Charles Sumner Post
Fraternity, Charity, Loyalty:
Local Nonprofit Teams up With Starr Center to Save Important Civil War Relic
Charles Sumner Hall, 2001
Charles Sumner Hall, 2006
by Kees de Mooy
former Program Manager, C.V. Starr Center
Walk down Chestertown's South Queen Street, and you would probably miss what is the only building of its kind left standing in the United States. Once barely visible behind a tangle of vines and trees, but now exposed and in the process of being restored, stands the Charles Sumner Post, an abandoned structure that once served as a meeting hall for African American Civil War veterans. The Starr Center is working with a local nonprofit group to save this nationally significant historic structure.
Threatened years ago with demolition and more recently by the possibility of collapse, this rare survivor was purchased by a local nonprofit group, Preservation Incorporated. Roy Kirby & Sons, a Baltimore-based general contracting firm, painstakingly disassembled the interior trim, shored up the building, poured new foundations and footings, and rebuilt the structural framing. Funding has been provided by the Maryland Historical Trust the National Trust's Bartus Trew Providence Preservation Fund, Preservation Maryland, the Kent County Heritage Trust, Historical Society of Kent County, and Kent County Arts Council.
Soldiers guarding Washington, D.C.
Courtesy Library of Congress
The current appearance of the Charles Sumner Post provides little indication of its significance to Civil War history. Some 450 free blacks from Kent County – many of them newly liberated from slavery – fought to gain their freedom and preserve the Union. Some paid the ultimate price for freedom. Mortality rates were appallingly high, with many soldiers dying of disease on forced marches or in the unsanitary field hospitals of the day. Others were killed in some of the bloodiest engagements of the war, such as the infamous Battle of the Crater at Petersburg, Virginia.
Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner
Courtesy of Library of Congress
Shortly after the war ended, a small group of African American veterans from Kent County formed a local branch of the Grand Army of the Republic (G.A.R.), the largest and most powerful Union veterans' organization in the United States, and the only racially integrated beneficial organization of the nineteenth century. Black, white, and even a few mixed-race G.A.R. posts were formed throughout the North and South. "Having suffered together through brutal forced marches and on the bloody battlefields of the war, a unique bond of comradeship was formed that transcended racial considerations," explains Penn State historian Barbara Gannon.
The Charles Sumner Post's mission was guided by the national G.A.R.'s motto,
"Fraternity, Charity, Loyalty." Named in honor of the leading
antislavery senator from Massachusetts, the Post served as a place where
soldiers could share and celebrate their stories of hardship and heroism.
Charity work of the Charles Sumner Post was carried out primarily by the
Women's Relief Corps, the first such group founded in Maryland.
G.A.R. veterans at unknown location
Courtesy of Maryland Archives
Expressions of loyalty were the most public aspect of the Sumner Post's
mission.
Each May 30th – Decoration Day – veterans donned their G.A.R.
uniforms and headed a parade that included the Women's Relief Corps, the
Calvert cornet and Oriental bands, several wagons decorated with evergreen,
and a large group of children. They marched first to the Chester Cemetery,
where the graves of white Union and Confederate soldiers were decorated
with flowers, then on to Janes United Methodist Cemetery where their black
comrades' graves were similarly honored. From there, the parade went to
the public wharf at the foot of High Street, where a musket salute was fired
and flowers were strewn in the Chester River. Decoration Day parades were
carried out in this way until the last veteran of the Sumner Post died in
the late 1920's.
From the time of its construction in 1908, the Grand Army Hall, or Army Hall as it was often called, was rented out for weddings, receptions, graduation parties and musical performances. Many local and regional musical groups performed on the small second floor stage, including jazz legends Ella Fitzgerald and Chick Webb, who traveled from Baltimore by steamboat to play to a packed house. When the Sumner Post was sold in 1950 to the Centennial Beneficent Association, the building continued to be used in the same way, and it gradually became known as Centennial Hall.
Centennial Beneficent Association, ca. 1940
Courtesy of Calvin Frazier
To Joan Walker Hunter, a board member of Preservation Incorporated, the building symbolizes the rich contributions of African Americans who fought for, and won, their freedom. "Our ancestors came home after the war seeking how they could use their experiences to expand their often unknown and unmentioned contributions to their country and community," she says. "I strongly feel that it is imperative to preserve and restore this building that can be used to keep the legacy of the African American Civil War veterans alive and empowering."
For more information on the Sumner Post, contact the C.V. Starr Center.
