Spotted by Confederate pickets, members of the Sixth U.S. Colored Troops quickly ran into a torrent of artillery fire that cut through their ranks. That chaotic moment has been captured for the Union League in a new painting. Black soldiers wanted to help fight off the Confederate invasion of Pennsylvania in the month leading up to the Battle of Gettysburg. Professor Octavius V. Catto raised a company of African Americans from his students at the Institute for Colored Youth who were turned away at Harrisburg "due to a bureaucratic blunder and misinterpretation" of orders, said historian and author Andy Waskie, a professor at Temple University.