Confederates driving black people South
Confederates driving Black people South
Source: Harper’s Weekly, November 1862 via Wikimedia (public domain)

Gettysburg, Pennsylvania

Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, is justly famous for the pivotal Civil War battle that occurred there during the first three days of July in 1863. Many historians believe the defeat suffered by Robert E. Lee’s Confederate army during that battle sealed the doom of the slave-holding Southern Confederacy.

The town of Gettysburg suffered surprisingly little physical damage from the rebel invasion. There was some destruction of buildings and property, but the most significant and long-lasting damage was imposed on a specific segment of the population: the Confederates deliberately and systematically targeted the city’s Black residents with a campaign of terror that involved kidnapping and enslaving them. To this day, the Gettysburg African American community has not fully recovered from that traumatic experience.

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