Littlestown

After a stunning victory at Chancellorsville in May 1863, Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee led the Army of Northern Virginia through Maryland into Pennsylvania, marching east to threaten Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C., while the Army of the Potomac marched north from the capital searching for Lee. On July 1-3, the armies collided at Gettysburg in one of the pivotal battles of the Civil War, and three days later, after a bloody defeat, the Confederates began retracing their steps to Virginia. Located a short distance south of Gettysburg and on the route of advance for elements of the Army of the Potomac as it searched for the Confederate army, Littlestown was affected by events just before and after the battle. Union Gen. H. Judson Kilpatrick's cavalry division, almost 4,000 strong, arrived there late on the evening of June 29, 1863, and Kilpatrick and at least one brigade commander, Gen. George Armstrong Custer, likely lodged at the Union Hotel on the northwestern corner of the square. The Federals did not know that Confederate Gen. J.E.B. Stuart's cavalry corps was just six miles south at Union Mills, Maryland, and the following day the two forces collided in the streets of Hanover, Pennsylvania. The advance of the Union XII Corps camped on the night of June 30 in the fields east of town, and on July 2 the VI Corps marched through. Altogether, some 30,000 Federals passed through Littlestown on their way to Gettysburg, and the town's 700 residents welcomed them with songs, cheers, and food, an encouragement that soldiers later remembered as a meaningful boost to the army's morale.

Littlestown, Pennsylvania · United States