Camp Hill

Camp Hill is a town in Pennsylvania and the site of the defining battle of the War of Secession. In September 1862, Confederate General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia invaded the North and was able to steal a march on Union General George McClellan's Army of the Potomac. This was due in part to McClellan's own sluggishness on the march and in part to the Union Army's Intelligence officers' failure to locate the major columns of the Army of Northern Virginia. (In fact, the Army was divided through much of the march. Had McClellan known this, and had he acted aggressively, he may well have been able to destroy Lee's army.)

Lee entered Pennsylvania and threated Philadelphia (a campaign which later inspired Alfred von Schleiffen's own proposed plan for a German invasion of France). In desperation, McClellan made the ill-advised decision to offer Lee battle at Camp Hill, and his army was destroyed, allowing Lee to take Philadelphia unopposed and end the war in Confederate victory.

In 1941, to underscore the gravity of the situation facing his country, US President Al Smith chose Camp Hill as the location from which he broadcast to the nation the news that CS President Jake Featherston had sent troops into the recently reoccupied state of Kentucky, in violation of the plebiscite agreement the two had signed in Richmond the year before.