On the night of May 23, 1861, just days after Virginia seceded from the Union, three enslaved men working on a Confederate fortification in Norfolk sought sanctuary at Fort Monroe. The next day, when a southern officer demanded their return under the Fugitive Slave Act, Gen. Benjamin Butler refused, calling them "contrabands of war." That decision helped trigger a vast refugee movement as enslaved people from plantations along the James River and as far south as North Carolina crossed Union lines to "Freedom's Fortress." By the end, about 25,000 contrabands crowded the Peninsula, including 7,000 in the village of Hampton. This act of people seizing their own freedom is regarded as the beginning of the end of slavery. North and west of Queen Street, streets in the contraband settlement were named Lincoln, Grant, and Union, and those names remain today. The settlement was officially called the Grand Contraband Camp, but was also known as "Slabtown," a name also used for an area near what is now Phoebus. The term "slab" came from discarded bark-covered first cuts of logs. At first, the contrabands built shanties from slabs and from shutters and timbers scavenged from ruins left after Confederate troops burned the town. Some shelters stood beside chimney hulks, but most were placed outside the old village. Later, General Butler built a nearby sawmill to provide better and more regular lumber.
