African American Civil War veterans constructed this meeting hall for Charles Sumner Post No. 25, Grand Army of the Republic, in 1908. It is one of only two known surviving halls built for soldiers who served in the United States Colored Troops, segregated units composed of former slaves and free blacks commanded by white officers. The post included an auxiliary wing, Woman's Relief Corps 1, the first such group organized in Maryland. A small group of veterans formed the post shortly after the war and named it for the abolitionist Massachusetts senator Charles Sumner, who urged President Abraham Lincoln to extend full rights to African Americans, argued against Kent County's U.S. Senator George Vickers for passage of the Fifteenth Amendment extending voting rights to black males, and spearheaded passage of the first Civil Rights Act. The Grand Army of the Republic was the largest national Civil War veterans' organization, with white, black, and mixed-race posts in many parts of the country. Organized under the principles of "Fraternity, Charity, Loyalty," it lobbied Congress for pensions and was very influential in national politics. In 1868, the national organization established May 30 as Decoration Day, observed today as Memorial Day. For decades after the Civil War, Sumner Post veterans, like other posts throughout the country, commemorated the day by parading through Chestertown and placing flowers on the graves of dead soldiers, black and white, Union and Confederate. The last Sumner Post veteran died in 1928.