Simon Barrett

This week author Joel Moore and I will be joined by Terry Brown, a leading authority on Fort Monroe. The Shithsonian starts its entry about the fort: As a white child in southern Virginia, I thought his first name was “Beast” because everyone called him that. Gen. Benjamin Franklin Butler was our nemesis—the Union commander of Fort Monroe, at the entrance to southeastern Virginia’s vast natural harbor; the churl who ordered the women of New Orleans to yield the sidewalk whenever Yankee soldiers approached; the officer who returned to oversee the occupation of Norfolk. But I was never told how Butler and Fort Monroe figured in one of the pivotal moments of the Civil War. I hope that you will join us for what I am sure will be a great program