Skirmish of Sporting Hill, The Northernmost Confederate Advance

This is as far north as Robert E. Lee's army ever got. On June twenty-ninth and thirtieth of eighteen sixty-three, Confederate cavalry under Brigadier General Albert Gallatin Jenkins pushed through this area on the western edge of what is now Camp Hill, Pennsylvania, skirmishing with Pennsylvania militia along the Carlisle Pike. The Confederates used a barn on the McCormick property as cover. The Union defenders had artillery, including two cannon that arrived under Lieutenant Perkins just as the firing intensified. The very first Federal artillery shot punched through the upper wall of the Confederate-held barn and sent roughly fifty Confederate soldiers running for their horses.

At the time, this skirmish felt like the opening movement of a catastrophe. Confederate Lieutenant General Richard Ewell had led two full divisions plus cavalry into central Pennsylvania with orders to threaten Harrisburg, the state capital, just across the Susquehanna River a few miles east. Pennsylvania farmers fled. Civilians buried silverware. The Governor called out the militia.

Then everything changed. Lee received word that the Army of the Potomac was advancing faster than expected through Maryland. He ordered Ewell to turn around immediately and concentrate the entire Army of Northern Virginia near a small Pennsylvania crossroads town to the west. The soldiers who had nearly reached the Susquehanna pivoted south.

The battle they marched toward was Gettysburg, which began the following morning, July first, eighteen sixty-three.

The Skirmish of Sporting Hill killed at least sixteen Confederate cavalry soldiers, with another twenty to thirty wounded. Union losses were eleven men wounded. It is remembered today not for its tactical significance but for its geographic one: the furthest north that Lee's army would ever stand.