War brought devastation to Franklin County, whose county seat, Chambersburg, was burned to the ground in 1864 after Confederate invasions in 1862, 1863, and 1864, giving the county more Southern incursions than any other area north of the Mason-Dixon line. The first Union soldier to fall in Pennsylvania died in Greencastle, John Brown planned his raid on Harpers Ferry in Chambersburg, and twelve-year-old Hetty Zeilinger guided four thousand Union troops at Monterey Pass. Franklin County also provided sites for major army hospitals, especially after the battles of Antietam and Gettysburg. In the wider region near Gettysburg, civilians and militia answered the first call to arms, endured repeated threats and destruction of property, and women raised funds and nursed tens of thousands of wounded soldiers left behind from battles fought in orchards and fields. Part of the Gettysburg battlefield was owned by Freeman Abraham Brien, and although a number of Gettysburg-area Black men joined volunteer militias or U.S.C.T. regiments during the war, no Black veteran was interred in Soldiers' National Cemetery until 1884. Free men and freed men enlisted to fight for their own rights, and children sacrificed their security and sometimes their lives, and their combined efforts helped provide the turning point for the Union cause.
