Battle of Carlisle, J.E.B. Stuart Shells a Pennsylvania Town

On the evening of July first, eighteen sixty-three, Confederate cavalry commander J.E.B. Stuart rode into Carlisle with about four thousand horsemen and demanded the town's surrender. The garrison commander, Brigadier General William Smith, reportedly replied, Shell away and be damned. Stuart obliged.

Confederate horse artillery began bombarding Carlisle around eleven o'clock at night. Shell fire hit the downtown and the Army barracks. Stuart ordered the barracks burned, and most of the military buildings were destroyed. The bombardment continued for several hours before a courier arrived with urgent news: a major battle had erupted thirty miles to the southwest. Stuart's cavalry was needed immediately. The shelling stopped. Stuart marched for Gettysburg.

The timing matters. Stuart had spent the previous week on a long, looping ride around the Army of the Potomac, crossing into Pennsylvania far to the east and then moving north through Carlisle. He had been out of contact with Lee for days. Lee, commanding a major offensive operation on foreign soil, had been moving largely blind, uncertain where the Federal army was or how quickly it was concentrating. When Stuart finally appeared at Gettysburg on the afternoon of July second, the battle was already into its second day. Lee's army had fought without its cavalry screen, its primary intelligence-gathering arm, during the most consequential battle of the war.

Historians still debate how much Stuart's absence contributed to Confederate decisions on July first and second. What is certain is that while Lee was fighting at Gettysburg on July first without knowing where all of his corps were, Stuart was shelling a Pennsylvania county seat that offered no military advantage whatsoever.

The rebuilt Carlisle Barracks, reconstructed after the fire, still stands as an active Army installation today.