The A&P in Fort A.P. Hill
Invoking Black soldiers to restore the names of Confederate army bases
With all that’s happening in the US news these days, it’s possible you missed that US military bases once named for Confederate soldiers that have recently been renamed are reverting back to their original names…kind of.
To bring us all up to speed, at the beginning of 2021 congressional legislation passed calling for the renaming of US military institutions honoring Confederates. Trump tried to veto this legislation during his final weeks in office, but his veto was overturned by votes in the House and the Senate. Congressional representatives recognized that having military bases named after Confederate soldiers, who’d rebelled against the United States government and fought to preserve slavery, was problematic for today’s US military.
One result of this legislation was that Fort Lee, named for Confederate general Robert E. Lee, was redesignated as Fort Gregg-Adams, honoring both Arthur J. Gregg, a service member whose career spanned over thirty years and who was the first Black person to achieve the rank of lieutenant general in the US army, and Charity Adams Earley, the first Black woman to be appointed an officer in the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps. (Early, who helped solve the mail backlog crisis during WWII, was portrayed by Kerry Washington in 2024 film The Six Triple Eight.)
Recently, the Trump administration has issued orders to revert the names of military bases like Fort Gregg-Adams back to their original names, only in keeping with the current law, the persons being honored by the designation have changed from the original Confederate soldiers to someone else who served in the US military with the same last name. For example, Fort Lee is supposedly no longer named for Robert E. Lee, but is instead named after Private Fitz Lee, who earned a Medal of Honor in the Spanish American War. Private Lee was part of the Buffalo soldiers, a primarily Black army unit, and it is probably just a coincidence that he shares his name with Fitzhugh ‘Fitz’ Lee, Robert E. Lee’s nephew, who earned the rank of major general in the Confederate Army and later served as the governor of Virginia.
Fort A.P. Hill
A.P. Hill was originally named for Ambrose Powell Hill Jr., a career army officer, who was educated at West Point, served in the Mexican-American and Seminole Wars, and then during the Civil War fought for the Confederate army. He rose to the rank of lieutenant general and was killed shortly before the end of the war.
In 2023, as a result of the implementation of the Congressional legislation, Fort A.P. Hill was renamed Fort Walker in honor of Dr. Mary Walker, a Civil War surgeon. She was taken prisoner during the war after crossing enemy lines to treat the wounded. She earned a Medal of Honor for her service, the only woman who has been given that honor. After the war she supported the women’s suffrage movement (and rocked the heck out of this pantsuit):
As of June 2025, Dr. Walker is out, and the fort is back to being referred to as A.P. Hill. Apparently, the A.P. was a critical part of the name, because the re-renamed fort now honors three individuals: Bruce Anderson, Robert A. Pinn, and Edward Hill.
Like the Confederate general A.P. Hill, Bruce Anderson, Robert Pinn, and Edward Hill all served in the Civil War, granted on the Union side. Edward Hill was white. Both Bruce Anderson and Robert Pinn were Black. All three men earned Medals of Honor—Hill for leading a brigade skirmish line in the Battle of Cold Harbor, Anderson for volunteering to advance at the head of an attack and destroy palisades in the Second Battle of Fort Fisher, and Robert Pinn for taking command of his company after his officers had been killed or wounded in the Battle of Chaffin's Farm.
The Justification
During a recent congressional hearing, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth defended the decision to revert the base names saying soldiers and veterans have a tie to the bases where they served that was disrupted by the renaming (i.e., a soldier who served at Fort Lee wants it to retain the name they knew the fort as during their time there).
This reminded me of my recent post about Dartmouth’s Kappa Kappa Kappa fraternity. They changed their name once because of the association with the KKK but then reverted to Kappa Kappa Kappa because alumni weren’t giving like they used to. Eventually, it was changed again.
Here at The Silent Sod we often ask questions about whose memory matters and highlight how the memory of the dead is in the hands of the living. Hegseth defended the re-renaming saying that’s what people who have served in the military want. But we also have to ask whether this is what Bruce Anderson, Robert Pinn, and Edward Hill would have wanted. What would these men who fought to preserve the Union and end slavery think about their names being used to recreate the name of their wartime enemy A.P. Hill? Does it matter what they would think since they’re dead?
I recommend watching the clip I posted above featuring Senator King. He represents Maine but grew up in Virginia, where he says Robert E. Lee was revered. He had this to say to Hegseth’s claims that renaming the bases the first time had been an attempt to erase history.
“We’re not erasing history, Mr. Secretary. We’re recognizing history and recognizing that mistakes have been made in this country, the greatest of all was the civil war, where people took up arms against their country on behalf of the institution of slavery, and to continue the practice of recognizing those people and honoring them by the naming of these bases is, I believe, an insult to the people of the United States.” -Senator Angus King
I find it ironic that they are making claims that the name changes "erase" history when we know how much history gets erased!