So where is the Civil War Preservation Trust in all of this?
Karen Needles 


On September 22, 2011 at 10:45 AM Steve Corneliussen <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:

> Three weeks ago, when Jurretta Heckscher recycled my connotatively loaded
> word to create the subject line above, I had written, "Note for Jurretta
> Heckscher: Despite my distraction by the  decidedly non-irenic Irene, I
> still owe you that Fort-Monroe-snookered-historians answer, and I want to
> supply it." Under that new subject line, she answered:
> QUOTE
> Thanks, Steven.  I look forward to it.
>
> And speaking of Irene, dare one hope that the storm's postponement of the
> dedication of the Martin Luther King, Jr., Memorial in Washington might
> provide more time for thoughtful decision-makers to consider the long
> history of heroic struggle that made Dr. King's achievements possible?
> And that that struggle reached perhaps its pivotal moment in the actions
> that made Fort Monroe the beachhead of freedom?   One can only hope.
> UNQUOTE
>
> Following is a message that I'm circulating widely this morning. It contains
> not only a charge of dereliction of duty by the National Trust for Historic
> Preservation, but a paragraph on none other than James McPherson, who may
> not be snookered, but who in any case has joined other historians in failing
> to defend the historic landscape on the designated national historic
> landmark that constitutes almost all of Fort Monroe. That paragraph still
> does not answer the question I framed for myself. But in the context of the
> message below, it begins to show pretty clearly the kind of thing I'll be
> talking about. I have similar disappointments, in other words, to discuss
> concerning the nondefense of Fort Monroe's full historic landscape by Edward
> L. Ayers, Adam Goodheart and Douglas Brinkley. All of them have talked to me
> over the years, but none of them has answered my questions or comments about
> the crucial issue of the actual land at Fort Monroe -- even though all of
> them, presumably, understand about subdivisions near Monticello, big box
> stores near a battlefield, and casinos at Gettysburg.
>
> - - - - - - - - - -
> Associated Press continues false Fort Monroe reporting
>
> By including falsehoods in reporting on politicians’ plans for post-Army
> Fort Monroe, Va., the Associated Press continues to privilege a powerful
> overdevelopment faction in the six-year struggle for national historic
> landmark land on the Chesapeake Bay at the mouth of Hampton Roads.
>
> This e-mail message -- to journalists, decision makers, friends of Fort
> Monroe and advocates for American history -- explains what I believe AP is
> doing wrong and why it matters. I apologize that I’m not clever enough to
> explain more briefly.
>
> The problem is a Big Conflation that’s cousin to the Big Lie. To make parts
> of Fort Monroe into a national park or monument is not to make Fort Monroe
> itself into one. The Big Conflation exploits confusion over the fact that a
> moated stone fortress that’s sometimes called Fortress Monroe constitutes an
> eighth of the threatened historic landscape, Fort Monroe itself.
>
> AP articles today at DailyPress.com in Newport News and Chron.com in
> Houston -- and probably elsewhere -- stipulate truthfully that only portions
> of Fort Monroe are being considered for national monument status. But the
> first paragraph begins by falsely citing “Fort Monroe's preservation as a
> national monument.”
>
> And the article’s final sentence reports falsely, “Legislation that has the
> bipartisan support of Virginia's delegation is also pending in Congress to
> designate the fort a national park.” In fact that legislation involves only
> the parts of Fort Monroe that no one ever intended to overdevelop anyway.
>
> True, the Daily Press’s paper version omits that false final sentence, and
> true, the paper version’s front-page teaser blurb correctly reports that
> only “portions” of Fort Monroe are being considered for national monument
> status. Unfortunately, however, that teaser blurb carries this false
> headline: “Fort Monroe eyed as national monument.”
>
> That’s the Big Conflation. It matters because, judging by what I hear from
> Virginians who have watched the six-year struggle, trusting citizens are
> being deceived into believing that the overdevelopment threat has subsided.
>
> It has not.
>
> And overdevelopment matters in something akin to the way that subdivisions
> on a Monticello hillside would matter, or casinos at Gettysburg, or a big
> box store beside a Civil War battlefield.
>
> Unfortunately, the Big Conflation even tainted a recent Norfolk
> Virginian-Pilot op-ed by the eminent historian James McPherson, who asserted
> incorrectly that Fort Monroe “is being considered as a potential new
> national monument.” The Big Conflation has also tainted reporting at the
> Washington Post and elsewhere.
>
> Fort Monroe preservationists have come to disagree on strategy. A
> self-appointed citizens’ committee of about six active people -- a group
> that I co-founded in 2006 -- hopes that somehow, some way, things will be
> made right in future years or decades if Virginians will only just grasp now
> for a national park or monument as Virginia’s leaders are cynically defining
> it.
>
> Seeking to divert attention, Virginia’s leaders, with smiley faces, are
> calling for a tiny, token national park that’s actually bifurcated on Fort
> Monroe’s bayfront for what the editors of the Richmond Times-Dispatch have
> called “swanky condos.”
>
> Fort Monroe’s colossal value as waterfront real estate makes the stakes so
> high that even so trusted an organization as the National Trust for Historic
> Preservation has never stood up for the entire national historic landmark.
> Instead, NTHP kowtows to narrow, parochial interests centered in Hampton and
> abetted in Richmond.
>
> NTHP’s failure to do its duty has stifled the potential for national
> attention and has multiplied the difficulties for Fort Monroe’s defenders in
> Virginia’s political struggle. It’s hard to defend the full historic
> landscape of a national treasure when the NTHP itself is abstaining.
>
> And in fact everybody in Tidewater who has fought for Fort Monroe for six
> years -- including that citizens' committee -- believes that all of Fort
> Monroe needs to become a revenue-generating, taxpayer-minimally-burdening
> Grand Public Place built on a substantial national park along Fort Monroe’s
> entire bayfront, and that development not directly related to the national
> park must be kept inland.
>
> That’s also the view held overwhelmingly by the tens of thousands of
> Virginians who have been watching the political struggle. It’s the view held
> by the large numbers of them who recently e-mailed public officials
> demanding a real national park, not a token one. (I have copies of about a
> hundred of those e-messages.)
>
> But AP completely ignores the overwhelming view of Fort Monroe’s actual
> citizen-owners, and then undermines it further by falsely propagating the
> Big Conflation.
>
> Fort Monroe’s actual owners’ view, nevertheless, is why Virginia’s
> overdevelopment-obsessed leaders desperately need the Big Conflation.
>
> AP could never defend this reporting before any Journalism 101 class.
>
> For more, please see my recent Richmond Times-Dispatch op-ed:
> http://www2.timesdispatch.com/news/oped/2011/aug/11/tdopin02-corneliussen-what-fate-for-this-national--ar-1230828/
>
> Please forward this message widely.
>
> Steven T. Corneliussen
> [log in to unmask]
> Cell: 757 813-6739
>
> ______________________________________
> To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe please see the instructions at
> http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-hist.html"The person who says it cannot
> be done should not interrupt the person who is doing it."   Karen Needles

"Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed, is more important than
any other one thing."
Abraham Lincoln to Isham Reavis, Nov. 5, 1855
Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln. Volume 2, p. 328

______________________________________
To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe please see the instructions at
http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-hist.html