Virginia is considering a great idea: restoring the original name of the place where the arc of the moral universe bent toward emancipation.
In 1619 as “Point Comfort,” that historic landscape saw the dawn of British North America’s slavery. In 1861 as “Fort Monroe,” it saw the dawn of U.S. slavery’s demise.
True, dropping the military name could offend people such as me — a former Navyman, son of a Navyman, married in Fort Monroe’s chapel to a soldier’s daughter.
But way more importantly, that Chesapeake Bay landscape uniquely commemorates the struggles of the planet’s first nation to found itself on freedom.
Stand on Point Comfort’s shoreline where the new African Landing Memorial is rising. It will commemorate the first captive Africans’ 1619 arrival via the Atlantic Ocean, visible on the horizon.
Then turn around and see the 1861 end of emancipation’s arc: the majestic, moated stone citadel. It attracted the freedom-striving Civil War slavery escapees who started the movement some historians call self-emancipation.
That citadel was the Union’s mighty stronghold in Confederate Virginia. The self-emancipating escapees called it Freedom’s Fortress.
It’s within the overall post, which the Army retired in 2011, and is one part of the bifurcated, token Fort Monroe National Monument. (On my Substack The Self-Emancipator, I’ve posted an illustrated Point Comfort profile.)
In May 1861, mere weeks into the Civil War, enterprising slavery escapees Frank Baker, Shepard Mallory and James Townsend asked for asylum at Fort Monroe. This provoked momentous events that the distinguished Civil War historian James M. McPherson, in a Virginian-Pilot guest column, called “the story of the end of slavery in America.”
Civil War and slavery historian Edward L. Ayers, University of Richmond president emeritus and holder of the National Humanities Medal, once called those events “the greatest moment in American history.” By war’s end, all across the South, hundreds of thousands had escaped. McPherson has said they “forced the issue of emancipation.”
At a Norfolk State University Civil War history meeting, former National Park Service chief historian Dwight T. Pitcaithley once asked, “Where’s the national monument to emancipation?”
I’ve argued we already have it: Point Comfort. It could appeal to all sides in the history wars.
The renaming to recognize 1619, though, would stir up a history-wars challenge: the starkly obvious connection to the contentiousness-inspiring 1619 Project, which framed itself with Point Comfort.
But Virginia could contribute constructively not by joining the 1619 battling, but by showing — with this historic landscape — how the arc of the moral universe bent toward emancipation.
Virginia could also finally engage an idea from two decades of political debates about Fort Monroe’s post-Army future: elevating the Historic Triangle of Jamestown, Williamsburg and Yorktown into the Historic Diamond.
It wouldn’t radically change the development-vs.-preservation balance. But it would take some relenting on Virginia’s vision for Fort Monroe, which I’ve been opposing since my first Daily Press guest column about it as a brand new history activist in 2005.
Virginia’s 2005 vision persists today: “to redevelop this historic property into a vibrant, mixed-use community.”
No kidding. And no mention of the token national monument. Scroll to the end of the official “Reimagine the Future of Fort Monroe” webpage.
That any vision will be initially costly creates a convenient pretext for overdevelopment: public financial necessity. But with Fort Monroe increasingly ranked alongside the likes of the Liberty Bell, Plymouth Rock and Gettysburg, that pretext boils down to a claim that the United States is fourth-rate.
The Historic Triangle does a great job of telling the story of a slavery nation’s founding.
Add Point Comfort. Call it the Historic Diamond. Then Virginia would be telling the world about the complete founding — the founding of a country that belatedly but blessedly began striving to live up to the Declaration of Independence.
Steven T. Corneliussen of Poquoson publishes the free-subscription Substack newsletter The Self-Emancipator, named in the spirit of the antebellum abolitionist publication The Emancipator.
