Steve Corneliussen's response to the Daily Press

Above the fold on today's Daily Press front page appears a story headlined "Slavery had beginning, end at Fort Monroe." It's easily available at DailyPress.com. In my personal view it's important in several ways, as discussed below for any friends of Fort Monroe who might be interested. Thanks very much.

Steven T. Corneliussen

Citizens for a Fort Monroe National Park (CFMNP.org)

(I love to get reply comments by reply e-mail, though I can't always guarantee that I can answer each message.)

- - - - - - - -

Thanks, Daily Press and Lara Chapman, for highlighting the Fort Monroe freedom story. (Please note, though, that the Web site of Citizens for a Fort Monroe National Park, CFMNP.org, was unaccountably omitted from the "Learn More" list at the end.)

It seems to me that with the Fort Monroe Authority planning Fort Monroe's future on behalf of a powerful handful of Hamptonians plus Governor Kaine's administration -- but not on behalf of Fort Monroe's true owners, all Americans -- the Fort Monroe freedom story is all the more vital to discuss.

It's important to recall that in January 2008, when leading historians -- both black and white -- came to town to discuss Fort Monroe's history during planning for Fort Monroe's future, they declared the freedom story not an African American story, but an American one.

In fact it seems to me that the freedom story confers international significance on our national treasure of Fort Monroe. Here's why.

No doubt Gen. Butler was not only "bold" in a sense, as the article says, but clever and constructive too. It seems to me, though, that the most important bravery in this story is that of the self-emancipating Americans who had been enslaved not by any "rightful" owner -- to use the article's word -- but by fellow human beings who in fact operated against what was known to be right.

The only thing "rightful" about owning fellow humans was that legally but illegitimately, the grotesque, perverted laws of that day gave some humans property rights in other humans. But the self-emancipating Americans knew deep in their hearts, just naturally, that it was time for America finally to live out the true meaning of the Declaration of Independence.

It seems obvious that the self-emancipators knew in their own way what President Lincoln came later to know in his own way, as he showed in the Gettysburg Address when he spoke of a nation "conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal" and when he spoke of "a new birth of freedom."

Long before the Emancipation Proclamation, self-emancipators like Frank Baker, James Townsend and Sheppard Mallory stood up bravely. They risked the wrath of not-rightful fellow humans. They claimed the freedom and human dignity that are the human rights of all human beings under what the Declaration of Independence called the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God.

It was originally, in the very first place, these Americans, and not some Union general, who started the cascade of self-emancipation that spread across the South and contributed enormously to the Civil War's outcome -- and to the basic meaning of American history itself.

And when you see some young woman in some chaotic country stand up to oppose the vicious sex slavery that formerly enslaved her, you're seeing fundamentally the same assertion of human dignity and freedom.

America did not invent all of that. But America tried first and has tried longest to make a nation out of such ideas.

It seems to me that that's an important part of why we must not allow Fort Monroe to be disrespected and misused by people who think of it as a narrowly envisioned, short-term economic windfall for one city, Hampton.

Which leads back to the topic of the present danger to Fort Monroe itself.

A half-century ago, all of Fort Monroe -- not just the moated fortress -- was designated a national historic landmark. When those eminent historians came to town in January of 2008, I was in the audience. After they made clear that they saw the Fort Monroe freedom story as central to Fort Monroe's history, I asked them to discuss something.

The Fort Monroe Authority -- which, as I say, does not represent Fort Monroe's actual owners -- had convened the symposium, and had steered the historians' discussion to center only on the moated fortress. So I asked the historians to discuss the relationship of the freedom story to the national historic landmark in its entirety.

Of course, the national landmark in its entirety -- the land outside the moated fortress -- is central to any narrow vision of Fort Monroe as a short-term economic windfall for one city. If you can confine "history" to the moated fortress, maybe you can build upscale condos -- or whatever -- on the rest of the land.

So the Fort Monroe Authority official in charge of the symposium ruled my question out of the scope of the discussion. The eminent historians never discussed the relationship of the land -- the "viewshed" -- to Fort Monroe's history, and to American history, and to the history of human liberty itself.

Today this national treasure with international significance is slated for some unspecified amount of development. That's not just development to make the place economically self-sustaining for its owners, who are the American people. Instead, Fort Monroe is slated for some unspecified amount of development just for the sake of development, and for the wishes of that powerful handful.

In Virginia, that too is a fundamental question that our leaders have never discussed with citizens. They still could, if they chose to.