I found this interesting:
zeveland:
It's not necessary to call Serial.begin() for the Leonardo since the CDC device is initialized elsewhere. The stub was retained for backwards-compatibility.
.. since it seems to say that the serial speed for the USB CDC is independent of whatever code you write. I'm inferring that since you don't need to open the port with a speed (e.g. Serial.begin(115200))
Does that sound right?
Which leads me to my second question:
Q: Is the serial monitor in the Arduino IDE monitoring the USB CDC serial port or the hardware serial port?
Thanks for any insights!
Daniel