Sewell's Point

Three weeks after Virginia left the Union, the escalating shoving match between federal and Confederate forces jostling for control of Hampton Roads finally erupted into a shooting war. Alarmed by the increasingly aggressive patrols of Union gunboats...

Few Union officers were more celebrated in the North — or reviled in the South — than the man who took charge of Fort Monroe on May 22, 1861. In just four short weeks of war, Benjamin F. Butler had seized command of the Massachusetts...

Few local landmarks stand out as strongly as the Chamberlin Hotel at Old Point Comfort. For all its size and architectural style, however, the 9-story structure is merely the last survivor of a time when this strip of sand dividing the Chesapeake Bay and...

On the night of May 23, 1861, Frank Baker, Sheppard Mallory and James Townsend slipped into a skiff and rowed across Hampton Roads from Sewell's Point in Norfolk to Old Point Comfort. Being out at night without permission was dangerous for slaves. That...