Military Installation Names. What they were, and are, and how they got there. Part 3.
We've just done two posts in this three part series on the naming of military posts, starting off with the controversy, although there doesn't seem to be that much of of a controversy, over the suggestion that military posts in the South named after Confederate generals ought to be renamed.
We eclectically started off our post on Southern Posts with this entry, which wasn't in the South.
Why did we do that?
Well, at that time this series was conceived of as a single post. But by the time we had all the text we were interested in posting, the post was so long, as Part 2 no doubt shows, that it no longer made much sense to do so. But it still makes sense to ask the questions we intended to, and those had to do with why posts were named what they were.
It probably shouldn't surprise anyone, but there are Army Regulations. . . now, for naming posts. The more surprising things is that this hasn't always been the case. The Army's Center For Military History sums up the story, which they likely are asked about a fair amount, particularly now, this way:
We eclectically started off our post on Southern Posts with this entry, which wasn't in the South.
Why did we do that?
Well, at that time this series was conceived of as a single post. But by the time we had all the text we were interested in posting, the post was so long, as Part 2 no doubt shows, that it no longer made much sense to do so. But it still makes sense to ask the questions we intended to, and those had to do with why posts were named what they were.
It probably shouldn't surprise anyone, but there are Army Regulations. . . now, for naming posts. The more surprising things is that this hasn't always been the case. The Army's Center For Military History sums up the story, which they likely are asked about a fair amount, particularly now, this way:
Naming Army Installations
The naming of posts started as a tradition when the Army was young. In the Continental Army, many posts and camps were named by the commander or supervising engineer for high ranking officers, including those still living; for example, Fort Washington on the New York and Fort Lee on the New Jersey sides of the Hudson in 1776, Fort Putnam at West Point, or Fort Mifflin below Philadelphia on the Pennsylvania side of the Delaware. Forts were also named for fallen heroes, such as Fort Mercer, built in 1777, on the New Jersey side of the Delaware opposite Fort Mifflin, named in honor of Brig. Gen. Hugh Mercer who fell at Princeton in January of that year.
For much of the Army's history in the 19th Century, the naming of posts was still mainly a local prerogative. For example, War Department General Order Number 79, dated 8 November 1878, left the naming of installations to the commander of the regional Military Division in which the installation was located. Although not always, the names of installations usually reflected a local influence, such as Fort Apache in Arizona, established in 1871, and the Chickamauga Post in Georgia, established in 1902. In the 1890s, the then Quartermaster General, Maj. Gen. Richard N. Batchelder, recommended that the War Department assume responsibility for naming installations, but that did not become policy until World War I when the massive general mobilization saw the establishment of numerous installations of various sizes and functions. The names usually, but not always, reflected some regional connection to its location, and usually with a historic military figure significant to the area: for example, Camp Lee near Richmond, Virginia, and changing the name of the Chickamauga Post in Georgia to Fort Oglethorpe.
In the years between the World Wars, it became the common practice for the War Department to entertain recommended names for posts from installation commanders, corps and branch commanders, and the Historical Section Army War College, as well as from outside the Army. Public opinion and political Influence sometime weighed heavily on the decisions. For an example of the latter, when in 1928 the Army renamed Fort George G. Meade in Maryland as Fort Leonard Wood, the Pennsylvania delegation in Congress held up the Army's appropriation bill until the service agreed to restore the name of the Pennsylvania-born general. The regional connection, however, cannot be overemphasized. Fort Monmouth in New Jersey, for example, was originally named Camp Alfred Vail, in honor of the Army's then chief Signal Officer, when the installation was established as a Signal Corps training facility in 1917, but changed to Fort Monmouth, for the 1778 battle fought nearby, when it became a permanent installation in the 1920s.
The War Department better defined the criteria when it established the policy for "naming military reservations in honor of deceased distinguished officers regardless of the arm or service in which they have served" in a memorandum dated 20 November 1939.
