Enormous Undertaking: The Fort's Construction

During the War of 1812, British soldiers burned Hampton and occupied the Old Point Comfort Lighthouse, while the British Navy sailed unopposed up the Chesapeake Bay to Fort McHenry in Baltimore, burning Washington, DC, along the way. After the war, President James Madison hired the French engineer Brevet Brigadier General Simon Bernard to design a network of coastal defenses to protect the nation from future attacks. Bernard, a member of the French Army's Engineer Corps and a former aide-de-camp to Napoleon, arrived in the United States in 1816 after being recommended to Madison by the Marquis de Lafayette. Madison placed him at the head of the Board of Engineers, which was charged with constructing coastal defenses, forts, roads, and canals. Construction of Fort Monroe began in 1819, and during the early 1820s it required delivery of 800,000 bricks a month, most produced within a mile of the fort, while large quantities of granite came from quarries along Maryland's Susquehanna River. The main fortification was completed by 1834.

Hampton, Virginia · United States