At the end of June and beginning of July 1863, Dillsburg lay in the path of the Confederate invasion and saw repeated cavalry passage along Baltimore Street. On June 28, a Confederate cavalry patrol under Maj. James Nounnan broke away from Gen. Richard Ewell's Second Corps advance on Harrisburg and rode through Dillsburg, taking horses and provisions from local inhabitants and camping in town overnight before rejoining the corps. On July 1, Gen. Jeb Stuart's Confederate cavalry brigades under Fitzhugh Lee, John Chambliss, and Wade Hampton passed through Dillsburg on Baltimore Street during Stuart's Pennsylvania Campaign raid, stopping at Dills Tavern to refresh their mounts. Two brigades then continued toward Carlisle, while Hampton's brigade camped in an apple orchard just north of town, until a courier informed Stuart that his men were needed at Gettysburg, where a pivotal battle had already begun.