Shortly after World War II, in 1946, the Army established the Army Memorialization Board. Governed by Army Regulation (AR) 15-190, Boards, Commissions, and Committees: Department of the Army Memorialization Board, it assumed responsibility for deciding on the names of posts and other memorial programs and the criteria for naming them. The regulation stated that all those individuals memorialized must be deceased and fall within one of five categories:
(1) a national hero of absolute preeminence by virtue of high position,
(2) an individual who held a position of high and extensive responsibility (Army and above) and whose death was a result of battle wounds,
(3) an individual who held a position of high and extensive responsibility and whose death was not a result of battle wounds,
(4) an individual who performed an act of heroism or who held a position of high responsibility and whose death was a result of battle wounds, and
(5) an individual who performed an act of heroism or who held a position of high responsibility and whose death was not a result of battle wounds.
On 8 December 1958 , AR 1-30, Administration: Department of the Army Memorialization Program superseded AR 15-190 , and removed responsibility for naming installations from the Memorialization Board and transferred it to Headquarters, Department of the Army. In turn, AR 1-33, Administration: Memorial Programs superseded AR 1-30 on 1 February 1972. This revision retained the same memorialization criteria and categories as the previous regulation, but added a list of appropriate memorialization projects for each category. For example, it would be appropriate to name a large military installation after a person in category two, while it would be appropriate to name a building or a street after a person in category five. The final decision on naming a post was still made by the Headquarters, Department of the Army. The 15 January 1981 revision of AR 1-33 named the Army Chief of Staff as the responsible individual for the naming of installations.
This post here, of course, started off with the topic of the Confederate named posts, and the Congressional Research Service recently issued this short synopsis of the Confederate posts and military installation names in general, about which it must have been receiving inquiries from members of Congress.
The current AR 1-33 became effective on 30 June 2006, and redefined and expanded the categories of individuals to be memorialized, and listed appropriate memorialization programs for each category. The naming of installations is now the responsibility of the Assistant Secretary of Army (Manpower and Reserve Affairs). The Director of the Installation Management Agency is responsible for the naming of streets, buildings, and facilities on all military installations except medical installations, where the Commander of the U.S. Army Medical Command has the approval authority, and on the United States Military Academy, where the Superintendent of the United States Military Academy has the approval authority.
Confederate Names and Military Installations
Updated June 16, 2020
On June 8, 2020, an Army spokesperson made a statement that the Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and the Secretary of the Army Ryan D. McCarthy are “open to a bi-partisan discussion” on renaming the Army's 10 installations named after Confederate leaders. This statement follows the Commandant of the Marine Corps Gen. David Berger’s message (MARADMIN 331/20) on June 5, 2020, instructing commanders to “identify and remove” displays of the Confederate battle flag on Marine bases. Gen. Berger's order was signed following a House Armed Services subcommittee hearing on February 11 regarding the rise of white supremacy in the ranks. A 2019 Military Times survey found that “36 percent of troops who responded have seen evidence of white supremacist and racist ideologies in the military, a significant rise from the year before, when only 22 percent reported the same in the 2018 poll.” In addition to some Department of Defense (DOD) officials, certain Members of Congress have expressed interest in renaming military installations named after Confederate leaders. There is also interest in the DOD’s selection and approval process for naming military installations.
U.S. Military Bases Named in Honor of Confederate Military Leaders
There are 10 major military installations named after Confederate Civil War commanders located in the former states of the Confederacy. These installations are all owned by the U.S. Army. They are: Fort Rucker (after Col. Edmund W. Rucker, who was given the honorary title of “General”) in Alabama; Fort Benning (Brig. Gen. Henry L. Benning) and Fort Gordon (Maj. Gen. John Brown Gordon) in Georgia; Camp Beauregard (Gen. Pierre Gustave Toutant “P.G.T.” Beauregard) and Fort Polk (Gen. Leonidas Polk) in Louisiana; Fort Bragg (Gen. Braxton Bragg) in North Carolina; Fort Hood (Lt. Gen. John Bell Hood) in Texas; and Fort A.P. Hill (Lt. Gen. Ambrose Powell “A.P.” Hill), Fort Lee (Gen. Robert E. Lee) and Fort Pickett (Maj. Gen. George Edward Pickett) in Virginia.
