Adam Goodheart in the NYTimes wrote about the Fort Monroe designation as a new National Park. Read his article here, and get the NYT if you want more.

Fort Monroe, the president said as he prepared to sign the order, “was the site of the first slave ships to land in the New World. But then in the Civil War, almost 250 years later, Fort Monroe also became a refuge for slaves that were escaping from the South, and helped to create the environment in which Abraham Lincoln was able to sign that document up there.” Mr. Obama pointed to a framed, autographed copy of the Emancipation Proclamation hanging opposite his desk, not far from a portrait of Lincoln.

In a conversation after the ceremony, Interior Secretary Kenneth Salazar called Fort Monroe “a crown jewel in the history of America’s march toward a more perfect Union.” He added, “I can’t think of a place that has more national historical significance than Fort Monroe.”