Ewell's March to Gettysburg
Near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
On June twenty-eighth, eighteen sixty-three, General Robert E. Lee sent orders to General Richard Ewell to pull his Confederate troops out of Carlisle and concentrate them at Gettysburg. Ewell's corps had pushed deep into Pennsylvania, the northernmost penetration of a major Confederate force during the war.
By June twenty-ninth, two of his divisions were marching south along this very road, passing through Mount Holly Springs, York Springs, and Heidlersburg. Two days later, those soldiers would be engaged in the opening hours of the Battle of Gettysburg, which would claim roughly fifty thousand casualties over three days and end Lee's invasion of the North.
