Camp Stanton

Camp Stanton. Training Post for USCT. Nearby stood Camp Stanton, a Civil War-era recruiting and training post for African American Union soldiers. Named for Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, the camp was established in August 1863. Although black soldiers had served in the nation’s armed forces since the Revolutionary War, they were barred from the U.S. Army during the Civil War until President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863. The 7th Regiment, United States Colored Troops (USCT), organized in Baltimore, trained here. The 9th, 19th, and 30th Regiments were organized and trained at Camp Stanton. All of the units saw hard combat in Virginia during the last campaigns of the war. , Slightly down river from here stood The Plains, a plantation owned by Col. John H. Sothoron, one of the wealthiest men in Southern Maryland and an ardent secessionist. On October 20, 1863, U.S. Army Lt. Eben White arrived there on a mission to recruit black soldiers. White was accompanied by two USCTs, inflaming Sothoron and one of his sons home on leave from the Confederate army. A scuffle ensued, White was killed, and Sothoron fled to Virginia. Sothoron’s wife and children vacated their home until after the war, while The Plains housed former slaves from Virginia’s Northern Neck. In November 1868, a St. Mary’s County jury acquitted Sothoron in White's death. Sothoron filed a $98,638 claim against the U.S. government for “losses and damages sustained at The Plains.” The claim was rejected in 1875.