Camp William Penn: Training Ground for the United States Colored Troops

Camp William Penn, located here outside Philadelphia, was Pennsylvania's only training camp for African American soldiers during the Civil War, and it was the largest federal training camp for African American soldiers. Eleven regiments of United States Colored Troops were trained here, comprising more than ten thousand men. The first recruits arrived on June twenty-sixth, eighteen sixty-three.

Those soldiers went on to fight in Virginia, South Carolina, Florida, and elsewhere before the camp closed on August fourteenth, eighteen sixty-five. The regiments trained here, including the Third, Sixth, Eighth, Twenty-Second, Twenty-Fourth, Twenty-Fifth, and six others, represent one of the most concentrated contributions to Union military service made anywhere in the country.