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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