The National Civil War Museum: The War That Made Harrisburg

Reservoir Park sits on a ridge east of downtown, and the museum at its center looks out over the city toward the dome of the State Capitol. This is a city that the Civil War ran through in every dimension.

The National Civil War Museum houses one of the most comprehensive Civil War collections in the country, presenting both Union and Confederate perspectives. When the museum opened in two thousand one, that curatorial choice generated real debate. The philosophy, unusual among Civil War institutions at the time, was to document the conflict without enshrining either side, and to present the military and political history alongside the central fact that the war was fought over slavery.

Harrisburg's relationship to the conflict was intimate. The city was the capital of the second largest state in the Union. Camp Curtin, just north of downtown, processed more than three hundred thousand soldiers. The underground railroad network that had run through Tanner's Alley for decades suddenly found itself operating in a city mobilizing for war, with freedom seekers moving north through the same streets where Union regiments were drilling.

In June of eighteen sixty-three, Confederate forces under General Richard Ewell marched within striking distance of Harrisburg as part of the prelude to the Gettysburg campaign. They advanced close enough that Pennsylvania's governor ordered earthworks and rifle pits dug around the city's perimeter. The Confederate thrust was called back before any assault came. A few days later, the battle turned at Gettysburg, forty miles to the southwest, and the threat to Harrisburg dissolved into history.

The museum tells all of it. The departure, the strategy, the slavery, the defense, the cost. It is the right place for these stories, in the city that lived them.