Naming Policy by Military Service
Currently, DOD does not have a department-wide review process to evaluate the naming of military installations. Each military service has its own naming criteria and approval process summarized below.
ArmyIn general, the naming of Army installations is the responsibility of the Assistant Secretary of Army for Manpower and Reserve Affairs (ASA (M&RA)), However, the Secretary of the Army retains final approval authority for the Army Memorial Program—a program that oversees the naming of all Army real property. For the Army, the naming of a U.S. Army installation after a deceased individual is considered a memorialization, while naming an installation after a living individual is termed a dedication. The Army maintains separate criteria for memorialization and dedication of Army real property. The regulation that sets these criteria is Army Regulation (AR) 1-33, The Army Memorial Program (October 2018). In addition to dedicating and memorializing installations after people, the Army can also name an installation after an event. AR 1-33 provides a separate set of criteria for this “naming” and is defined as “the non-permanent naming of Army real property after famous battles and events.”
NavyOPNAV INSTRUCTION 5030.12H(October 2017) explains the U.S. Navy’s policy and procedures for the naming of streets, facilities and structures. According to this instruction, “names selected should honor deceased members of the Navy.” It may also be appropriate to honor deceased persons other than Navy personnel who have made significant contributions to the benefit of the Navy. This instruction is applicable to naming a structure or building that is identified by a real property unique identifier or a street. Naming designations of internal portions of buildings or spaces can be assigned at the discretion of the local installation commander. The spokesman for the Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike Gilday announced on June 9, that Adm. Gilday directed his staff to draft an order that will ban the Confederate battle flag from all public spaces and work areas on Navy bases, ships, subs, and aircraft.
Marine CorpsThe Manual for the Marine Corps Historical Program addresses the Commemorative Naming Program and specifies that “property may be named for individuals highly regarded within the Marine Corps and/or local communities. Names of deceased Marines, or members of other military organizations who died while serving with or in support of Marine Corps units, will be considered first.”A Marine Corps Installations Command Policy Letter 3-15 offers guidance for Marine Corps Installations Command.
Air Force Air ForceManual 36-2806, Awards and Memorialization Program (2019), sets Air Force policy for the Air Force’s memorialization program. The manual states “The memorialization program is designed to provide enduring honor and tribute to living and deceased military members and civilians with records of outstanding and honorable service through the naming of Air Force installations, streets, buildings, and interior spaces of buildings.” Chapter 4 of the manual provides naming criteria and approval authorities for Air Force installations, and states: “When naming an Air Force installation ensure only the most deserving individuals are selected for memorialization. Selections should bring honor to the Air Force and reflect the goodwill of the local community.”
Well, there you have it. From that you can take it to be the case that the Army wouldn't be naming any posts after Confederate rebels today as they wouldn't meet the first two criteria. I.e., no Confederate figure is a "national hero", in spite of what some in the South may have viewed over the last century about figures like Robert E. Lee, and in spite of the treatment those same figures were given by the Army in the early and mid 20th Century, and the second criteria implicitly presumes that they were in the U.S. service, which none of the Confederate figures was at the time of their famous or infamous service.Author InformationBarbara Salazar Torreon Senior Research Librarian
Camp Wheeler, Georgia, named after Joseph Wheeler and which was used in World War One and World War Two. The land was returned to its owners following the Second World War. Camp Wheeler is arguably the only former military post that would meet the current rules, as while Wheeler had been a Confederate General in the Civil War, he was also a Maj. Gen. in the U.S. Army during the Spanish American War. Wheeler is associated with Georgia, but was actually from Connecticut.
None of which means that the post would be, or should be, renamed, although we addressed that topic in our first post in which we concluded that they largely should be.
