Grand Contraband Camp

Grand Contraband Camp. "Freedom's Fortress". , On the night of May 23, 1861, just days after Virginia seceded from the Union, three enslaved men working on a Confederate fortification in Norfolk carried out an audacious plan, appearing at the gates of Fort Monroe and asking for sanctuary. The next day, when a southern officer demanded their return under the Fugitive Slave Act, Gen. Benjamin Butler refused, calling them "contrabands of war." This decision set in motion of one of the great refugee floods in history.

At first a handful, then dozens, then hundreds of slaves from plantations along the James River and as far south as North Carolina streamed across Union lines to "Freedom's Fortress." By the time it was over, some 25,000 contrabands crowded the Peninsula, 7,000 of them in the village of Hampton. This remarkable act of people seizing their own freedom is regarded as the beginning of the end of slavery.

The area north and west of Queen Street was crisscrossed by streets of contrabands named Lincoln, Grant, and Union, which retain those names today. The area was officially called the Grand Contraband Camp, but was known as "Slabtown," as was an area near what is now Phoebeus. The term "slab" comes from discarded bark-covered first cuts of logs. Initially the contrabands used the slabs, along with other materials such as shutters and timbers scavenged from the ruins that remained after Confederate troops burned the town. Their shanties were sometimes built next to the hulks of chimneys, but most were placed outside the old village. Later, General Butler built a sawmill nearby to give contrabands better, more regular lumber.