Fort Monroe's
Casemate Museum
Fort Monroe, is also called Fortress Monroe, and
is a military installation at Hampton, Virginia, at the Old
Point Comfort that is located at the southern end of the
Virginia peninsula, and with Fort Wool, would guard the
navigational channel between the Chesapeake Bay and Hampton
Roads, that is a natural roadstead at the confluence of the
Elizabeth, Nansemond and the James Rivers. The fort is entirely
surrounded with a moat, and is the only remaining fort in the
nation that is still an active Army base, although it has been
scheduled for decommissioning this year; and is the only six
sided fort in the nation. In the initial exploration done by
Captain Christopher Newport in the earliest days of the colony
of Virginia this site was identified and recognized as a
strategic defensive location, and in May of 1607, the first
permanent English settlement in this country would be located
some 25 miles inland from the bay, located along the James River
at Jamestown. The land where the fort now sits had been part of
Elizabeth Cittie in 1619, then Elizabeth River Shire in 1634 and
then included in Elizabeth City County when that was formed in
1643. And in 1952, Elizabeth City County and the nearby town of
Phoebus agreed to consolidate with the smaller but independent
city of Hampton, that would then become one of the biggest
cities of Hampton Roads. In 1609, defensive fortifications would
be constructed at Old Point Comfort during the state's first two
centuries, but the substantial fort made of stone and become
known as Fort Monroe wasn't completed until 1834. The base would
be named after the President, James Monroe. All during the Civil
War, when the majority of the state had joined the Confederacy,
Fort Monroe would continue to stay in Union hands. It would then
become historic and symbolic as the site of early freedom for
former slaves that had escaped here under the provisions of the
contraband policies that would later become the Emancipation
Proclamation. Some years after, the former President of the
Confederate States, Jefferson Davis, would be held in the area
that is now known as Fort Monroe Casemate Museum. The fort is
scheduled to close in September of 2011.
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