As the Army's Center for Military History item notes, early on posts were named as a matter of local prerogative. When we looked at the Wyoming posts names, an interesting added part of the picture comes to light. When the U.S. first established any military presence in Wyoming at all, it was acquiring existing facilities and simply keeping their names. Ft. Laramie was the first permanent U.S. post in what would become Wyoming and the Army simply bought Ft. Laramie and kept the name. Jaques LaRamy wasn't an American military figure and wasn't an American at all. This didn't seem to figure into the Army's naming conventions at all at the time. Other forts occupied prior to the Civil War went the same way, in part.
Having said that, on some occasions the office establishing a camp was naming it after himself, or in quite a few instances, a commander who was up his chain of command. A person can look at that more than one way, rather obviously, but both were common.
When the Civil War hit, in Wyoming, the 11th Ohio and 11th Kansas came into the state, and they established the practice of occupying established "stations" of a civilian nature and building posts at them. Sometimes they observed the pre war naming convention, but more often they simply named the station after where they were.
The Civil War was a great national shock and following it hte officer corps of the Army was made up of veterans of that war, many of whom had held much higher ranks during the ar than they did after it. Even as the war was raging the Army started to name new posts after U.S. Army senior officer who had lost their lives during the war or, in some cases, very soon after it. Wyoming posts like Ft. Buford and Ft. Sanders (the same post) or Ft. Phil Kearny provide such examples.
During the Civil War the Indian Wars heated up massively as Indians tribes, either intentionally or due to circumstances engaged non Indians with increasing frequency. At the time, and for many years thereafter, this was attributed to Indian opportunism but a careful look at the era would lead a person to question that.* The war resulted in the withdrawal of the Army from the Frontier to a large extent, although it should be noted that the military presence on the Frontier was very small to start with and the distance between the prewar Frontier forts was massive in extent, so the extent to which that alone was responsible for the uptick in conflicts, as some have asserted, is questionable.
The war directly caused a big upswing in European migration on the transcontinental trails across the West which arrived at the same time in which Indians tribes noticed and became increasingly concerned over the character of European American presence in the upper West. Prior European Americans had been small in number and were often fairly feral in their nature. The new migrants were largely passing through but they were also largely of the yeomanry class whose view of hte land was markedly different, and they were also descendant in large numbers of prior American populations that had a history of conflict with Indians. Simultaneously miners began to penetrate the West in numbers for the first time. Towns, and even cities, began to be built which was a notable and dangerous new development for Indians and finally the railroad began to penetrate as well. All of this made an already touchy situation explosive.
As did events like the Sand Creek Massacre on November 29, 1864 during which Colorado militia attacked a Cheyenne band with no real cause. This put the Cheyenne to flight and also to war, with that war spreading north very rapidly into Wyoming. In turn, Sioux bands allied with the Cheyenne could not help but note was occurring generally.
All of this meant that even as the Civil War was being fought the Plains Indians Wars were igniting, meaning that as early as 1865, if not earlier, the Army was naming posts after Army figures who had been killed in combat with Indians. Ft. Caspar was one of the first such examples, but it would soon be joined by Ft. Fetterman and Ft. Brown. Civil War figures were not replaced by Indian War figures, however, with the seminal name of Abraham Lincoln being given to the post of that name in 1872.**
This loose practice kept up as the Army approached World War One. Camp Cody, featured above, was named for example at the time of the Punitive Expedition. Other posts incorporated varied names.
During the Civil War the Indian Wars heated up massively as Indians tribes, either intentionally or due to circumstances engaged non Indians with increasing frequency. At the time, and for many years thereafter, this was attributed to Indian opportunism but a careful look at the era would lead a person to question that.* The war resulted in the withdrawal of the Army from the Frontier to a large extent, although it should be noted that the military presence on the Frontier was very small to start with and the distance between the prewar Frontier forts was massive in extent, so the extent to which that alone was responsible for the uptick in conflicts, as some have asserted, is questionable.
The war directly caused a big upswing in European migration on the transcontinental trails across the West which arrived at the same time in which Indians tribes noticed and became increasingly concerned over the character of European American presence in the upper West. Prior European Americans had been small in number and were often fairly feral in their nature. The new migrants were largely passing through but they were also largely of the yeomanry class whose view of hte land was markedly different, and they were also descendant in large numbers of prior American populations that had a history of conflict with Indians. Simultaneously miners began to penetrate the West in numbers for the first time. Towns, and even cities, began to be built which was a notable and dangerous new development for Indians and finally the railroad began to penetrate as well. All of this made an already touchy situation explosive.
