When Andrew Jackson made the island now known as Fort Wool into his summer White House, there was no question where he'd spend the Fourth of July.
Steaming across the channel to Fort Monroe, the hero of the War of 1812 reviewed the troops after a 24-gun salute honoring the states of the Union. Then he joined the excited crowd from the Hygeia Hotel and across Hampton Roads to listen to the Army band and watch a fireworks display that one observer described as "certainly magnificent and of the first order."
So widely admired were the patriotic observances at Old Point Comfort that — over the years — they also attracted such figures as Southern firebrand Edmund Ruffin, who noted the fireworks and crowds in his diary just two years before firing the first shot at Fort Sumter.
Thousands of Union troops joined the celebration only a few months after that attack, adding giant bonfires to a fiery display designed to be seen by rebel forces watching from the Peninsula and Norfolk.
President Rutherford B. Hayes came here, too, drawn by the brilliance of the fireworks and the patriotic setting. But his 1879 visit was just another milestone in a long Army tradition that will come to an end today with the Sept. 15 closing of the historic post.
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