The Confederate Advance: How Close They Really Got

In late June of eighteen sixty-three, Confederate forces came closer to capturing Harrisburg than most Americans realize. Two full divisions of General Richard Ewell's Second Corps were marching on the city from the southwest, through Cumberland County. A third Confederate division, under General Jubal Early, was aiming to cross the Susquehanna and attack from the east. If they had taken Harrisburg, they would have seized the largest Union military training camp in the North, cut the key rail lines connecting the eastern states to the western theater, and captured the capital of Pennsylvania.

Union General Darius Couch, commanding the Department of the Susquehanna, responded quickly. He dispatched troops to the area west of the river, near present-day Camp Hill, and ordered earthworks thrown up at two positions that became known as Fort Couch and Fort Washington. The labor of building those defenses fell largely to Black civilians and laborers, who worked alongside soldiers to construct the fortifications protecting a city and a state that had only imperfectly extended them its protections.

Confederate cavalry rode to within sight of the Capitol dome. At Sporting Hill, just west of the river, a skirmish was fought on June twenty-ninth, eighteen sixty-three. Then Robert E. Lee ordered Ewell to pull back. Lee had just learned that the Union Army of the Potomac was closer than expected, and he needed to concentrate his forces. The two sides collided within days at a small Pennsylvania town called Gettysburg.

The earthworks at Fort Couch and Fort Washington saved Harrisburg. So did the decision that redirected the Confederate army south. Within a week, the largest battle ever fought in the Western Hemisphere determined the outcome those earthworks had only delayed.