As did events like the Sand Creek Massacre on November 29, 1864 during which Colorado militia attacked a Cheyenne band with no real cause. This put the Cheyenne to flight and also to war, with that war spreading north very rapidly into Wyoming. In turn, Sioux bands allied with the Cheyenne could not help but note was occurring generally.
All of this meant that even as the Civil War was being fought the Plains Indians Wars were igniting, meaning that as early as 1865, if not earlier, the Army was naming posts after Army figures who had been killed in combat with Indians. Ft. Caspar was one of the first such examples, but it would soon be joined by Ft. Fetterman and Ft. Brown. Civil War figures were not replaced by Indian War figures, however, with the seminal name of Abraham Lincoln being given to the post of that name in 1872.**
This loose practice kept up as the Army approached World War One. Camp Cody, featured above, was named for example at the time of the Punitive Expedition. Other posts incorporated varied names.
Camp Furlong, Columbus, New Mexico. 1916. I don't know who this post was named for, as there's little easy to find information on that. However, it's worth noting that this post in 1912 was established at time at which Wesley J. Furlong, a black recipient of the Medal of Honor from the Civil War, was still living.
Camp Stewart, not Stuart. I'm not sure which military figure this post was named for, but it was not J. E. B. Stuart. It may have been named for Brig. Gen. Daniel Stewart, whom Ft. Stewart, Georgia, was also named for. That Stewat was a general in the Revolutionary War. Of note, teh Amy chose not to retain this name with this post
When the US ran up to entry in the Great War, the naming conventions, but not regulations, tighted up considerable. As the CMH item notes, the practice became to name military posts after generals of historical importance and preferentially with a connection to the region of the post. Unnamed as a policy, it very clearly became the practice to name Southern posts after Confederate generals even to the extent of naming some after figures of some infamy or who were even of questionable military competence.***
The fact that even figures who were not only rebels, but in some occasions associated with the worst of the Confederate cause and also those who were not bright shining military lights really tells us something about the extent to which the Lost Cause mythology had seized and altered the common historical understanding of the Civil War. It also says something about the extent to which the Army, faced with the largest war it had been in since the Civil War, looked back on that war for guidance. Seemingly it was also the only thing that compared to what it was now in.
It was the only thing that it had been in for nearly eighty years in which Southern military figures, save for Joseph Wheeler, had really shined in an obvious fashion. There's been a lot of notable figures of the Indian Wars since 1865 and the Spanish American War contributed additional names to the Army's heroic list. These names were not forgotten, but the policy of local attribution meant that they largely were absent from the South. They were used, and sometimes more than once. Frederick Funston, only recently departed and expected to have lead the American Army in France if war came, was a hero of the Spanish American War who died shortly before the war. Two Camp Funston's were named for him thereafter, for example.
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Prior posts in this series:The fact that even figures who were not only rebels, but in some occasions associated with the worst of the Confederate cause and also those who were not bright shining military lights really tells us something about the extent to which the Lost Cause mythology had seized and altered the common historical understanding of the Civil War. It also says something about the extent to which the Army, faced with the largest war it had been in since the Civil War, looked back on that war for guidance. Seemingly it was also the only thing that compared to what it was now in.
It was the only thing that it had been in for nearly eighty years in which Southern military figures, save for Joseph Wheeler, had really shined in an obvious fashion. There's been a lot of notable figures of the Indian Wars since 1865 and the Spanish American War contributed additional names to the Army's heroic list. These names were not forgotten, but the policy of local attribution meant that they largely were absent from the South. They were used, and sometimes more than once. Frederick Funston, only recently departed and expected to have lead the American Army in France if war came, was a hero of the Spanish American War who died shortly before the war. Two Camp Funston's were named for him thereafter, for example.
