In 1619, Virginia Colony Secretary John Rolfe stated that "20, and odd Negroes" had been traded for supplies. In 1861, at the start of the American Civil War, three enslaved men sought refuge at Fort Monroe. The federal commander, Major General Benjamin Butler, protected these individuals by declaring them contraband of war and forever releasing them from the ownership of their masters. In 2011, the place where the first enslaved Africans arrived and the first contrabands found refuge was designated a national monument by the first elected black president, Barack Obama. It will forever be the crossroads in the arc of freedom.
