After a stunning victory at Chancellorsville in May 1863, Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee led the Army of Northern Virginia through Pennsylvania, marching east to threaten Harrisburg, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C., while the Army of the Potomac marched north from the nation's capital searching for Lee. By sunset on June 30, 1863, the Battle of Hanover had ended, leaving streets strewn with corpses and horse carcasses as local physicians and Good Samaritans cared for sixty or more wounded soldiers in Center Square at the Concert Hall and later at Marion Hall, northeast of the square off present-day York Street. A few days later, the Pleasant Hill Hotel, which served as a private academy and stood on the grass to your left, opened as a makeshift hospital and admitted forty-two patients who were still recovering. After the Battle of Gettysburg, the United States government rented the building between July 10 and August 15, 1863, as an official army hospital as trains carried Gettysburg wounded through Hanover and 12,000 to 14,000 patients were dispatched to Baltimore, York, Philadelphia, and Harrisburg, while about 150 remained in Hanover for long-term treatment. Dr. Perin Gardner of the 1st West Virginia Cavalry, the surgeon in charge of the hospital, reported that abundant comforts and luxuries supplied by sympathetic people and devoted women brought a hearty response to the calls of humanity.