Camp Funston, Leon Springs, Texas.
Camp Funston, Kansas.
In Michigan, which was his home, George Armstrong Custer of Little Big Horn fame, or infamy, found his name attached to the World War One training post there, Camp Custer, which survives today as Ft. Custer, a Michigan National Guard training range.
Camp Custer, 1918. This post remained in service after the war and was designated a permanent base and therefore a "fort" in 1940. After World War Two it went into use as a Marine Corps and Navy Reserve post but reverted to the Army at the start of the Korean War. It was turned over to the state of Michigan as a National Guard training range in 1968, but interestingly it still sees some Navy Reserve use.
So the naming conventions remained loose during the Great War but there was obviously an unofficial policy of naming posts after a military figure with a local connection, and in the case of the South, that meant, in the minds of Army leaders, picking Confederate generals' names. To put it fairly, however, they didn't seem to be under any mental reservation about that. Indeed, during the war the widow of at least one Confederate general, and one of the problematic ones at that, was honored, and therefore the general himself vicariously honored, at the post.
What black soldiers thought of this seems unrecorded, or at least I haven't run across their thoughts. They were obviously aware of it and indeed as many black soldiers hailed from the South they saw service in some of these posts. Indeed, it's worth noting that black combat soldiers were more likely, as a class, to see combat in World War One than World War Two. While the services were segregated at the time, save for the Marine Corps which didn't allow blacks to enter their service at all until mid World War Two, the Great War did not see an effort to preclude black troops from the front lines to the same extent that was done in the Second World War and there were a variety of black National Guard units that saw service in the war.**** Some of those units would have trained at these posts.
National Guardsmen of the 370th Infantry of Illinois, which had black officers and enlisted men. Black officers were very unusual, but once again this was a feature of a few such units in World War One. The 370th had an all black officer corps, the only such unit to have that feature.
It should have been noted that there were ways around naming posts after Confederate officers, if the Army had chosen to do them. For one thing, they could simply have been named for their locations, which would have been easy enough. As has been already pointed out in Part 2 of this series, that's exactly how Wyoming's two National Guard training ranges were named, even though by the time the second one, Camp Guernsey, was being established, there was clearly a Wyoming personality, Jay L. Torrey, whose name was available for use.*****Another option, in some instances, would have been to use the names of Southern figures from the Revolution or the War of 1812, although that would have perhaps simply served to remind Southerners that names of Confederate generals were being excluded. Finally, while it would be controversial today, names of Indian War figures were available, but that would have had to have been done without regard to their place of origin and, as odd as it may seem, the Plains Indian Wars were closer in time to World War One for the most part than the Civil War such that many of the participants in those wars remained alive, with some Army officers, such as Pershing, having served in them.
Whatever the situation may have been during World War One, it's harder to justify the ongoing practice of naming Southern posts after Confederate figures after 1918. By that time, the new war had produced more than its share of well known national heroic figures. Nonetheless, the practice continued all the way through World War Two. The reason it did is truly an example of institutional racism. By that time, no matter what the majority view of the country may have been, the Army basically accepted the Lost Cause thesis and had made up, in its mind, with the rebellious Southern officers of the 1860s and accepted them as their own. Indeed, as an example of that, John J. Pershing and his aid, George Marshall, visited the tomb of J. E. B. Stuart at VMI in 1920, honoring the rebel cavalryman by their presence. During the same time frame the Army actually became more prejudiced in its view towards its black soldiers, not less, and when the Second World War Came the Army acted to exclude existing black Regular Army formations from combat in spite of their World War One examples. Half of the Army posts now subject to controversial Confederate names were named during the Second World War, not the First.
