Pete Hegseth changes Fort Liberty back to Fort Bragg after Army’s attempt to erase Confederate names

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced Monday night that Fort Liberty would be again named Fort Bragg – but with a twist. 

In 2023, Fort Bragg – located outside of Fayetteville, North Carolina – was renamed Fort Liberty, so that it would no longer be named after a Confederate general. 

The base was originally named Fort Bragg in 1918 after Confederate Gen. Braxton Bragg. 

That Bragg was a slaveowner – but he was also so inept that he helped the Confederacy lose the Civil War to U.S. forces. 

In a Pentagon release Monday night, Fort Bragg will now be named after Roland L. Bragg. 

A Pentagon spokesperson decribed Bragg as a World War II fighter ‘who earned the Silver Star and Purple Heart for his exceptional courage during the Battle of the Bulge.’ 

Hegseth signed a memorandum outlining the name change while flying overnight  to Stuttgart, Germany. 

‘That’s right, Bragg is back,’ Hegseth said in a video released by the Pentagon.

In the video, Hegseth doesn’t mention that the Bragg the base will be named after has changed. 

Hegseth is making good on a campaign promise from President Donald Trump. 

During a trip to Fayetteville, North Carolina, in October, Trump promised to restore Fort Liberty’s name to Fort Bragg. 

‘So, here’s what we do,’ Trump said. ‘We get elected,’ and then, ‘I’m doing it.’  

In the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd in May 2020 and the subsequent Black Lives Matter protests that broke out, the military started making moves to rid bases of names of Confederate officers, who had sought to preserve slavery during the Civil War. 

During Trump’s 2020 reelection bid against then former Vice President Joe Biden, Trump dug his feet in and resisted these calls to change. 

Trump made the issue about preserving American culture instead of maintaining hurtful terms related to the country’s racist past. 

Weeks after Floyd’s death, Trump announced that he ‘will not even consider’ renaming military bases named after members of the Confederacy.

‘These Monumental and very Powerful Bases have become part of a Great American Heritage, and a history of Winning, Victory, and Freedom,’ Trump tweeted. ‘The United States of America trained and deployed our HEROES on these Hallowed Grounds, and won two World Wars,’ the president continued.

‘Therefore, my Administration will not even consider the renaming of these Magnificent and Fabled Military Installations,’ Trump said in June 2020. 

Trump went so far that in December 2020 – after he lost the election to Biden – he still vetoed the massive military spending bill because it contained the provision to rename the bases. 

Trump didn’t buy an argument made by former CIA Director, Gen. David Petraeus, that American bases shouldn’t be named after military members who fought against the U.S. – the basic definition of anyone involved in the Confederacy.  

But in a way, the original Bragg did the United States a favor. 

Historians have said Bragg ‘did as much as any Confederate general to lose the war’ because of his string of military defeats.