The Birth of Fort Monroe

Fort Monroe consists of 170 historic buildings spread across 565 acres of land and 8 miles of waterfront along the Chesapeake Bay in Hampton Virginia.

Prior to it becoming a National Monument on November 1, 2011, Fort Monroe was the home of TRADOC (United States Army Training and Doctrine Command) with a work population of nearly 3000 people,  including 1000 people in uniform.

Fort Monroe was originally used to stand guard over the heavily traveled navigational channel between the Chesapeake Bay and Hampton Roads. Surrounded by a moat, the six-sided stone fort was the last remaining fort in the United States still active as an Army post when it was recently decommissioned in 2011.

During the initial exploration by the mission headed by Captain Christopher Newport in the earliest days of the Colony of Virginia, the site was identified as a strategic defensive location. In May 1607, they established the first permanent English settlement in the present-day United States about 25 miles further inland from the Bay along the James River at Jamestown.

It became notable as a historic and symbolic site of early freedom for former slaves under the provisions of contraband policies and later the Emancipation Proclamation. For several years thereafter, the former Confederate President, Jefferson Davis, was imprisoned at the fort in the area now known as the Fort Monroe Casemate Museum.

Fort Monroe closed on September 15, 2011. Several plans for how Fort Monroe can be best utilized are currently under development in the Hampton community.

Birthplace of the Civil War-era Freedom Movement

Fort Monroe is the Birthplace of the Civil War-era Freedom Movement and served as a key defensive site at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay for 400 years.

Fort Monroe is one of the least known and most important places in America. It was the landing site of the first enslaved people brought to North America, and functioned as an assembly,training, and embarkation point for U.S. forces in the Seminole Wars, suppression of Nat Turner’s Rebellion, Black Hawk War, Mexican War, and Civil War. Fort Monroe protected important military and civilian resources located inland during World War I and World War II.

Since then, it has served as a major headquarters for training soldiers for war.
One hundred and fifty years ago, Fort Monroe became the birthplace of the Civil War-era freedom movement when three brave enslaved men escaped the Confederate Army and fled in a small boat to relative safety at Fort Monroe. There, the Union commander seized these men as “contraband” of war, an unusual legal maneuver that provided refuge for the three men, and in turn, heralded the beginning of the end of slavery in America.

Over the course of the Civil War, more than 500,000 African American women, children, and men would liberate themselves, following in the footsteps of those first three freedom seekers at Fort Monroe, leading to one of the war’s most extraordinary—and overlooked chapters. Preservation of Fort Monroe is critical to our Civil War heritage.

The Future of Fort Monroe Remains Uncertain.
On September 15, 2011 the U.S. Army will vacate Ft. Monroe following the recommendation of the Base Realignment and Closure Commission, and the lands and buildings will revert to the Commonwealth of Virginia.

The Governor of Virginia is willing to donate key property at Fort Monroe to allow the National Park Service to help manage this treasured national historic resource in partnership with the Commonwealth. However, it may be years before a National Park designation would be enacted by Congress. To survive, it is imperative that the buildings and lands at Fort Monroe remain in productive use.

Kirsten Talken-Spaulding to Serve as Fort Monroe's First Superintendent

Talken-Spaulding, 45, is currently a National Park Service Bevinetto Congressional Fellow who has worked in both the park service's Washington legislative affairs and in a congressional committee office on Capitol Hill during the two-year leadership program.

Talken-Spaulding previously served at National Capital Parks-East as chief ranger. She has held other management positions at Prince William Forest Park in Haleakala National Park in Hawaii, and the Mojave National Preserve in California.

Historical Sites You Want to Visit at Fort Monroe

Jefferson Davis Cell
Jefferson Davis, the one-time lieutenant in the US Army and later President of the Confederacy, was here on two occasions: once as the secretary of war and once as prisoner.

Following the Civil War, Davis was accused of treason, plotting the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, and mistreatment of Union prisoners of war. In May of 1865, he was escorted to a casemate cell within the walls of Fort Monroe, chained in ankle irons for three days and heavily guarded with soldiers.

He remained in the casemate for six months until he was moved to a better-appointed cell inside Carroll Hall. Davis was released from Fort Monroe a year and a half later upon being permitted to post $100,000 bail, paid by prominent northerners Horace Greely, Gerrit Smith, and Cornelius Vanderbilt. He was never brought to trial.