Hampton

Control of Hampton was disputed during the war’s first months as Brig. Gen. Benjamin F. Butler sought to expand Union control over the lower Peninsula. Despite his defeat at the Battle of Big Bethel on June 10, 1861, his troops occupied Hampton on July 3, 1861, but when troops were needed to defend Washington after the Bull Run defeat, the Federals abandoned the town. After Confederate commander John Bankhead Magruder learned from a New York Tribune article that Butler planned to quarter Union troops and escaped slaves known as “Contraband of War” in Hampton, he moved quickly to prevent it, ordering Hampton resident Capt. Jefferson Curle Phillips of the Old Dominion Dragoons to burn the town. Local residents, including members of the Warwick Beauregards and the York Rangers, carried out the order on the night of August 7, 1861. Phillips assembled his troops at the western wall of St. John’s churchyard, informed citizens that the town would be destroyed, and soon Hampton was engulfed in flames, leaving only the charred walls of St. John’s Church and a few scattered building shells standing. The Union continued to use the ruined town, with soldiers camping in St. John’s churchyard and African-Americans settling in the large Grand Contraband Camp in Hampton and in Slabtown near Fort Monroe, where they supported the Union cause as camp laborers, servants to Federal officers, and crew members on navy ships.

Hampton, Virginia · United States