Marching through Pennsylvania: the story of soldiers and civilians during the Gettysburg campaign

Abstract

In the summer of 1863, Confederate General Robert E. Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia invaded Pennsylvania and inaugurated the Gettysburg Campaign. It was the only time during the war when an entire Confederate field army found itself on free soil, and as such, it provides a remarkable opportunity to explore the relationship between Confederate soldiers and Union civilians during the Civil War. Traditionally, advocates of the Lost Cause have contrasted the Army of Northern Virginia's treatment of Pennsylvania's residents to Union armies' conduct toward southern civilians.^In an effort to prove the Confederacy's righteousness and salvage pride in the face of defeat, many southerners have rallied to the ideals of the Lost Cause, and it comes across in their discussions of the Confederates' march through Pennsylvania.^Authors like Clifford Dowdey, Douglas Freeman, and Edward Pollard distinguish Lee's Army of Northern Virginia and its second invasion of Union territory with an aura of epic restraint. As a result, the veil of the Lost Cause has obscured the true nature of the relationship between the Confederate invaders and the Union civilians in their path, and the myth has proven difficult for historians to dispel. Interestingly, while popular perceptions of a Marble Man surrounded by an army of chivalrous soldier-saints persist, the historical record does not support these views.^By examining a variety of sources and investigating various aspects of soldier-civilian relationships during the march, one can demonstrate that Confederate soldiers actually behaved no better or worse than their Union counterparts during Federal marches through the South.^This dissertation endeavors to do just that by comprehensively exploring the actual nature of the relationship between Lee's soldiers and Union civilians and the legacy of that relationship in history and memory. In doing so, it stands to fill a glaring gap in the historiography of the Civil War by continuing the tradition of scholarship on civilians in the path of Civil War presented in books like Stephen Ash's When the Yankees Came (1995), Anne Bailey's War and Ruin (2002), Mark Grimsley's Hard Hand of War (1995), and Lee Kennett's Marching Through Georgia (1995).