A related column appeared in today's Richmond Times-Dispatch:
http://www.timesdispatch.com/rtd/news/columnists_news/article/MIKE28_20090227-223126/218089/

On Feb 28, 2009, at 1:51 PM, S. Corneliussen wrote:

> In this thread two days ago, Brent Tarter offered an article from  
> the Richmond Times-Dispatch that speculated that if the envisioned  
> slavery museum is being abandoned in Fredericksburg, maybe it should  
> be built in Richmond instead. Another candidate location is Fort  
> Monroe, as is argued in the July 7, 2008, op-ed that appears below.
>
> At Citizens for a Fort Monroe National Park (CFMNP.org), we advocate  
> a revenue-generating, self-sustaining, innovatively structured  
> national park something like San Francisco's Presidio. It seems to  
> us that Robert F. Engs, a historian at Penn, is right that Fort  
> Monroe is not just _a_ place where slavery began to die, but is  
> _the_ place where it began to die. But Fort Monroe was also part of  
> the beginning of American slavery, nearly a quarter of a millennium  
> before the self-emancipators James Townsend, Frank Baker and  
> Sheppard Mallory took the risk of escaping enslavement and sought  
> sanctuary there following Fort Sumter. So last July 7 in the Norfolk  
> Virginian-Pilot, CFMNP's Scott Butler published this op-ed arguing  
> for a Fort Monroe location for the slavery museum.
>
> (Note: Anyone within the WHRO PBS Channel 15 broadcast area might  
> want to plan to watch the Fort Monroe discussion that will take  
> place at 8:30 next Friday, March 6. Cathy Lewis, the host -- and  
> also the host of a noontime talk show on the NPR channel 89.5 FM --  
> has begun her own speculating about what Scott proposed.)
>
> Fort could house national slavery museum
> By SCOTT BUTLER
>
> FIVE YEARS AFTER a ceremonial groundbreaking, construction on the  
> U.S. National Slavery Museum in Fredericksburg has yet to begin.  
> Richmond Mayor L. Douglas Wilder, the museum's founder, blames the  
> slowdown in fundraising on his other commitments and the national  
> economy.
>
> Meanwhile, plans are proceeding for the Smithsonian's National  
> Museum of African American History and Culture, scheduled to open in  
> 2015. But as columnist Roger Cohen says, "What this $500 million  
> institution will be remains to be invented."
>
> There is a common and eminently sensible solution to these dilemmas.  
> Fort Monroe in Hampton, which the U.S. Army will vacate in three  
> years, has museum-adaptable buildings that are themselves associated  
> with the history of slavery, and that stand on a spit of land, Old  
> Point Comfort, with an even longer connection to that history.
>
> In 1619, a British privateer landed at Old Point Comfort and traded  
> its human cargo of 20 Africans for food, setting in motion the  
> creation of the American slave system. Two hundred years later, that  
> thriving system provided much of the work force for the construction  
> of Fort Monroe's moated stone fortress, intended to protect American  
> freedom.
>
> Then in 1861, shortly after Virginia's secession, three enslaved men  
> escaped in a small boat from Norfolk and asked for asylum at Union- 
> held Fort Monroe. The Union commander granted their request on the  
> dubious moral grounds that they were "contraband of war." But his  
> decision led to thousands of escaped slaves pouring into the fort  
> and nearby, Confederate burned Hampton, where they created for  
> themselves an enclave of freedom.
>
> Their actions, in turn, inspired the passage of the Confiscation  
> Acts, the first legal steps on the path to the Emancipation Act and  
> the Thirteenth Amendment.
>
> The history of Fort Monroe and Old Point Comfort encapsulates the  
> history of American slavery from its very beginning to the beginning  
> of its end. And there is more. The smaller details of this centuries- 
> long story could provide hooks for an exploration of many aspects of  
> U.S. slavery and its aftermath. For example:
>
> * African origins: The Africans who arrived in 1619 came from the  
> Portuguese colony of Angola, where the population was Christian and  
> often literate.
>
> * The economics of slavery: Hampton records show the names of slave  
> owners and the 600 slaves they hired out to work on Fort Monroe from  
> 1819-1822.
>
> * The Underground Railroad: In 1854, Charles Gilbert liberated  
> himself and made his way from Richmond to Old Point Comfort, one of  
> the sites on the Underground Railroad. He hid out beneath the Hygeia  
> Hotel for a month, eating refuse from the dining room, until he was  
> able to board a ship going to Philadelphia.
>
> * African-American volunteers in the Union Army: The U.S. Colored  
> 2nd Regiment Cavalry was organized at Fort Monroe in 1863 and took  
> part in the siege of Petersburg and Richmond.
>
> * Cultural achievements and aspirations of slaves: It was at Fort  
> Monroe that some of the first Spirituals, that sublime art form  
> recently designated a national treasure by Congress, were collected  
> for posterity - among them "Let My People Go." It was there, too,  
> that Mary S. Peake, a freeborn black woman, taught "contraband"  
> inhabitants of Hampton to read, just as she had taught slaves in her  
> home before the destruction of the city.
>
> * The post-war story: In 1865, Fort Monroe became the headquarters  
> of the Freedmen's Bureau, and in 1868, Hampton Institute -- now  
> Hampton University -- was founded with the aid of Northern  
> missionaries who had helped to educate the contrabands during the  
> war. The contraband community in Hampton flourished economically and  
> culturally until the advent of "Jim Crow" laws in the late 19th  
> century.
>
> Given this wealth of history, what better place could there be for a  
> national slavery museum than Fort Monroe? And what better place for  
> a truly national museum under the auspices of the federal government?
>
> Gov. Tim Kaine should encourage Wilder and the Smithsonian to focus  
> on Fort Monroe and Old Point Comfort as a Smithsonian Affiliate  
> site. He could share with them what a dozen Civil War historians  
> said at a symposium organized by his Fort Monroe Authority. They  
> called the fort "a spiritual Ellis Island" for African Americans and  
> "sacred ground" in the continuing story of American freedom.
>
> Scott Butler, of Newport News, is a board member of Citizens for a  
> Fort Monroe National Park.
> ______________________________________
> To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe please see the  
> instructions at
> http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-hist.html

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