I've always thought that naming military bases and erecting statues of confederate soldiers was more about reconciliation after a terrible war. However, some of these recognize people who went on to become actively involved with the KKK and denial of God given rights to Black Americans. I am a Republican, when the party is conservative. FWIW, I think the answer rests in State sovereignty. Federal military bases should be renamed, it doesn't make sense to honor treasonous generals. However, States should decide on their own whether they want to honor these dead Confederate officers.
In the days before the war, you were a Virginian, New Yorker, a Marylander, what have you, and owed your first loyalty to the State you were from.
After all, in the days before the idea of a
Federal Government was twisted to be a
National Government, the State was the most meaningful and large of the governments to which you would answer. Your State even had two representatives, elected by the Legislature, to represent its interests in the Federal Congress and was a sovereign entity unto itself.
To turn against your State was the Treason. Every dog in town would have been set upon any man who was an officer in the Union Army who came marching into his 'hometown' in the South.
Lee faced a hard decision. A West Point Graduate with a record of military service in the Federal Army he had to decide whether to serve the land of his birth, where his family lived and his heritage was solid, versus serving an Army which would invade and conquer his homeland.
Far from treason, he made the only decision he could.
