Today in Hampton History 1861 - Confederate troops systematically

Today in Hampton History
1861 - Confederate troops systematically



 burn the entire town of Hampton. Brig. Gen. John B. Magruder issued the order after reading a letter from U.S. Maj. Gen. Benjamin F. Butler, printed in the New York Tribune, outlining plans for self-emancipated “Contrabands”* to settle there. 

Butler’s dispatch also argued that Freedom Seekers escaping slavery should be treated as free men, women, and children entitled to the “free enjoyment of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Magruder, enraged at Butler’s plan to “colonize them [the Contrabands] at Hampton, the home of most of their owners,” ordered local troops under Capt. Jefferson Curle Phillips to lead the burning.  

Inhabitants of the entire Hampton Roads area were astounded at the glow and flames, visible for miles. The next day, Butler called the Burning of Hampton a “wanton and unnecessary act” for which he could not “discern the strategical importance.”

Contrary to Magruder’s malicious intent, a thriving community of Contrabands rose from Hampton’s ruins. They lived as free people through the Civil War. 

(*Note: “Contrabands” were Freedom Seekers protected as “contraband of war,” a legal loophole devised by U.S. Maj. Gen. Benjamin Butler preventing them from being returned to slavery. By the end of the Civil War, thousands of Freedom Seekers claimed their right to escape from slavery under the U.S. Army’s “contraband” policy, and their actions eventually helped lead to the Emancipation Proclamation.)

Image: “Burning of the Village of Hampton, Va., by the Rebel Forces under General Magruder, Midnight, Wednesday, August 7th.” From the front cover of Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, 17 August 1861.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Battle of Missionary Ridge,

Image
The Battle of Missionary Ridge, also known as the Battle of Chattanooga, was fought on November 25, 1863, as part of the Chattanooga campaign of the American Civil War. Following the Union victory in the Battle of Lookout  Mountain on November 24, Union forces in the Military Division of the Mississippi under Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant assaulted Missionary Ridge and defeated the Confederate Army of Tennessee, commanded by Gen. Braxton Bragg, forcing it to retreat to Georgia. In the morning, Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman, commanding the Union Army of the Tennessee, made piecemeal attacks to capture the northern end of Missionary Ridge, Tunnel Hill, but were stopped by fierce resistance from the Confederate divisions of Maj. Gen. Patrick Cleburne, William H.T. Walker, and Carter L. Stevenson. In the afternoon, Grant was concerned that Bragg was reinforcing his right flank at Sherman's expense. He ordered the Army of the Cumberland, commanded by Maj. Gen. George Henry Thomas, to ...
Read more

Why Do Women Send Nudes? Why Do Men? It's Complicated, A New Study Finds.

Image
Why Do Women Send Nudes? Why Do Men? It's Complicated, A New Study Finds. Sexting is a universal language: Jeff Bezos does it (albeit awkwardly; remember that “I love you, alive girl” text?), Rihanna does it, teens do it (though it’s a smaller percentage than you’d think, given the worried headlines).  The question of why we send dirty images and texts doesn’t have an easy answer: Can it all be chalked up to sheer horniness, or is there some deeper ulterior motive that drives us to tap “send” on that nude?   In a new study, University of Arizona researcher Morgan Johnstonbaugh asked that very question: What motivates young people to send an explicit text in the first place ― and does the motivation differ for men and women?  To conduct the study, Johnstonbaugh, a sociology doctoral student, had more than 1,000 college students from seven universities fill out an online survey asking them about their rationale for sexting. She looked at two primary motivators: outside...
Read more

The Weirdest Marriage in the World was in the 80's. Started when Swiss Corina Hoffman visited Kenya.

Image
The Weirdest Marriage in the World was in the 80's. Started when Swiss Corina Hoffman visited Kenya. Hofmann and her boyfriend Marco made a trip to Kenya. There, she met a Samburu wàrrior named Lketinga Leparmorijo and instantly found him irresistible. She left Marco, went back to Switzerland to sell her possessions, and, in 1987, returned to Kenya, determined to find Lketinga, which she eventually did. The couple moved in together, married, and had a daughter. Hofmann moved into her mother-in-law's manyatta (compound) and learned to live as a Samburu woman, fetching wood and water. She opened a small shop in the village, to sell basic goods. Hofmann suffered several hàrdships, including disèases (mainly malaria) and marital problems. Increasingly paranoid jealousy from her husband, possibly a side effect of his addiĉtion to the d.rug khat (miraa), severely dàmaged her relationship, and in 1990 she decided to return to Switzerland for good, taking her daughter with her. Later o...
Read more

This is the kind of TV

Image
This is the kind of TV we had when I was a kid back in the 70s. And back then most homes only had one. So whether it was the Price is Right,  Saturday morning cartoons or the Sunday night movie we all watched the same thing. During  Comercials we would rush to go to the bathroom or get a snack from the kitchen. Nowadays most people have a tv in every room of the house and families just don't get together as they use to. These old sets might well be old and outdated but they did something that modern TVs don't they brought us all together in one room. It was a shared experience that modern families don't enjoy and it's sad because as an older person I know what their missing.
Read more

The End of the Old World? Understanding the power relations that transoceanic settlements and trade opened up.

Image
The End of the Old World? Understanding the power relations that transoceanic settlements and trade opened up. Jonathan Scott is one of the leading historians of 17th-century England. Here he continues the admirable expansion of his horizons to include oceans and the power relations that transoceanic settlements and trade opened up. But the book’s main aim is to use this international dimension to frame an argument about ‘how the old world ended’.  His model depends on the viability of familiar ideas: that there was a single ‘old world’, and that its undoubted evolution was rapid enough to be historically analysed as an ‘end’. Yet Scott explores neither problem. With no doubts about the categories, he can advance his case in an extreme form: ‘Fewer than three hundred years ago there occurred the most fundamental reordering of human existence since the beginning of agriculture’; there was ‘an exponential Industrial Revolution in Britain from about 1780’. The Industrial Revolution ‘c...
Read more