Segregation in the Army came to an end in the Truman Administration and it was Missouri born Truman who first used the Regular Army in support of desegregation in the South. Blacks were conscripted in a fashion roughly analogous with whites during the Korean War and combat units in that war were desegregated. This has been true, of course, ever since. Also under Truman, official naming conventions in the Army, already set out above, but repeated here, came into existance in 1946, providing:
(1) a national hero of absolute preeminence by virtue of high position,(2) an individual who held a position of high and extensive responsibility (Army and above) and whose death was a result of battle wounds,(3) an individual who held a position of high and extensive responsibility and whose death was not a result of battle wounds,(4) an individual who performed an act of heroism or who held a position of high responsibility and whose death was a result of battle wounds, and(5) an individual who performed an act of heroism or who held a position of high responsibility and whose death was not a result of battle wounds.
And that is where we are now.
As noted above, none of the Southern posts named after Confederates would meet these criteria now, but then not all of the remaining posts named after others would as well. At least Michigan's Fort Custer is probably named after an individual who is as despised by a significant number of Americans as the Southern posts are. So renaming them merely because they don't meet the current criteria likely wouldn't be in order. Renaming them because of who they are named after, however, very well might be.
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Military Installation Names. What they were, and are, and how they got there. Part 1. Named for Confederate Generals
Military Installation Names. What they were, and are, and how they got there. Part 2. Posts in Wyoming
*I'm not saying that such a careful look has in fact taken place.
**Ft. Abraham Lincoln, North Dakota, was the location from which the 7th Cavalry dispatched in 1876 in their message to gather the Sioux from the plains. The campaign would result in the Battle of the Little Big Horn.
***The universal military quality of Southern officers is a myth of the Lost Cause Era. In truth, the South has an inordinate number of marginal or even incompetent officers.
****The story of segregation in the Armed Forces is a little more complicated than it might at first seem, and has been dealt with here in earlier posts, specifically:
Blacks in the Army. Segregation and Desegregation
That post deals with the Army and the Navy, in spite of its caption.
As noted in that post, during the Revolution blacks were actually common in the Continental Army and it wasn't until after the Revolution that Congress banned their entry into the Army. Even with an official prohibition, actually enforcing the ban seems to have been loosely enforced at first. Only as the 19th Century progressed towards the Civil War were blacks actually excluded from the Army, but that day did arrive. During the Civil War the ban was reversed and the segregated Army came in, which remained all the way until just prior to the Korean War.
The Navy in contrast wasn't segregated until the late 19th Century, reflecting the fact that the Navy recruited from ports in the wood and sail era. During that time it was more concerned about bringing in experienced sailors than anything else and it accordingly disregarded race and even nationality in recruiting enlisted men. Only when the steel Navy came in post Civil War did that change and the Navy officially segregated in 1893, although officially enforcing that policy on a preexisting structure also took some time. This change reflected a change in recruitment in which mechanical and technical skills now took precedence over sailing skills, and the Navy was now recruiting largely from the interior of the country.
The Marine Corps had barred entry of blacks from the very beginning as it strictly limited its recruiting to whites. This was for a peculiar reason, however. The logic of its first commanders was focused on the mutiny suppression role that Marines fulfilled and they therefore tried to make the makeup of the Marine Corps reflect the largest national demographic out of a fear that allowing in minorities would cause conflicts in loyalties should mutinies occur. Interestingly enough, the one real mutiny, although it is not called that, which the Navy experienced didn't occur until the early 1970s at which time the black commanding officer of the vessel had to be ordered to stand down in his plan to arm his Marines and storm the parts of the ship held by protesting black sailors so, while the event occured two centuries later, ethnic loyalties did't play a part in that event when it really came. The Marine Corps allowed blacks into the service during World War Two and was integrated along with the Army and Navy in 1948. The Air Force had already taken the step in 1946 upon its coming into existence and was never officially segregated, although as it was formed out of the segregated Army, it took it until 1949 to really desegregate.
*****Torrey was a legislator and rancher who had lead the formation and recruitment of the 2nd Volunteer Cavalry during the Spanish American War. That unit failed to see action, but it was sufficiently well remembered that a Rough Rider was adopted as the unit patch for Wyoming National Guardsmen at some point and while different patches have come in, in recent years, for some units, it's still the default patch for the Wyoming Army National Guard. It's fairly surprising that Camp Guernsey wasn't named Camp Torrey.
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