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. 

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