Camp Stanton was a recruiting and training post for the United States Colored Troops south of Rt. 231 that operated between August 1863 and March 1864, where Black men, some formerly enslaved, learned to march and fire their weapons in a revolutionary shift in American society. 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, 9th, 19th, and 30th USCT regiments were organized and/or trained there, and all later saw intense fighting around Petersburg and Richmond, Va., during the last campaigns of the war. The Lincoln administration chose the site to recruit from the large African American population in southern Maryland and to suppress pro-Confederate sentiment in the region. Camp Stanton was named for Secretary of War Edwin Stanton. Its white commander of the 9th USCT, Col. Samuel Armstrong, described nearby Benedict as a "horrible hole, a rendezvous for blockade runners, deserters, and such trash; good for nothing but oysters...." The camp's waterside location proved unhealthy, and dozens of recruits died of disease, prompting its closure in March 1864. The camp was burned to the ground, and the dead buried at its cemetery were later reinterred at Arlington National Cemetery. Dr. Alexander Augusta of the 7th USCT served as the first African American surgeon in U.S. Army history and for a time as the camp's chief surgeon; after the war he taught at Howard University as America's first African American medical professor. Archaeologists excavated Minié balls there that reflect the massive social change as Black men who could not legally own guns before the war became armed federal employees when they joined the USCT. Sgt. Jacob Johns trained there with the 19th USCT, which fought around Petersburg and Richmond, Va., and was present when Gen. Robert E. Lee's army surrendered at Appomattox Court House.