Who decides what is "essential"? Who says California is essential to the country's defense? Wasn't control of the Mississippi essential to our national security in 1860?
And who says the national interest prevails over the will of a "sovereign state"? You certainly don't believe that was true in 1860. You support the Confederacy in spite of all they were trying to do to hurt the country they were leaving.
If the federal government has legal title it has legal title. If the property passes to the state it passes to the state. If you believe that the federal government has the land by right then it has that right whether the base is "essential" or not. You really don't have a leg to stand on, logically and ethically speaking. Just necessity and force.
Objective reality decides. California is not essential, but those military bases are. Army and Air force bases can be moved, but Naval bases cannot.
Wasn't control of the Mississippi essential to our national security in 1860?
"Control" insofar as hostile powers would not be allowed to use it to invade, but that wasn't in the cards and was not a serious consideration.
And who says the national interest prevails over the will of a "sovereign state"? You certainly don't believe that was true in 1860.
Sure I do, but nothing the South had was essential to the security of the rest of the Union.
You support the Confederacy in spite of all they were trying to do to hurt the country they were leaving.
What were they trying to do to "hurt" the country they were leaving? Stop paying the bulk of it's bills? Seems like the 20 million in the North should have been paying most of their own bills anyways.
If the federal government has legal title it has legal title.
"Legal title" is meaningless when the foundation for it changes. George III owned all the land in the Colonies, but when independence was declared, he ceased to own it.
Abraham Lincoln said that people have a right to own the land on which they reside, and I think he is right about this.
This is another aspect of longstanding and heavily populated military bases. They have more or less permanent "residents".
Anderson occupied Ft. Sumter for four months. Had a Federal garrison occupied it since 1800, it would have been a different matter I think. Anderson took it, and this after the South Carolinians had been told it would be turned over to them by the then Secretary of War.
Also the Lincoln administration itself had led people to believe that all the way up to April of 1861 when Lincoln sent his war fleet.