(Second attempt, thanks to funny business with the forum's reply-to
e-address.)
(bcc to Professor Glymph at Duke)
> From: John Kneebone
> At 2:30 p.m., hear Thavolia Glymph, of Duke University, “Emancipation and
> the Problem of Black Refugees and Refugee Camps in the Civil War.”
Thanks for this alert. It's probably unlikely at a purely scholarly
conference, but can anyone say if there's any remote chance that Professor
Glymph or any ensuing discussion will in any way engage the impending fate
of post-Army Fort Monroe?
In a 2011 Diane Rehm NPR panel including Adam Goodheart (who understands
Fort Monroe deeply but doesn't publicly defend its threatened sense of
place), Chandra Manning and David Blight, Professor Glymph said something
very much like what Eric Foner, Kate Masur, Edward Ayers and others (notably
Goodheart, in fact) have emphasized recently:
QUOTE
I don't think it was clear-cut to anyone at the beginning, what was going to
happen. The stakes were clear, I think. Most Northerners and Southerners,
white and black, free and enslaved, did understand that the fundamental
cause was slavery and on the ground, if one could identify any group of
people who understood where this war would probably go, it would be the
slaves themselves who, from the very first moment, even long before the
escapes to Fort Monroe began moving for freedom. And so clearly, the most
important abolitionists here are the slaves -- the enslaved people.
UNQUOTE
It seems to me that to the extent that evolving understanding of Black
agency makes Fort Monroe more important as the central historic landscape
for the dynamic that the professor illuminates, it also heightens the
importance of the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot's warning that if the fake, split
national monument at Fort Monroe is indeed cemented forever -- as Virginia's
leaders grimly intend -- Fort Monroe itself will forever remain "degraded."
Please note that I understand that in all likelihood, Monday's scholarly
meeting will _not_ engage Fort Monroe's fate, especially since historians
unfortunately and unaccountably follow Goodheart's lead in silently
abandoning the historic landscape to Virginia's politicians and cronies --
and to their financially and culturally costly obsession with
overdevelopment.
But I nevertheless had to ask. When these freedom-and-dignity matters,
partially understood in the sesquicentennial, are discussed at the
bicentennial, something cherishable might be gone--in fact, as things stand
now, probably will be gone.
Thanks.
Steven T. Corneliussen
Poquoson, Virginia
http://www.fortmonroenationalpark.org/
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