> brought secretly onshore at night and
 > buried at Fort Monroe in Hampton

Please forgive what may seem a grossly technical bit of nitpickery, but 
for important present-moment reasons, with the Army leaving Fort Monroe 
next year, it's always necessary, in my view, to avoid overstating 
Hampton's geographical ownership stake in Fort Monroe.

Granted, it is absolutely true that the two four-century histories -- 
that of Hampton and that of Point Comfort (later Old Point Comfort, site 
of Fort Monroe beginning in about the 1820s) -- are intertwined. But it 
was only after more than a third of a millennium, ca. 1950 (and well 
after 1942), that Fort Monroe came to fall within Hampton's newly 
expanded city boundaries.

This clarification is important because -- and here I must lapse into 
sound-bite-speak, for which I also ask forgiveness -- the federal 
base-closure law is an idiot. In effectively calling for the donation of 
any closing Army post to the nearest locality for what it calls 
"redevelopment," the law does not distinguish a national treasure from a 
humdrum Fort Drab in a cornfield. That's a big part of why financially 
(and culturally) counterproductive overdevelopment still threatens 
post-Army Fort Monroe.

Virginia's disappointingly incomplete and shallow civic (and, for that 
matter, scholarly) discussion of first principles concerning the 
post-Army Fort Monroe challenge continues to skip key questions almost 
entirely. Right now the most important of these mainly unaddressed 
questions is, Why are Virginia leaders, finally having admitted that 
some sort of pays-its-own-way national park is needed, still refusing to 
grant ownership of even a small amount of Old Point Comfort's land to 
the National Park Service?

That question is not unrelated to the preeminent unaddressed question, 
dodged for five years now by Virginia leaders from Gov. Tim Kaine (D) to 
Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) to Hampton U. President Bill Harvey: To what 
extent, if any, does Hampton have something like an ownership claim in 
post-Army Fort Monroe?

The assumption by our leaders -- in a state whose politics is driven by 
developers' money -- has been that Hampton has an enormous ownership 
claim, and not just a unique stake that all agree must be respected. In 
part, this assumption derives from geography and boundaries.

And that's why it's important to note that only after 1942, and only 
after a third of a millennium outside of Hampton, did this national 
treasure come to fall within Hampton's boundaries.

Thanks. Sorry I couldn't make it shorter. If anyone answers, I suggest 
that she or he replace the subject line.

Steven T. Corneliussen
Citizens for a [[self-sustaining]] Fort Monroe National Park (www.CFMNP.org)

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