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.