the newly issued Emancipation Proclamation was read to a gathering under the historic tree there.
=== After the War: teaching teachers ===
After the War, a normal school (teacher training school) was formalized in 1868, with former Union brevet Brigadier General Samuel C. Armstrong (1839–1893) as its first principal. The new school was established on the grounds of a former plantation named "Little Scotland", which had a view of Hampton Roads. The original school buildings fronted the Hampton River. Legally chartered in 1870 as a land grant school, it was first known as Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute.
Typical of historically black colleges, Hampton received much of its financial support in the years following the Civil War from the American Missionary Association (whose black and white leaders represented the Congregational and Presbyterian churches), other church groups, and former officers and soldiers of the Union Army. One of the many Civil War veterans who gave substantial sums to the school …
