The Naming Commission Comes for West Point

Created by the fiscal 2021 national defense authorization act, the Naming Commission’s duties included recommending procedures for renaming Department of Defense assets “to prevent commemoration of the Confederate States of America or any person who served voluntarily” with them. While nine U.S. Army posts named for Confederates have received the most attention, the commission’s “remit” extends much further.

The ramifications of the above remain to be seen, but already the U.S. Military Academy at West Point is undergoing a (shameful) transformation: its “Reconciliation Plaza” has begun to be dismantled and will soon be altered beyond recognition. The plaza, consisting of stone “markers” arranged on the academy’s grounds, was presented by the West Point Class of 1961 on the occasion of their fortieth reunion in 2001. Exactly a century prior to the 1961 members of the Long Gray Line, the school graduated two classes in 1861 – one in May, the other in June. Graduates served in both the Northern and Southern armies.

The precise purpose of Reconciliation Plaza was to “commemorate the reconciliation between North and South and dedicate this memorial to our classmates who died in service to our nation” [emphasis added]. The latter intent was traditional at military schools (including my alma mater, the Virginia Military Institute), and was non-controversial.

Stephen Dodson Ramseur, who had sustained multiple wounds in battle prior to the October 1864 Battle of Cedar Creek – and, at 27, was the youngest West Point graduate to be promoted to major general – had just had his second horse shot from under him when he was hit in the lungs, a mortal wounding. Learning of his condition and subsequent capture by Union forces, several of Ramseur’s friends from West Point “came to his side,” among them his close friend, George Armstrong Custer. Ramseur, whose first wedding anniversary was days away, had just learned of the birth of his daughter.

Astoundingly, the Commission found the depiction of these acts to be within its remit and unacceptable to remain in place. Indeed, at West Point’s Reconciliation Plaza. What Purity-Tested entity determines the giving of water to a wounded soldier, and the comforting of a dying soldier by his friends, to be unacceptable depictions of reconciliation – particularly among the very soldiers who fought one another honorably on the field of battle? If the actual participants themselves were able to reconcile to such a degree during or immediately after the heat of battle, who in a later generation dares to dismiss and hold in contempt such acts of kindness?

The Naming Commission Comes for West Point
By Forrest L. Marion
West Point – flickr
Created by the fiscal 2021 national defense authorization act, the Naming Commission’s duties included recommending procedures for renaming Department of Defense assets “to prevent commemoration of the Confederate States of America or any person who served voluntarily” with them. While nine U.S. Army posts named for Confederates have received the most attention, the commission’s “remit” extends much further. In fact, a logical end point to its (Diversity-Equity-Inclusion-inspired) work is nowhere to be found:

The Commission recognizes that [defense] assets commemorating the Confederacy or an individual who voluntarily served with the Confederacy will continue to be identified after the submission of the Commission plan. The Commission recommends the base rename, remove, or modify any such assets identified in the future [emphasis added].

The ramifications of the above remain to be seen, but already the U.S. Military Academy at West Point is undergoing a (shameful) transformation: its “Reconciliation Plaza” has begun to be dismantled and will soon be altered beyond recognition. The plaza, consisting of stone “markers” arranged on the academy’s grounds, was presented by the West Point Class of 1961 on the occasion of their fortieth reunion in 2001. Exactly a century prior to the 1961 members of the Long Gray Line, the school graduated two classes in 1861 – one in May, the other in June. Graduates served in both the Northern and Southern armies.

The precise purpose of Reconciliation Plaza was to “commemorate the reconciliation between North and South and dedicate this memorial to our classmates who died in service to our nation” [emphasis added]. The latter intent was traditional at military schools (including my alma mater, the Virginia Military Institute), and was non-controversial.

Not so the former. The markers, duly noted by the Commission, depicted “acts and events between 1861 and 1913 to serve as examples of reconciliation.” But given the atmosphere in official Washington since the fruitless extremism-in-the-ranks hunt in 2021, such a purpose is suspect, especially if white men were behind it.

At least two markers or exhibits described by the Commission deserve particular attention. They depicted the following acts or events:

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“Marker 4 portrays a Confederate soldier providing water to a U.S. Soldier wounded by Confederate guns”; and,

“Marker 6 commemorates Confederate [Major General] Stephen Ramseur and two U.S. Army classmates from West Point who comforted him as he lay dying after a surprise attack by Ramseur’s army failed.”

Stephen Dodson Ramseur, who had sustained multiple wounds in battle prior to the October 1864 Battle of Cedar Creek – and, at 27, was the youngest West Point graduate to be promoted to major general – had just had his second horse shot from under him when he was hit in the lungs, a mortal wounding. Learning of his condition and subsequent capture by Union forces, several of Ramseur’s friends from West Point “came to his side,” among them his close friend, George Armstrong Custer. Ramseur, whose first wedding anniversary was days away, had just learned of the birth of his daughter.

Astoundingly, the Commission found the depiction of these acts to be within its remit and unacceptable to remain in place. Indeed, at West Point’s Reconciliation Plaza. What Purity-Tested entity determines the giving of water to a wounded soldier, and the comforting of a dying soldier by his friends, to be unacceptable depictions of reconciliation – particularly among the very soldiers who fought one another honorably on the field of battle? If the actual participants themselves were able to reconcile to such a degree during or immediately after the heat of battle, who in a later generation dares to dismiss and hold in contempt such acts of kindness?

Commemorate is but the latest politically weaponized entry in the lexicon of those who “love all words that devour.” In the 2021 defense act’s four main, relevant paragraphs in Section 370, some form of the word “commemorate” appears in each – and is prohibitive of the Confederacy and Confederates. Without debating the merits, and mostly demerits, of Congress’s mandate, it is enough to return to the Commission’s own words. The primary purpose of the Class of 1961’s gift to West Point was to “commemorate the reconciliation between North and South,” which the Commission quoted [emphasis added].

The Commission may have wished otherwise, but commemorating the Confederacy or Confederates was not within the Class of 1961’s stated purpose. The Commission’s accurate quotation of the purpose in its report is at odds with – and severely undermines – its own recommendations.

The Civil War, perhaps more than anything else, is a perfect exemplar of American Exceptionalism.

We are thr only nation in history to weather a civil war and come out thr other side intact and stronger.  There were no mass executions of traitirs, no desecration of the graves of thr Confederates, no humiliation of the defeated.

Lincoln and the rest understood that bringing the former Confederates back into the fold as full Americans was the only way for America to remain whole and peaceful.  America could not exist if the Confederates were relegated to second class citizens.

He said as much in his Second Inaugural Address.

With malice toward none with charity for all with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right let us strive on to finish the work we are in to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan ~ to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

Vandalizing Reconciliation Plaza to discredit the Confederacy undoes more than a century and a half of Lincoln’s intent.

I am going quote from George Orwell’s 1984:

Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.

And

There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always— do not forget this, Winston— always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless.
If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face— forever.

These wokies are doing both simultaneously.

They are rewriting history and they are doing it for the enjoyment of trampling an enemy who is helpless.

The Confederacy is long dead and no one will stand up for them, so they get to pretend they are doing a noble deed fighting the memory of slavery, when what they are really doing is picking open an old wound.

They are going to reignite the Civil War by desecrating the memory of unity and reconciliation at its end.