Fort Gordon & Distraction Tricks

As you continue to read The Naming Commission's report, the common theme is that all these Southerners were evil & therefore the question of voluntary service never needs to be addressed, despite the requirement from Congress. John B. Gordon left behind many writings and speeches because he became a politician after the war. The commission had the opportunity to refute his ideas--but they didn't even try.

The paragraph on Gordon reminds you that he owned slave but concedes that even without a military education he performed well during the war. But before you develop a positive opinion about him, he opposed Reconstruction policies. (pg. 28) Which policies? They don't say! Was it Lincoln's policies? Johnson's policies? Congressional policies? Is the committee not aware that there were different Reconstruction policies that were evolving as events continued to take shape? Despite a historical advisor from Yale as a resource, the commission makes statements that are so simplistic that it appears no research was performed. And of course, once again, Gordon's "voluntary" service is not determined--it is merely assumed. If the committee looked closer, Gordon discusses how slavery played a role as a political dispute in the early stages of secession.

However, Gordon clearly states in his 1903 book:

"The South maintained with the depth of religious conviction that the Union formed under the Constitution was a Union of consent and not of force ; that the original States were not the creatures but the creators of the Union; that these States had gained their independence, their freedom, and their sovereignty from the mother country, and had not surrendered these on entering the Union; that by the express terms of the Constitution all rights and powers not delegated were reserved to the States; and the South challenged the North to find one trace of authority in that Constitution for invading and coercing a sovereign State."

Did Gordon hold these same views in 1861? If he did, then his service was not voluntary. Selective Service (the draft) is legal in the United States, even with the 13th Amendment, because courts ruled that a citizen owes his sovereign certain duties. The Naming Commission, under the terms Congress set, does not need to prove Gordon right or wrong: it merely needs to establish its standards for "voluntary" service.

Moreover, these small introductions are designed to make individuals like John B. Gordon look evil so you won't ask these important questions.

Gordon preached reunion and said very fond words for Union Generals, in 1887 he declared.

"It was my melancholy pleasure to take part in the funeral honors paid to the North's greatest hero, General U. S. Grant. Every soldier and citizen who took part in that greatest pageant of modern times; every child who, with loving hands, placed flowers upon his bier; and every stone that shall hereafter be placed in the monument to his memory, will but add to northern manhood and northern character."

Imagine if The Naming Commission had the courtesy to speak of John B. Gordon in the same terms? If they did, we may actually have a united nation.

In the end, the biases and incomplete findings are not the concerns of congress: the concern is whether John B. Gordon voluntarily served in the Confederate Army. The Naming Commission's report is incomplete & therefore the base cannot be renamed.