Fort Monroe

I haven’t blogged in a few days because I’ve been spending your generous donations seeing graves of many of the most despicable humans in American history. And a few good ones too. But really, mostly despicable people. But that isn’t quite all I’ve been doing on this trip. This morning, I visited Fort Monroe, outside of Newport News, Virginia. This fort is a tremendously important place that Obama made into a national park, though that slow transition is very much still in transition. It’s notable because it’s where the first African slaves landed in 1619. This is not yet interpreted that I saw, but I am sure that will change; again, the National Park Service moves at a snail’s pace with new sites. It’s also the site where Benjamin Butler recognized the power of declaring self-freed slaves contraband and not returning them to their masters, a project that went very far in killing treason in defense of slavery. That less than a year before, Butler was an active supporter of Jefferson Davis for president, to the point of not supporting Stephen Douglas, is amazing to me. Moreover, this is also the spot where you can visit this glorious site:

This is the prison cell where Jefferson Davis was held upon his arrival to Fort Monroe. Unfortunately, he wasn’t led from here to a firing squad, or a gallows if we didn’t want to waste the bullets on such a scoundrel. Me saying this on Twitter led to a bunch of liberals saying “executing Davis would have been an unacceptable use of state power” which made me say “oh, liberals.” Anyway, I still very much enjoyed walking into the prison cell where that treasonous bastard was forced to stare at an American flag, and was even shackled for a short time. Sadly, 19th century notions of honor won the day and he spent most of his nearly 2 years at Fort Monroe able to wander around freely with his wife, something he wouldn’t have allowed his own slaves. And then he was never prosecuted for his grotesque crimes.