Gettysburg Campaign: Farthest Confederate Advance

You are standing near the northernmost point reached by Confederate forces during the Gettysburg Campaign of eighteen sixty-three. Units under General A.G.

Jenkins, part of General Ewell's Corps, pushed up to the outskirts of Harrisburg, the Pennsylvania state capital, in the last days of June. Defending militia faced them in a skirmish that drew casualties on both sides. It was the high-water mark of Confederate ambition in the Eastern Theater.

Within days, Robert E. Lee received word that Union forces were concentrating to the south, and he pulled his scattered corps back toward Pennsylvania's south-central counties. The armies collided at Gettysburg on July first, and the Confederate drive north never recovered.

This quiet stretch of farmland north of the capital was as close as the Confederacy ever came to the heart of Pennsylvania.