The sprawling Army base in North Carolina had long been named for Braxton Bragg, an incompetent Confederate general who owned enslaved people.
Then in 2020, Congress moved to strip the base of its name, mandating a new one. The base was renamed Fort Liberty as part of the U.S. military’s examination of its history with race. But Mr. Trump and other conservatives raged against the changes, arguing that “wokeness” was softening the military and wiping away important elements of American tradition and heritage.
President Trump campaigned on a promise to restore the old name, and his pledge was brought to fruition on Friday, but with a twist that seemed both a rewriting of history and an internet troll: Fort Liberty again became Fort Bragg, not in honor of the Confederate general but in memory of Pvt. Roland L. Bragg, a previously obscure infantryman who had served at Fort Bragg and fought in the Battle of the Bulge during World War II.
The official ceremony at the military base on Friday cemented a political victory for Mr. Trump, who suffered a legislative defeat in 2020 when Congress pushed past his veto of a bill with a provision to rename nine Army bases that had honored treasonous Confederate generals who fought against the United States to preserve slavery and white supremacy.
Those bases were renamed for candidates that “embody the best of the United States Army,” according to the naming commission that recommended the initial changes. They included decorated officers, enlisted troops who survived harrowing trials in battle, President Dwight D. Eisenhower and one civilian: Dr. Mary Edwards Walker, a Civil War surgeon and the only woman ever awarded a Medal of Honor.
Veterans, politicians, Private Bragg’s relatives and current service members attended the renaming event, which featured a ceremonial unfurling of the new Fort Bragg colors.
The reversion of Fort Liberty to Fort Bragg is part of a larger effort by Mr. Trump — through Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth — to purge the military of top officers, diversity initiatives, transgender service members and other policies and personnel that he said had made the armed forces “woke.”
Army officials stressed during the official ceremony that their intention was to honor Private Bragg, and not the Confederate general. They hosted members of Private Bragg’s extended family at the event, and spoke of his valor and courage while fighting the Nazis in Europe. They described one episode in which the soldier escaped capture and regrouped with his comrades by knocking out an enemy soldier and driving a German ambulance through enemy lines.
“Fort Bragg is named after Roland L. Bragg,” Lt. Gen. Gregory Anderson, the mission commander at Fort Bragg, replied when asked about the base name’s ties to the Confederacy.
“He’s one of us,” he added of Private Bragg. “He’s cut from the same, you know, cloth we are. That’s what I think about.”
Diane Watts, Private Bragg’s daughter, said she was unaware of Mr. Hegseth’s order to change the name of the base to honor her father until a local reporter in Maine called her to ask about it. She had assumed it was a prank call.
When a reporter asked whether she thought her father’s name might be being used for political purposes, Ms. Watts replied: “I don’t think that’s the case. I really don’t. I think that they looked for a man of good character, and they found my dad.”
Daniel Driscoll, the Army secretary, attended the renaming ceremony but declined to answer questions.
The cost of renaming the Army bases named for Confederates was estimated at about $39 million, covering expenses like replacing the signage and removing old references to the bases’ outdated names.
Colonel K. Mixon, the garrison commander for Fort Bragg, estimated that the costs to reverse the changes there would be less than $1 million. Businesses and street signs near Fort Bragg in nearby Fayetteville, N.C., still referred to Fort Liberty on Friday. The nearby Army Airborne & Special Operations Museum on Friday featured merchandise with the name of Fort Liberty as well as shirts with the words “Bragg is back!”
The original naming of the nine Army bases was part of a movement to glorify the Confederacy and advance the Lost Cause myth that the Civil War was fought over “states’ rights” and not slavery.
These Confederate generals were at first pariahs after the Civil War. But by the height of the Jim Crow era, they were idolized by many Americans, especially in the South.
In 2020, amid racial justice protests in many American cities after the murder of George Floyd, an overwhelming majority of Congress pushed past Mr. Trump’s veto of a military policy bill to strip the names of Army bases named for Confederates, starting the process to give the installations new names.
In 2023, Fort Bragg was officially renamed, along with eight other Army bases originally named for Confederates.
But Mr. Trump, who has repeatedly defended monuments honoring Confederates, had vowed during the 2024 campaign to revert the name of Fort Bragg to honor Braxton Bragg, the Confederate general, who was widely considered by his fellow Confederates and many historians to have been a poor commander.
Vice President JD Vance had also falsely claimed while campaigning near the base last year that Vice President Kamala Harris had directed the changing of the name of the base during the Biden administration, rather than a bipartisan, veto-proof majority of Congress in the final days of Mr. Trump’s first term.
“It’s Fort Bragg, and we’re proud,” Mr. Vance said in Raeford, N.C., in October.
On Monday, Mr. Hegseth said that Fort Moore — renamed in 2023 for Lt. Gen. Harold G. Moore and his wife, Julia — would again be called Fort Benning. The base was originally named for Henry L. Benning, a Confederate and white supremacist. Mr. Hegseth again selected an honoree who had the same name, saying that the base was being renamed to honor Cpl. Fred G. Benning, who served during World War I.