro-slavery, pro-secession, pro-segregation monument.

And that's why we had it removed.

In fact, one of my colleagues on the commission, when she looked at it, went, "Sweet Jesus."

She just had never seen anything so awful.

So, it was really terrible.

And Secretary of Defense Hegseth has said, "We're going to put it back," but it's gonna take two years to get it in shape 'cause it was so destroyed by the elements in over 100 years.

He says he is gonna put it back.

So we'll have to see if they can get it in shape to put it back.

But we will see just how awful, how racist that monument is.

- You know, Ty, you mentioned the Secretary of Defense.

I believe that he called the naming commission, and I quote here, "woke lemmings."

How do you even respond to something like that?

- Yeah.

Well, one, I think the idea that four flag and general officers and three Republicans are some woke group is just crazy.

The thing is, we weren't created out of whole cloth.

The United States Congress did it in a supermajority and told us what to do, which is to remove everything that commemorated the Confederates because it did not reflect the values of America.

The second thing I would tell you about whether we were woke lemmings is not only who we are, but how we did it, which is that we went everywhere.

And he would somehow think that by changing this, we're changing history.

No, we're changing commemoration.

Every year at West Point, the Battle of Gettysburg is gonna be taught.

Every year, Pickett's gonna charge.

Every year, Lee's gonna lose.

That's not gonna change.

But who we commemorate reflects our values.

It reflects what inspires us.

It reflects the greatest part of Americans.

And so we should change that.

Remember, I don't know if you've ever flown through Idlewild Airport.

Well, that's what JFK Airport in New York used to be called.

Maybe you've flown through Reagan Airport.

That changed.

There was a statue of George III in Manhattan in 1775.

We change who we commemorate when it no longer reflects the values that we hold dear.

And the values of the Confederacy, slavery, treason, killing U.S.

Army soldiers, those no longer reflect us.

So I hear what Secretary of Defense Hegseth says, but he is wrong.

They're no woke lemmings.

He just needs to read a little more history.

- Ty, the work that you do is so profoundly important.

We thank you for sharing some of it with us today.

The book is "A Promise Delivered."

It's worth the read.

That is all the time we have this week.

But if you wanna know more about the show, you can find us on social media or visit salve.edu/pellcenter, where you can always catch up on previous episodes.

For G. Wayne Miller, I'm Jim Ludes, asking you to join us again next time for more "Story in the Public Square."

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