Freedom Threatened

Freedom Threatened. Gettysburg National Military Park. , The stone house across the field to your front was the home of the Warfields, an African American family that had moved here from Maryland less than a year before the battle. James Warfield, a blacksmith and farmer, had worked hard to purchase this property. When in June 1863 they heard of the approaching Confederates, the Warfield family fled their home. Had the Warfields chosen to stay, they would have risked their lives as well as their freedom. The Confederate Army, while in Pennsylvania, was abducting black men, women, and children, and forcing them south into slavery., When the Warfields returned home they found a looted and bullet-riddled house, a devastated orchard, trampled fields, and thirteen shallow graves on their land. James Warfield tried unsuccessfully to sell the house in the wake of the battle. In 1868, he applied to the state government for $516 worth of damage and later received approval for $410 in compensation. However, James Warfield continued to struggle financially. His will, written shortly before his death in 1875, shows that he intended to sell his house and personal property in order to pay off his debts. Today the Warfield house stands here as a silent testament to both the causes and consequences of the Civil War., [Captions:] , The Warfield home and farm as it would have appeared prior to the battle. Of the many outbuildings present in 1863, only the stone farmhouse remains today., In Franklin county, across the mountains to your left, the Confederate Army systematically rounded up free black men, women, and children. Reverend Phillip Schaaf of Mercersburg recorded that African American residents were "captured and carried into slavery (even such as I have known to have been born and raised on free soil), and many other outrages." This image originally appeared in Harper's Weekly, November 8, 1862.