During the Civil War, Lyles and her family faced capture by Confederate soldiers at the Caledonia Furnace. The soldiers aimed to reassert slavery's dominance, viewing Lyles and others as fugitives. Historian Allen Guelzo notes that freeing enslaved individuals would have undermined the Confederacy. Observations indicated that troops scoured for enslaved people, considering them 'stolen.' Consequently, Lyles and her children were kidnapped, exposing them to the horrors of the Confederate slave market, reaffirming slavery's brutal economic foundation in the South.
As historian Allen Guelzo writes in Gettysburg: The Last Invasion, "To have left [them] in undisturbed freedom would have been tantamount to denying the validity of the whole Confederate enterprise."
Well before the Confederate soldiers arrived at Caledonia, therefore, one local observed them scouring the country in every direction ... for horses and cattle and Negroes.
A diarist reported that the Rebels were "driving them off by droves ... just like we would drive cattle."
The Rebels who invaded Pennsylvania waged war to ensure that slavery would endure not merely in "vestige," but in totality.
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