23. Why the US military dedicated installations to former enemies of the United States
Following the Civil War American troops remained in the South as an occupying Army throughout the period known as Reconstruction. Throughout the region, resentment against the occupying forces festered. When the last occupying forces withdrew from the South in 1877, divisive issues remained. Southern legislatures enacted the laws ushering in the era of Jim Crow. Backlash against the North emerged in the revision of history known as the Lost Cause, as Confederate leaders in the military and politics became lionized as heroic, noble opponents against a tyrannical and overreaching federal government.
Symbols of the Confederacy became symbols of freedom in much of the white South, and opposition to the United States continued. World War 1 began at the height of the Lost Cause era. In order to establish reconciliation with white southern politicians and civic leaders at the outset of the First World War, US Army officials established Camps recognizing the Confederate military leaders. By then many had become mythologized as fighters for freedom and liberty, the true defenders of the values expressed in the Declaration of Independence. In the interim between the World Wars, the Lost Cause gained acceptance throughout the North as well as in the Old South, and leaders such as Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson were judged on the their achievements in battle, rather than their rejection of their oaths to defend the United States.