With Virginia on the brink of secession, the new Union general at Fort Monroe had a tough mission ahead. Freeing slaves wasn’t part of it, but his encounter with three runaways would eventually spur thousands to risk their lives for a chance at liberty – and, eventually, to fight for the rights they had long been denied.

In the spring of 1861, everyone in southeastern Virginia knew a showdown years in the making was about to begin.

The Union Army’s surrender of Fort Sumter off the coast of Charleston in mid- April had been a wake-up call. No one had been killed in the bombardment, but South Carolina’s willingness to fire on a federal fort had taken many by surprise.

In Virginia, the Confederate victory gave advocates of secession the boost they needed to sway public opinion. In Washington, President Abraham Lincoln called for 75,000 troops to put down the rebellion.

Within weeks, thousands of those Yankee volunteers arrived at Fort Monroe, a granite bastion at the mouth of the Chesapeake.

The fort had been built decades earlier – after the British had sailed up the Bay and laid siege to Washington in 1814.

It was constructed to keep foreign invaders from approaching the capital, but its cannons could just as easily fire on domestic threats. Accessible from Bay and ocean, Fort Monroe gave the federal government a 65-acre toehold in breakaway Virginia.

Perhaps the fort’s greatest strategic asset in the looming Civil War was its proximity to the mainland. A bridge connected Fort Monroe to Hampton, and the James, Elizabeth and York rivers connected it to the rest of Tidewater. That meant local folks could reach the federal property on foot or by boat.

To white residents, the influx of Union soldiers to Fort Monroe that spring was a sign of arrogant federal power. Most wanted to stay far away from the growing military enclave, and many fled Hampton as the Army beefed up its presence.

To black Virginians, the Yankee troops seemed an answer to decades of desperate prayers. Slaves – almost a third of Virginia’s population – were curious about the boatloads of Union soldiers disembarking nearby.

After weeks of watching so many armed men set up camp within its walls, three slaves from Hampton decided they could wait no longer.

They hatched a plan to escape to the fort ...

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