Harrisburg's Civil War importance as a transportation center and state capital became strikingly clear upon the fall of Fort Sumter in April of 1861 when President Abraham Lincoln issued a call for volunteers to take up arms against the Confederacy. The largest of camps from which Northern troops were mustered throughout the entire course of the War, in both the North and the South, with over 300,000 enlistments passing through its gates, was Harrisburg's Camp Curtin, located in what is today the city's uptown area. Regiments not just from Pennsylvania, but from Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, and Wisconsin, were mustered into service here. At the end of the War, the Camp became a major point for the discharge of the victorious Union troops. In recognizing the importance of Camp Curtin to the War efforts, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania erected the present statue of Curtin in October, 1922, on a plot of land that had been part of the Camp at N. Sixth and Woodbine Streets back-dropped by the Camp Curtin Memorial-Mitchell United Methodist Church which houses various Civil War artifacts and commemorative artwork.

Panorama by Jeb Stuart / Jackson Lattimore