Fort Slavery, CA

Yesterday Susan and I returned from a visit with friends in Fort Bragg, about ten miles north of Mendocino. I had commented to our friends on the absurdity of naming a California town for Braxton Bragg.  Bragg was a famous traitor,  a famously vile personality, a famously failed Confederate general and the owner of 105 enslaved human beings he worked like robots on his plantation. 

Today I opened my newspaper to see a headline stating that a state senator has authored a bill that would strip the names of civil war traitors from state public property. Unfortunately it will leave the names of political entities like towns untouched.

Fort Bragg was founded and named before the Civil War. Bragg had been a minor hero of the Mexican War, in which the future generals of the Civil War took California from Mexico at gun point. President Polk wanted good ports on the Pacific. In the later Civil War, California supported the Union, but that support came mostly from the southern end of the state, where many Latinos, including the last Mexican governor, Pio Pico, were partly black.  Pico managed  Lincoln's re-election campaign in the state. The northern half of California housed a great many traitors, and their descendants, many of them meth heads, are likely to cling to the name of the nasty-tempered slave-owner known for fruitless head-on charges into fortified American positions. Innovative military leaders like General Grant were grimly pleased to hear that on the field of battle their opponent would be Bragg. Victory was at hand.

My suggestion is that Fort Bragg be renamed Fort Arnold. That's a compromise. Benedict Arnold fought half the Revolutionary War on our side and half for the British. He wasn't all bad.