Lawsuit sought to restore monuments honoring a Confederate officer

President Gerald Ford recognized Black History Month at a celebration of the Bicentennial in 1976. This month's article is written to underscore the continuing and persistent challenges faced by Americans as we deal with the horrible legacy of slavery following the American Civil War.

In 2023, the National Ranger Memorial Foundation sued the federal government, contending it should not have removed the name of Colonel John Singleton Mosby from the National Ranger Memorial located at Fort Moore in Georgia. The lawsuit asked a federal court to restore Mosby's name to two monuments in the Memorial. That federal lawsuit will be explored here.

Who was John Singleton Mosby?

Most of the information about John Singleton Mosby was found in the book "Gray Ghost" by James A. Ramage. Mosby became a lawyer in 1855. In 1860, he paid taxes on one slave.

Just prior to the Civil War, Mosby told a friend that should war break out, he would fight for the Union. But when war came, he couldn't bring himself to fight against his home state of Virginia. Mosby had no military training and early in the war, he had no commission. Around 1863, he became a colonel and reported to Robert E. Lee.

Throughout 1863, 1864, and until the war ended in 1865, Mosby led a band of from 200 to 400 men. Some called them Mosby's Rangers. The tactics Mosby developed were akin to what is called guerilla warfare today.

Mosby and his men masqueraded as Union soldiers and constantly tried to frighten real Union soldiers, approaching Union Posts with loud screams. They disrupted Union supply and communications lines. They used hit and run tactics and surprise attacks, quickly fading into the countryside where they blended in with the local population to evade capture. Their goal was to distract the Union Army from fighting the war. In a lecture years after the war, Mosby said the object of war is not to kill people but to disable the adversary.

After the war, Mosby settled back into his law practice, changed political parties and supported Ulysses S. Grant for President. Mosby organized a group known as "Grant conservatives," targeting disgruntled Virginians. This was a time when Democrats condemned the Republican party as the party of Black people. According to author Ramage, Mosby did not want to be associated with African Americans, saying he was for "our people," meaning the White people of Virginia.

Mosby worked for three Republican administrations. He helped elect President Grant. President Rutherford B. Hayes appointed Mosby as U.S. Consul to Hong Kong. Under President William McKinley, he worked in the Department of the Interior and as an assistant Attorney General.

Background to the lawsuit

On Oct. 7, 2022, then Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin ordered implementation of the findings of the Naming Commission, established by Congress in Public Law 116-283. The Commission's mission was to provide removal and renaming recommendations for all Department of Defense [DoD] items that commemorate the Confederate States of America or any person who served voluntarily with the Confederate States of America.

Using the word "haphazard," the Commission reported that the naming of some DoD assets had to do with faulty memories about the Civil War in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, rather than with any historical acts actually committed by their namesakes. The Commission's report says that White Southerners advocated for names they had been raised to revere, such as Benning, Bragg, Gordon, Hill, Hood, Lee, Pickett, Polk and Rucker. According to the Commission's findings, in preparing for World War I and World War II, while hastily naming bases and DoD assets, the Army often deferred to local sensitivities and regional connections of a namesake.

Fort Benning was named after Henry Lewis Benning, a former Confederate General. Prior to his military service, he served as a justice on the Georgia Supreme Court, where he authored Padelford v. Savannah (1854) 14 Ga. 438. In that opinion, he stated: "The Supreme Court of Georgia is co-equal and co-ordinate with the Supreme Court of the U.S. and therefore the latter cannot give the former an order, or make for it a precedent." In 1860, Benning led a walkout of the Georgia delegation to the Democratic National Convention when the national party refused to put a plank supporting slavery into its platform.

If you watched the film "We Were Soldiers Once. . .And Young," based on a book by Hal Moore and war correspondent Joe Galloway, you already know why Fort Benning, in Georgia, was renamed Fort Moore. Moore's troops, who were sent to Vietnam from Fort Benning, greatly respected him. He was like a father to them.

Lieutenant General Hal Moore commanded the forces in the first major battle in Vietnam in November 1965, the Battle of Ia Drang Valley. An American battalion was ambushed and was in such close quarters with the enemy that the U.S. was unable to use air and artillery support. The Americans suffered a casualty rate of over 50%. Galloway would later write it was the battle that convinced Ho Chi Minh he could win.

The renaming of the fort included not only General Moore, but his wife Julia Moore. At the time of the Ia Drang Campaign, the Army had not yet set up an adequate system of notifying the next of kin of battlefield fatalities. Telegrams were given to taxicab drivers for delivery. Julia Moore took it upon herself to accompany the cab drivers who delivered the telegrams and assisted in the death notifications, grieving with the widows and families of men killed in battle. She attended the funerals of those who fell under her husband's command. She was instrumental in prompting the Army to immediately set up notification teams consisting of a uniformed officer and a chaplain.

