 Soon after his birth, his father moved to Richmond, where for many years, he was in the general mercantile 
brokerage business.Sclater briefly attended the Cabell School in the Virginia Piedmont and in March 1864 he entered the Virginia Military Institute when that institution had been moved from Lexington to Richmond, and where the cadets were in 
active war service in the defense of Richmond.In April 1865, Sclater was paroled from the Cadet Battalion by order of Union Army officers, after Lee's army had evacuated Richmond.