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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