(Second attempt, thanks to funny business with the forum's reply-to 
e-address.)

(bcc to Professor Glymph at Duke)

> From: John Kneebone
> At 2:30 p.m., hear Thavolia Glymph, of Duke University, “Emancipation and
> the Problem of Black Refugees and Refugee Camps in the Civil War.”

Thanks for this alert. It's probably unlikely at a purely scholarly 
conference, but can anyone say if there's any remote chance that Professor 
Glymph or any ensuing discussion will in any way engage the impending fate 
of post-Army Fort Monroe?

In a 2011 Diane Rehm NPR panel including Adam Goodheart (who understands 
Fort Monroe deeply but doesn't publicly defend its threatened sense of 
place), Chandra Manning and David Blight, Professor Glymph said something 
very much like what Eric Foner, Kate Masur, Edward Ayers and others (notably 
Goodheart, in fact) have emphasized recently:
QUOTE
I don't think it was clear-cut to anyone at the beginning, what was going to 
happen. The stakes were clear, I think. Most Northerners and Southerners, 
white and black, free and enslaved, did understand that the fundamental 
cause was slavery and on the ground, if one could identify any group of 
people who understood where this war would probably go, it would be the 
slaves themselves who, from the very first moment, even long before the 
escapes to Fort Monroe began moving for freedom. And so clearly, the most 
important abolitionists here are the slaves -- the enslaved people.
UNQUOTE

It seems to me that to the extent that evolving understanding of Black 
agency makes Fort Monroe more important as the central historic landscape 
for the dynamic that the professor illuminates, it also heightens the 
importance of the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot's warning that if the fake, split 
national monument at Fort Monroe is indeed cemented forever -- as Virginia's 
leaders grimly intend -- Fort Monroe itself will forever remain "degraded."

Please note that I understand that in all likelihood, Monday's scholarly 
meeting will _not_ engage Fort Monroe's fate, especially since historians 
unfortunately and unaccountably follow Goodheart's lead in silently 
abandoning the historic landscape to Virginia's politicians and cronies --  
and to their financially and culturally costly obsession with 
overdevelopment.

But I nevertheless had to ask. When these freedom-and-dignity matters, 
partially understood in the sesquicentennial, are discussed at the 
bicentennial, something cherishable might be gone--in fact, as things stand 
now, probably will be gone.

Thanks.

Steven T. Corneliussen
Poquoson, Virginia
http://www.fortmonroenationalpark.org/ 

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