The fighting across the river from Harrisburg was over. Union officials estimated that 16 Confederates had been killed, and 20 to 30 wounded, while the Federals had lost 1 officer and 19 enlisted men wounded. There had been more fear than fighting, and most of the troop movements and shooting had been part of reconnaissance efforts. What the enemies did not know about one another had shaped the skirmishing.

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On the morning of July 1, Colonel William Brisbane’s brigade (the 32d and 33d Pennsylvania) and Ewen’s brigade (the 22d and 37th New York), accompanied by Landis’s battery, struck out from Fort Washington for Carlisle, on the trail of the Rebels. Captain William H. Boyd’s 120-man company of the 1st New York Cavalry reached the town well ahead of the infantry.

James W. Sullivan, a 15-year-old local boy, wrote years later about the entry of Union troops into Carlisle. “They made a brave showing coming up Hanover Street…to the square,” he recalled. “First were the regiments of the New York National Guard, led by a drum and fife corps.” After the ecstatic locals laid out a feast for the soldiers, Sullivan continued, “the scene was that of a merry picnic.”

But the feast was premature. The howl of an incoming artillery shell announced that a Confederate force was still nearby. This time it was not Jenkins’s command, but Brigadier General Fitzhugh Lee’s brigade of Major General J.E.B. Stuart’s Cavalry Corps, freshly arrived in the area. The ensuing bombardment, lasting until 3:00 a.m. on July 2, left 1 Federal dead and 12 wounded. The Confederates suffered about 8 casualties from return fire. A lumber yard, the local gas works, and the town’s famous U.S. Cavalry barracks were all burned during the engagement.

The skirmishes near Harrisburg and at Carlisle in June and July 1863 caused probably less than 100 casualties, so they get little attention from military historians. But had this small-scale fighting not been interrupted by the huge Battle of Gettysburg, the Rebels might have captured the capital of Pennsylvania. And with that moral victory under their belt, who knows what the Confederates might have captured next.

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