Forum participants might be interested in this message that I've distributed to a number of people who follow the controversy over the fate of Fort Monroe at Old Point Comfort, Virginia. Thanks.
Steve Corneliussen
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http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/03/magazine/mag-03CivilWar-t.html
This weekend's New York Times Sunday magazine offers a long article about the Fort Monroe Freedom Story -- the Contraband Story, as some still call it -- under the quite tellingly worded headline "How Slavery Really Ended in America." The author, Adam Goodheart, has written in the past with real understanding of the only-just-now-emerging full significance of what happened in the Civil War at the Union's highly symbolic but also objectively crucial bastion in Confederate Virginia. Here he continues. It seems to me that this fine article, even though it leaves the post-Army Fort Monroe question entirely unmentioned, will likely unlock the long-delayed but inevitable national attention that can encourage and bolster Virginia's leaders -- and national preservation organization leaders -- in following through on their worthy and hopeful new resolve to achieve a fitting disposition for post-Army Fort Monroe. I offer some comments below, for what they may be worth, and I thank all who may read this message for their indulgence. Reply comments gladly welcomed.
Steven T. Corneliussen
Co-founder, Citizens for a Fort Monroe National Park (CFMNP.org)
Cell: 757 813-6739
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In my view the Fort Monroe Freedom Story constitutes the heart of the Civil War's contribution to the completion of the founding of America.
When President Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address, he framed it in allusion to the Declaration of Independence, which affirmed that the desire for -- and the right to -- freedom and dignity inheres in human nature itself, whether you care to think of that as reflecting the laws of nature or the laws of nature's god.
That's why Union General Butler's indispensable 1861 "contraband" decision -- under the laws of war and under the filthy laws of slavery -- ranks second to the most important decision in the Freedom Story. That was the decision of enslaved but self-emancipating Americans to stand up, take a big risk, and assert the very rights that America had claimed, but had not yet so much as even tried fully to respect, under natural law -- a law higher than the ones lending practicality to the general's clever, constructive actions.
It also seems to me that America did not originate -- or serve as the first to recognize -- these laws of nature. Moreover, America itself is not exceptional, despite what Rush Limbaugh trumpets. Instead, it is America's founding principles that are exceptional.
And Fort Monroe is the one location on this planet where a country first -- albeit haltingly and often failingly -- resolved at least, and at last, actually to try to live by those principles. We still try imperfectly, but if you check the various declarations of independence and declarations of human rights on continents planetwide, you can see the effect.
Goodheart's article leaves Fort Monroe's present situation unmentioned. Readers won't learn that the Fort Monroe question was misframed a half-decade ago by a BRAC law grotesquely ill-fitted for Fort Monroe's situation. They won't learn that the editors of one Tidewater paper, along with key decision-makers -- in Gov. McDonnell's administration, on the Fort Monroe Authority, and maybe also in Hampton -- contemplate and maybe even intend land sales not just in the western residential corridor where such sales might make sense, but within the precious but endangered green bayside heart of Old Point Comfort.
(And thank heaven for the other Tidewater paper, and for its recent editorials at http://hamptonroads.com/2011/03/turning-point-fort-monroe, http://hamptonroads.com/2011/01/park-services-time-ft-monroe, and http://hamptonroads.com/2010/11/make-fort-monroe-national-park.)
Surely this article will finally unlock national attention, and surely national attention will quickly focus on the parallels between our own situation and those elucidated by Ken Burns in his national park series.
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