> An even better use is the proposed Museum of the Confederacy
> branch museum proposed for Ft. Monroe.

Amen! (Except I myself wouldn't say "better.") Waite Rawls, who directs the 
MOC, is a regular at Fort Monroe planning events, and he has a big cheering 
section (with me among the most vocal). I've said this before in this forum, 
though not in the context of the slavery museum at Fort Monroe, but when you 
think about it, Virginia's present Historic Triangle's Jamestown, 
Williamsburg, and Yorktown encompass the earliest settlement, the colonial 
years, and the Revolution -- but that combination leaves out the profoundly 
formative Civil War. With the Monitor Center nearby, a Fort Monroe involving 
both a slavery museum and a branch of the Museum of the Confederacy could 
anchor not a Historic Triangle but a Historic Quadrangle. (Anyone interested 
in that idea might want to see a June 2007 Richmond Times-Dispatch op-ed in 
which I proposed it: http://www.cfmnp.org/JuneteenthAsSubmitted.htm .) This 
fall, the new Ken Burns series on America's national parks will air. Maybe 
by then Governor Kaine and the others who seek to perpetrate the 
mediocritization of Fort Monroe will wake up. If they could argue financial 
necessity, they'd at least have a case. But they can't. Even if you don't 
care about historical, cultural, recreational, architectural and 
environmental enrichment -- that is, even if you only care about financial 
enrichment for Hampton and the region -- a Fort Monroe with national stature 
is a better plan.
Steve Corneliussen
Poquoson, Virginia 

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