For those of us who do not live in Virginia, this is a fruitful discussion. The postings have so far been very informative.
Anita Wills
> Date: Mon, 9 Feb 2009 11:22:51 -0500
> From: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Ft Monroe self-emancipators, cont.
> To: [log in to unmask]
>
> 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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