Kevin, I'm certain that you and I agree on everything that's important
here. Locating the fullest meaning of American history in the unfolding
of liberty? Amen! The term "liberty" central to understanding the public
identity of Americans? Amen! Slavery and darkness in benighted foreign
lands lacking liberty? Amen!
In fact, I intended what I wrote this morning to highlight those very
truths. You and I apparently see them the same way. And I'll bet if you
were here in Tidewater, you'd see that those truths are being scanted in
the planning for post-Army Fort Monroe. So I apologize that I've
obviously botched this bit of writing -- and I thank you for alerting me
and giving me another chance.
In my view we tell the Fort Monroe Contraband story in the wrong way --
in a way that will be discarded in the future, when we finally get
completely over the logic (such as it was) and the language of the
slavery era.
Today's front-page news article -- in the paper that's local to Fort
Monroe -- shows progress in that direction, I agree. That's why I began
by thanking the paper and the reporter for highlighting the Fort Monroe
freedom story, and by noting that with the Fort Monroe Authority
planning Fort Monroe's future on behalf of a powerful handful of
Hamptonians plus Governor Kaine's administration -- but not on behalf of
Fort Monroe's true owners, all Americans -- the freedom story is all the
more vital to discuss.
But indeed it is also important, as I wrote, to recall that in January
2008, when leading historians -- both black and white -- came to town to
discuss Fort Monroe's history during planning for Fort Monroe's future,
they declared the freedom story not an African American story, but an
American one. And Kevin, that's not how the article plays it. (It's also
not how the Fort Monroe Authority plays it.)
True, the article does do what historians, journalists and others have
often not done: it confers on Sheppard Mallory, Frank Baker, and James
Townsend the simple dignity of being named. In the usual telling,
they're treated as nameless ciphers among feckless, helpless souls
waiting passively for white politicians to deign, belatedly, to confer
what should not have been denied in the first place: liberty.
But the Daily Press article still treats the episode as part of a
historical process energized by the actions of powerful whites, when in
fact the original energy for liberty came not from any Union general,
but from those three Americans -- Baker, Mallory, and Townsend. What
they did re-illustrated important principles that you and I, Kevin, hold
to be self-evident.
True, Gen. Butler could temporarily have delayed the tsunami of
self-emancipation that the three men started, and true, it's good that
he didn't. But Gen. Butler was only invoking the laws of war -- the
contraband-of-war principle -- plus the grotesque, perverted civil laws
of the day, the ones that legally but illegitimately framed some
American humans as the property of other American humans. Baker,
Mallory, and Townsend, on the other hand, were invoking the Laws of
Nature and of Nature's God.
Which laws were the more beautiful in this story? Which the most
timeless? Which the most connected to the fullest meaning of America?
And Kevin, I ask you or anyone else: what do you make of this sentence
from the Daily Press article? "Their owner, Col. Charles K. Mallory,
demanded their rightful return."
Rightful return?
Those who will inevitably be accusing me of "political correctness" for
criticizing that sentence will have to ignore this self-evident truth:
even if Virginia and the U.S. perverted justice and decency enough to
make an "owner" of humans "rightful" under the law, the sentence is
still about rightfulness in terms of legitimacy -- and legitimacy is a
lot bigger thing than mere legality.
And this is not presentism either. Would any abolitionist have spoken of
a "rightful" return of those Americans to Col. Mallory? The answer is
self-evident.
I think part of the miscommunication problem that I caused this morning
might have been that the headnote I added specifically for this forum
was misleading. But yes, I do think that we're still today entrapped, to
some degree anyway, by residual slavery-era language that inherently
involves unconscious acceptance of odious assumptions. I usually add,
but did not add it this morning, that it seems to me that the language
of the slavery era also to some extent re-perpetrates the logic -- such
as it was -- of that era.
"Rightfulness" is the clearest example from today's news article, in my
view. My favorite earlier example, not from today's article but
discussed in this forum before, was a supposed distinction between
"legitimate" and "illegitimate" slave-catchers. I ask you again: When in
human history was _any_ slave-catcher "legitimate"?
In any case I say again what I've said before in this forum: Fort Monroe
is by far the most important history question facing Virginia today.
Even if I'm misinterpreting the history-of-liberty dimension -- even if
my revisionism should later be shown to have been faulty -- I assert
that in 2009 no thoughtful person can say that we understand the slavery
era as well as we ought to. And meanwhile, countenanced by Governor
Kaine, this precious national treasure -- with what I believe is
international significance in the history of liberty itself -- is under
threat by a combination of people. A few of them almost viscerally hate
all criticism of slavery-era logic, such as it was. Most of them,
though, are simply development-minded leaders whose underestimation of
history (and of the vanishing charm of Tidewater's increasingly
congested shoreline) stops them from speaking out against what threatens
Fort Monroe.
And I will toss this in again too: It seems to me that in both the Fort
Monroe freedom story and the Hemings-Jefferson paternity discussion,
many well-intentioned people seek to accord retrospectively as much
dignity as possible to those from whom, long ago, dignity was withheld.
Sally Hemings's retrospectively accordable dignity is important, but
Fort Monroe still exists and is under threat right now. Where are
Virginia's historians?
Steve Corneliussen
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