In 1861, this site was chosen for an artillery battery to block the James River approach to Richmond, the Confederate capital, sixty miles away. At the outbreak of the Civil War, the Confederacy had thousands of miles of shoreline to defend from the far stronger Union Navy, and this river was a direct route to Richmond with no defenses. Fort Huger was paired with a fort at Mulberry Point to create a crossfire against Union ships attempting to pass. After a year of operation, however, the value of such forts was undermined by the arrival of ironclads. On March 8, 1862, nearby combat between USS Monitor and CSS Virginia transformed naval warfare, and two months later the ironclad Galena shelled Fort Huger while the fort's return fire bounced harmlessly off her hull. Unable to damage these new vessels, the defenders destroyed their guns and abandoned the fort. Construction had been difficult because Confederate labor shortages affected projects like this one, and Fort Huger was built with both free and enslaved labor, with free workers or the owners of enslaved workers paid 50 cents per day.