Ft. Monroe is already open to tourists, but someone is cooking up one of those grandiose Civil War heritage tourism plans for the place: [it could become a] "learning laboratory" with a teacher institute that would draw on the post's Civil War heritage and its role in the demise of slavery to draw in visitors.Emphasis added. Could slavery have been ended without the good fortress? And I, for one, never book a vacation before checking my extensive nationwide list of learning laboratories.
Now picture busloads flocking to learn the etymology of "contraband of war," to lay wreaths at the bust of Butler, to ponder the contributions of Dix and Wool, to trace the steps of the Big Bethel campaign.
Is this a heritage tourism goldmine?
