How did the United States Army’s Fort Benning come to bear the name of a man who advocated for war against the United States and recruited white Georgia soldiers to fight for the continued enslavement of Black people—a man who served as an officer in the rebelling forces, and who never served in the United States military?
Embracing the Lost Cause
When Georgia officials successfully lobbied to make Columbus, Georgia, the site of a U.S. Army installation in 1918, the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer reported that the existing Camp Benning—a site that had been hosting organized gatherings of Confederate veterans since the 1890s—would serve as a “sub-camp” and the new base would adopt its name (becoming “Fort” Benning to indicate its “permanent character”).
At the time, President Woodrow Wilson and other national politicians were embracing the “Lost Cause” message in the name of national unity, even as Black Americans faced segregation, Jim Crow laws, and racial terror lynching throughout the country.
Establishing Southern military bases crowned with Confederate names symbolized that supposed reconciliation, while dishonoring and deeply offending Black Americans. In a June 1917 editorial, the Philadelphia Tribune, a Black newspaper, criticized a recent Confederate veterans’ parade held in Washington, D.C.: “Think of it. No apologies to make for trying to destroy this grand old Union of States. No apologies to make for the needless sacrifice of precious lives.”
But Confederate nostalgia had been building for several decades. The resurgence of white supremacy that followed the end of the Reconstruction era in 1877 also sparked fondness for the Confederate “Lost Cause.”
The 1890s brought the formation of groups like the United Daughters of the Confederacy and Sons of Confederate Veterans, the dedication of public Confederate memorials, and efforts to gather surviving Confederate forces.
On December 11, 1895, the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer reported that several hundred former soldiers in Georgia’s Muscogee County area had established a Confederate veterans group and named their organization Camp Benning ”in honor of that distinguished man and gallant Confederate soldier General Henry L. Benning.”
For the local white community, Camp Benning soon became a prominent remembrance site and institution commemorating and celebrating an era characterized by the enslavement of Black people.
On January 15, 1900, the Atlanta Constitution announced that, “as usual,” the United Daughters of Confederacy would be joining with Camp Benning to mark the birthday of General Robert E. Lee (who died in 1870). “It is planned to have as many of the school children as is possible present at the exercises,” the article explained, “as it is wished to teach them about the greatness and genius of the south’s great general.”
Fighting to Prevent the Abolition of Slavery
Camp Benning was named after Henry L. Benning, a Georgia lawyer and enslaver who began advocating for the state to leave the Union more than a decade before the start of the Civil War.
Once Georgia did secede, Benning traveled and gave speeches urging other Southern states to follow suit. His motivations were not ambiguous.
“What was the reason that induced Georgia to take the step of secession?” Benning asked in an 1861 speech urging Virginia lawmakers to join the Confederacy. He continued:
This reason may be summed up in one single proposition. It was a conviction, a deep conviction on the part of Georgia, that a separation from the North was the only thing that could prevent the abolition of her slavery. This conviction, sir, was the main cause.
Dishonoring Black Americans in 2025
Perhaps it is easy to understand why Confederate veterans reuniting in Columbus chose to name their camp after one of the city’s most prominent pro-slavery Confederate leaders. But what does it mean for the U.S. military to continue that legacy?
For decades, Fort Benning’s roots as a camp for reunited Confederate veterans remained reflected in its name, its location on an 1,800-acre former plantation, and the plantation mansion’s use as the commanding general’s residence.
In 2021, a Congressional Naming Commission was organized to review and recommend name changes to military assets associated with former insurrectionists who advocated war against the United States. The Commission’s report included a recommendation to remove Benning’s name and, in 2023, the base was rededicated as Fort Moore.1 Fort Moore was named to honor Lt. Gen. Hal Moore and his wife, Julia Compton Moore.
Less than two years later, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the base renamed Fort Benning.
Because a 2020 federal law banning the naming of U.S. military assets after anyone who fought with Confederate forces remains in effect, Hegseth’s order claimed Fort Benning now honors someone new.
Fred Benning served briefly in the U.S. Army as a corporal during World War I and received the Distinguished Service Cross for actions while deployed in France. Fred Benning left the military and returned to Nebraska, where he operated a bakery for nearly 40 years and served as a town mayor before his death in 1974.
He is one of more than 6,000 soldiers to receive the Distinguished Service Cross during World War I and one of more than 13,000 total recipients. Little in Fred Benning’s biography suggests him as a likely namesake for a military base––except, of course, his last name.
Using Cpl. Fred Benning as a loophole, the recent order to resurrect the Fort Benning name is an order to re-establish the U.S. military’s ties to nostalgia for the Confederate traitors whose names were previously adopted.
“Pestilence and Famine” Over Black Elected Officials
“By the time the North shall have attained the power, the black race will be in a large majority, and then we will have black governors, black legislatures, black juries, black everything,” Henry L. Benning warned Virginia lawmakers as the Civil War loomed ahead. “Suppose they elevated [abolitionist Charles] Sumner to the Presidency?” he continued.
Suppose they elevated Fred Douglas, your escaped slave, to the Presidency? And there are hundreds of thousands at the North who would do this for the purpose of humiliating and insulting the South. What would be your position in such an event? I say give me pestilence and famine sooner than that.
More than 160 years ago, on the verge of war, Henry L. Benning was willing to abandon the nation’s democratic ideals, and even plunge the country into peril and destruction, rather than sacrifice white control of America’s political and economic institutions.
Today, national leaders’ thinly veiled effort to restore Benning’s name to this Georgia military installation is about far more than just a name.
This act restores and empowers a dangerous historical narrative that sanitizes slavery, condones treason and war against the United States, and imagines white supremacy as an acceptable and honorable component of America’s greatness.