Grand Contraband Camp was located in Elizabeth City County on the Virginia Peninsula near Fort Monroe during and immediately after the American Civil War. The area was a refuge for escaped slaves who the Union forces refused to return to their former Confederate masters, by defining them as "Contraband of War". The Grand Contraband Camp was the first self-contained black community in the United States and occupied the area of the downtown section of the present-day independent city of Hampton, Virginia.
Read more about Grand Contraband Camp: Confederate Slaves in Union Hands: Legal Status, The Camp Is Created, Contrabands Join The Union Cause, Education, Legacy
Famous quotes containing the words grand and/or camp:
“Unpretending mediocrity is good, and genius is glorious; but a weak flavor of genius in an essentially common person is detestable. It spoils the grand neutrality of a commonplace character, as the rinsings of an unwashed wine-glass spoil a draught of fair water.”
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (18091894)
“There was a deserted log camp here, apparently used the previous winter, with its hovel or barn for cattle.... It was a simple and strong fort erected against the cold, and suggested what valiant trencher work had been done there.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)