African-American history began at Fort Monroe in 1619, when a ship carrying, as colonist John Rolfe reported, "20 and odd Negroes, which the Governor and Cape Merchant bought for victualle," made a stop on its way to Jamestown at Old Point Comfort, the present site of Fort Monroe. The unnamed Africans aboard were the first to be introduced into an English coastal colony, and whether they were slaves or indentured servants, their arrival marked the beginning of America's "peculiar institution."

Almost exactly two hundred years later, some of the victims of this now flourishing institution were contracted out to begin the construction of Fort Monroe. Then, a generation later, in the first months of the Civil War, the fort which slavery had helped to build suddenly became a beacon of freedom. On May 24, 1861, three escapees from bondage -- Frank Baker, Sheppard Mallory and James Townsend --made their way by boat to Fort Monroe and asked for sanctuary. The Fugitive Slave Act was still in force, but the post commander, Major General Benjamin Butler, decided that it no longer applied in Virginia, which had seceded from the Union. So instead of handing the escapees over to the Confederate emissary who came the next morning to claim them, he declared them to be "contraband of war."

Word spread quickly among African Americans in the surrounding area and the region, and by July nearly a thousand of them had made the journey to "Fort Freedom." By the end of the war, 10,000 or more were living in the fort and in houses they had built on the ruins of Hampton, burned by the Confederates to keep it out of Union hands. According to historian Robert F. Engs, author of "Freedom's First Fortress: Black Hampton, Virginia, 1861-1890," this risk-taking resettlement was the first "mass freedom incident" of the Civil War and the beginning of freedom for all Americans. It was also at Fort Monroe that many African American spirituals, one of the richest aspects of American culture, were transcribed for the first time.

In some ways, the contrabands were no better off than they had been under slavery. They were physically abused, denied food, and cheated out of the wages for their Union jobs by their supposed protectors, and though many of them may not have realized it at the time, they were excluded from the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, which was directed at slaves in rebel-held territory. Technically, they remained the property of the Union until the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865.

They regarded themselves, however, as free and independent, and their attitude of self-reliance led them to create, in that part of Hampton known as the Grand Contraband Camp, a uniquely vibrant post-war black community. In the words of Robert F. Engs, "By 1890 they had made tremendous strides toward achievement of their goals: half of the businesses on Hampton's main street were black owned, Hampton blacks participated fully in the political process throughout the 1880s, electing black officials and delegates to the state legislature. Blacks held jobs across the entire spectrum from common laborer to professional; nearly half were the category of skilled craftsman or above. Hampton blacks saw to the education of their children, supporting the public elementary school and a private secondary school. Many sent their children to [Hampton] Institute thereafter…. Many went on to colleges and graduate schools in the North, and returned to become involved in local and state politics. Finally, blacks established a whole set of community institutions to serve the people: five churches, various fraternal organizations, women's associations, young people's groups, and temperance societies. The Hampton black community by 1890 was an elaborate one which shared the styles, values, and problems of many other American communities, whatever the geographical location or racial composition."

Another consequence of "Fort Freedom" was the establishment in 1868 of Hampton Institute, now Hampton University, by missionaries who had come down from the North during the war to help the contrabands. Hampton Institute provided an important educational resource for black Hamptonians, but it also promoted what many of these same people considered a wrong-headed strategy of accommodation to white prejudices and paternalism. Thus Hampton, according to Engs, was also a microcosm of the decades-long national debate among African Americans about the best way to achieve full equality.

After 1890, whites reasserted control of city politics, and black Hampton lost much of what it had gained. But the flowering that had followed Fort Monroe's transformation into "Fort Freedom" did not entirely cease, says Engs: "The forces of repression ultimately engulfed black Hampton just as the had the rest of the black South, but the twenty years of respite enjoyed by Hamptonians made a crucial difference. During that period a whole new generation of blacks had reached maturity in a community in which parents owned property, voted, held elective office, and knew more about the outside world than many white Hamptonians. Even in political and economic defeat, black Hampton's first free generation could look with pride at its major achievement: its children. They were well educated, ambitious, sophisticated in business, in education, and in the ways of the world, white as well as black, Northern as well as Southern. They and their descendants would continue to play a major role in American black life long after accommodation had been repudiated."

African-American Heroes of the Contraband Period

* Mary Peake, a free black woman living in Hampton, became a teacher in the 1850s, and during the early days of the Civil War she taught the Contraband ex-slaves who had come to Fort Monroe. She died of tuberculosis in 1862. A Hampton school and street are named after her, and there is a Mary Peake Center.

* George Scott, a runaway slave from a plantation near Yorktown, furnished information about Confederate positions to General Butler of Fort Monroe. Scott was one of many African-American spies for the Union Army whose "black dispatches," as they were called, were a crucial source of information.

Text contributed by Scott Butler. Comments? Please contact us.

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