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The Gettysburg Campaign: Summer 1863:
For the second time in two years, the Confederate Army took the war north. The Union army followed closely. The two armies fought at Gettysburg on July 1st the 3rd. After suffering severe casualties, Lee retreated. During the retreat, cavalry clashes occurred in places like Monterey Pass. Lee was trapped at the flooded Potomac River at Williamsport before crossing the C&O Canal and river back into West Virginia at Falling Waters.
A Sad Visit Home:
As the Confederate army moved north towards Pennsylvania in the summer of 1863 Henry Kyd Douglas visited his home for the first time since the Union army had occupied Ferry Hill plantation after the Battle of Antietam in the fall of 1862.
"We encamped near Shepherdstown and I visited my home across the Potomac and saw the desolation of war. My beautiful home was a barren waste and a common, and the blackened walls of the burnt barn stood up against the sky as a monument of useless and barbarous destruction. I felt that it would be hard for me, going into Pennsylvania, to set aside all ideas of retaliation."
The Reel family's barn was struck by Union artillery and burned during the Battle of Antietam, 1862. |