Freedom's Fortress

Fort Monroe was the site of Major General Benjamin F. Butler's decision in 1861 to accept escaping slaves as "contrabands of war." Thousands of former slaves who cast off their bondage and sought sanctuary here called this "The Freedom Fort." The First and Second Regiments of U.S. Colored Cavalry and Battery B, Second U.S. Colored Light Artillery, were raised here during the Civil War. In 1865 the Bureau for the Relief of Freedmen and Refugees ("Freedmen's Bureau") established its state headquarters here.