Gettysburg Campaign: The Raid on Jefferson
Near York, Pennsylvania
Most people know Gettysburg as a battlefield, but the surrounding towns felt the war in a different and deeply personal way. In June and July of eighteen sixty-three, thousands of Confederate and Union soldiers passed through the small community of Jefferson. General J.
E.B. Stuart's Confederate cavalry passed through the town on June thirtieth, taking horses, livestock, food, and supplies from local farms and homes.
Union forces moving in the opposite direction did the same. Plundered by both sides, the citizens of Jefferson endured the war not as distant news but as soldiers walking through their front doors. Within days, those same troops converged on Gettysburg for the battle that would define the war.
