The Grenada sentinel. [volume] (Grenada, Miss.) 1868-1955, 1909-06-25

christened Fort Monroe by the mill ~
tary authorities. 1t is too beautiful a
place to make masculine designation
fitting, and no excess of ga1lantry is
needed to make the assertion. The stronghold
was constructed a century ago, but it looks as
if it had been lifted bodily from some mediae-
val European principality and planted here on
the shore of the new world.
You walk for a full mile on the ramparts be-
fore a circuit of the post is ended. and below
you all the way lies the moat running in from
the sea. Masonry, pierced with portfolios and
rooted in deep with sand and sod, Is the ma
terial of this bulwark of defense.
The live oaks that grow within the fortress
are green through the year. They are older
much older-than the masonry walls which
hedge them in protectingly from the winter
sea blasts. Under a group Of the oaks at the
ocean side of the parade ground are placed the
priceless war relics of the revolution. They
are the old brazen smooth-bore cannon which
CORVALLIS yielded up to Washington at York
town. The British visitor to Fortress Monroe
is left in no doubt as to the identity Of these
bits of antiquated ordnance. In bold relief
Just above the trunnions is inscribed the state
ment that the cannon were a part of the fruits
of the American victory over the troops of
King George.
The French allies of the continentals must
have made merry over the taking of one of
these field pieces. The name of the maker let
into the knob of the cascabel shows that the
gun was cast in France. Another inscription
shows that the English took it from the French
on a Canadian battlefield. The Frenchmen
took the cannon, and with it revenge, on the
field at Yorktown. 1t probably was out of
sheer generosity of spirit that the allies made
no claim to the cannon on the ground of prior
ownership. They gave the trophy to Washing
ton, and it is in the safekeeping of the soldiers
of his country to-day.
There are 500 artillerymen at Fortress Mon
roe, and when the statement is made that
there is room for their maneuvers as foot SOL
diers on the drill parade plain a better idea
may be obtained of the extent of the field
within the fortress than could be conveyed by
mere figures. The barracks face the parade,
and ianking them are the officers quarters,
old-fashioned frame structures of the southern
style, suggesting summer comfort. The com
fort has no strength beyond the suggestion,
however, for some of the suffering ones say
that the high rampant walls cut of all the sea
breeze in summer.
A few Of the bachelor officers and a number
of corporals and sergeants are lodged in the
old casemates of the Fortress cool, if some
what cramped, Quartering. 1t was in one of
these classmates that Jefferson Davis. presi-
dent of the confederacy, was confined for some
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that the place where Davis was imprisoned at
Fortress Monroe was a dungeon. The case
mate is occupied to-day by a junior officer of
artillery, and he makes no complaint of hard
ship. The mistake In Jefferson Davis case
was in putting him in irons. Miles did it
under orders, and did it protesting. If Lincoln
had not been assassinated Davis probably
never would have been in chains, and his inn
p~risonment would have been OF the briefest.
The south realizes this, and some of the bitter
ness of the episode is said to be lost.
There are 80 officers of artillery stationed
at Fortress Monroe. Fewer than one-ffth OF
the number appear on the rolls as officers of
the garrison. The rest are students at the
postgraduate artillery school, which the gov
er9men conducts at the fortress for the
younger commissioned men of the service.
The officers have a club which is quartered In
a place having no counterpart in America.
The classmates of the ramparts of The fort are
connected by arched passageways, forming a
long stone-eRcased gallery. A generous Sec,
ton Of this battlement interior has been pre-
enapted for the lighter side of army life.
In every casemate is an embrasure through
which in the war days the face of the cannon
looked cut over the most. The embrasures are