In addition to renaming the fort, the Army removed two items from the Ranger Memorial at Fort Moore. One was a Ranger Walk paver and the other a Ranger Hall of Fame wall panel. Both items were inscribed with the name of Confederate Colonel John Singleton Mosby.

Allegations in the complaint

The complaint filed in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Georgia in September 2023 by the National Ranger Memorial Foundation [NRMF] has these allegations.

NRMF has approximately 6,000 members. Fort Moore houses the U.S. Army's Airborne and Ranger Training Brigade, which serves as the Army's premier training center for U.S. Army Rangers.

In 1993, NRMF proposed to the Army the erection of the U.S. Army Infantry Memorial Walk for placement at what was then Fort Benning, now Fort Moore. All construction and maintenance for the memorial would be at no expense to the Army. The Secretary of the Army accepted the gift, noting: "Your recognition of past, present, and future Rangers is an admirable gesture. The Walk will represent a lasting tribute to all Rangers."

Also at what is now Fort Moore is a Ranger Hall of Fame [RHOF] that has the sole objective of acknowledging and safeguarding the contributions of America's most distinguished Rangers. John Singleton Mosby was an original member of the RHOF. His name was inscribed on a granite paver contained within what is now called "Ranger Walk."

The complaint goes on to state that Mosby was "a staunch abolitionist" [despite biographer Ramage's statement that Mosby paid taxes on a slave in 1860].

NRMF alleged that many of the military and battlefield tactics employed by Mosby are still taught and utilized by Rangers today. In 1868, President Andrew Johnson pardoned all persons who fought in the Confederate Army.

On April 15, 2023, the Garrison Commander of Fort Moore requested the removal of Mosby's name from the various parts of the Memorial. In June 2023, Mosby's inscriptions were removed. According to NRMF, removal of the Mosby inscription on the RHOF wall panel and removal of paver with Mosby's name was violative of the executive clemency actions of President Andrew Johnson.

NRMF asserted in its complaint that the DoD violated the Administrative Procedure Act by removing the Mosby items, or in the alterative that the Naming Commission violated the Act by recommending their removal. NRMF further sought declaratory relief that the Mosby removals violated § 370 of the National Defense Appropriations Act. It also sought a declaration that the removal of the Mosby items violated the terms of the conditional gift of the Ranger Memorial to the Army.

The court order

U.S. District Judge Clay D. Land dismissed NRMF's action on Dec. 16, 2024. With regard to the claims against the Naming Commission, the court found them moot because it had no subject matter jurisdiction over the Commission as it was disbanded long before the NRMF action was filed. The court concluded the DoD defendants did not exceed their statutory authority by removing the Mosby items. As to NRMF's argument that it made a conditional gift to the Army, the court reviewed the documents attached to the complaint and concluded the gift was not conditional.

The court concluded: "Mosby's ranger tactics and methods may be worthy of admiration and respect in some quarters. But other Americans may genuinely conclude that the development of them as an officer of the Confederate States of America in an open rebellion against the United States adds a treasonous taint that overcomes the appropriateness of any tribute to the effectiveness of some specific maneuver or survival technique. It is beyond reasonable dispute that the United States Congress, consisting of the duly elected representatives of the American people, has the authority to decide whether Mosby should be memorialized and honored on a United States military installation. Congress has determined that he should not be, and the Court finds that its determination was properly implemented by the Secretary of Defense."

Conclusion

Critics of memorials of the Confederacy refer to them as active racism. In a Rand report, Thomas S. Szayna states: "Some may argue that statues to political leaders of the Confederacy may be difficult to justify but that statues of Confederate generals like Lee, Stonewall Jackson, or Jeb Stuart celebrate the far-reaching military skills they demonstrated, thus they are celebrated for their contributions to the U.S. military profession and so the presence of such statues, especially at U.S. military bases, is justified." 

Szayna responds to such arguments, which are similar to the allegations in the just-dismissed NTMF lawsuit: "The argument is invalid, because the Confederate generals demonstrated their military skills for a cause--the retention of slavery--that was immoral and widely seen as such already in the mid-19th century. As an analogy, German generals in World War II, such as Erich von Manstein, Heinz Guderian, and Erwin Rommel, demonstrated impressive military skills but they fought for an odious cause and there are no monuments to them in Germany today. Military historians can argue about the tactical skills of Rommel or Jackson, and military officers can learn from the battlefield maneuvers that Rommel or Jackson conducted, but neither one deserves a monument in a public space."