![misty rural countryside looking across river to a wooded hill with buildings at crest](/camp-discharge-data/images/camp-across-schuylkill-1800.jpg)
The final year of the Civil War
A special Union Army post was swiftly erected on a hilltop in Lower Merion to handle a jumble of returning citizen-soldiers.
Many bore bullet wounds, broken bones, and other scars of combat. Some had lost limbs. Some were laid low by illness. Hundreds arrived half-dead as survivors of wretched prison camps.
![crowded muddy yard packed with ragged clothed men, sitting, lying, standing](/camp-discharge-data/images/andersonville.jpg)
Others were blessedly unscathed — but all grappled with the fresh, ferocious memories of their time at war.
![damaged photograph of middle-aged man, bearded, haunted look in his eyes](/camp-discharge-data/images/isaac-horner-61.jpg)
![head and shoulders studio portrait of a young man in army dress uniform](/camp-discharge-data/images/horner-young2.jpg)
The post, known as Camp Discharge, did its best to help move the young Union veterans back to civilian life. During its brief existence, it sat on a bluff overlooking what is today the Schuylkill Expressway, one of the nation’s busiest highways. The post was quickly dismantled, its story nearly forgotten.
![detail of the larger image: the camp buildings on the hillside above the woods](/camp-discharge-data/images/camp-discharge-buildings1200.jpg)
Back From Battle reclaims the history of Camp Discharge and follows the often tumultuous lives of the Pennsylvania volunteer soldiers who passed through its gates.