Manassas, Second was a Civil War engagement fought in Virginia, 1862. It was a Confederate victory.
In order to draw Pope's army into battle, Jackson ordered an attack on a Federal column that was passing across his front on the Warrenton Turnpike on August 28. The fighting at Brawner Farm lasted several hours and resulted in a stalemate. Pope became convinced that he had trapped Jackson and concentrated the bulk of his army against him. On August 29, Pope launched a series of assaults against Jackson's position along an unfinished railroad grade. The attacks were repulsed with heavy casualties on both sides. At noon, Longstreet arrived on the field from Thoroughfare Gap and took position on Jackson's right flank. On August 30, Pope renewed his attacks, seemingly unaware that Longstreet was on the field. When massed Confederate artillery devastated a Union assault by Fitz John Porter's command, Longstreet's wing of 28,000 men counterattacked in the largest, simultaneous mass assault of the war. The Union left flank was crushed and the army driven back to Bull Run. Only an effective Union rearguard action prevented a replay of the First Manassas disaster. Pope's retreat to Centreville was precipitous, nonetheless. The next day, Lee ordered his army in pursuit. This was the decisive battle of the Northern Virginia Campaign.
Fought between August 28 and 30, 1862, in Prince William County, Virginia, the Second Battle of Bull Run, also called the Battle of Second Manassas, marked the climax of the Northern Virginia campaign during the American Civil War. This clash pitted Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia against Union Maj. Gen. John Pope's Army of Virginia, and it dwarfed the earlier engagement fought on the same ground, the First Battle of Bull Run, which had taken place on July 21, 1861, in both scale and the numbers of men involved.
Confederate Maj. Gen. Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson set the stage through an extensive flanking maneuver that allowed him to seize the Union supply depot at Manassas Junction, putting Pope's communications with Washington, D.C. in jeopardy. He then pulled back several miles to the northwest, establishing hidden but formidable defenses along Stony Ridge while waiting for Maj. Gen. James Longstreet's wing of Lee's army to reach him. On August 28, Jackson engaged a Union column near Gainesville at Brawner's Farm; though the fighting ended without a clear victor, it succeeded in drawing Pope's focus. That same day, Longstreet pushed past minimal Union opposition at the Battle of Thoroughfare Gap and moved toward the developing battlefield.
Convinced he had cornered Jackson, Pope gathered the majority of his forces for a concentrated strike. On August 29 he ordered repeated assaults against Jackson's men, who were positioned along an unfinished railroad bed. These attacks failed, leaving heavy losses on each side. Around midday, Longstreet's troops arrived from Thoroughfare Gap and settled into position on Jackson's right. The following day, August 30, Pope pressed forward with renewed attacks, apparently still unaware of Longstreet's presence. After concentrated Confederate artillery fire shattered an advance by Maj. Gen. Fitz John Porter's V Corps, Longstreet unleashed his 25,000 men across five divisions in a counterattack, the largest coordinated assault the war had yet seen. This blow shattered the Union's left flank and forced the entire army back toward Bull Run. A skillful rear guard action kept the retreat from turning into a repeat of the earlier defeat at First Manassas, though Pope's withdrawal to Centreville still came in haste.
The victory here gave Lee the confidence to launch the Maryland campaign that followed.
The summer of 1862 had already seen Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan's Peninsula campaign fall apart during the Seven Days Battles in June. In response, President Abraham Lincoln turned to John Pope, giving him command of the newly created Army of Virginia. Pope carried a record of success from the Western Theater, and Lincoln wanted someone with a more combative disposition than McClellan had shown.
Two objectives defined Pope's assignment: shielding Washington and the Shenandoah Valley, and pulling Confederate troops away from McClellan by pushing toward Gordonsville. Having faced McClellan during the Seven Days, Lee concluded that no further danger existed on the Peninsula, freeing him from the need to hold every unit close to Richmond. Because of this, he sent Jackson toward Gordonsville with orders to block Pope and guard the Virginia Central Railroad.
Lee, however, was thinking beyond mere defense. With Union forces divided between McClellan and Pope and separated by considerable distance, he recognized a chance to crush Pope first and deal with McClellan afterward. To that end, he dispatched Maj. Gen. A.P. Hill with 12,000 troops to reinforce Jackson.
On August 3, General-in-Chief Henry Halleck ordered McClellan to complete his withdrawal from the Peninsula and march to Northern Virginia in support of Pope. McClellan objected to the order and delayed his movement until August 14.
Six days earlier, on August 9, Nathaniel Banks's corps clashed with Jackson's forces at Cedar Mountain. Banks initially gained ground, but a counterattack spearheaded by A.P. Hill pushed his troops back over Cedar Creek. Jackson's own advance stalled when it ran into the Union division commanded by Brig. Gen. James B. Ricketts. It was around this time that Jackson realized Pope's corps had consolidated, ruining his hope of striking them piecemeal. He held his ground until August 12 before pulling back to Gordonsville. The next day, Lee ordered Longstreet forward to bolster Jackson's position.
Between August 22 and 25, the opposing armies engaged in a string of small clashes along the Rappahannock River. Swollen by heavy rain, the river prevented Lee from forcing his way across. Meanwhile, Union reinforcements from the Army of the Potomac continued arriving from the Peninsula, tipping the numerical balance against Lee. Facing this growing disadvantage, he devised a new strategy: send Jackson and Stuart, commanding half his army, on a flanking maneuver to sever Pope's supply line along the Orange & Alexandria Railroad. This would compel Pope to retreat, exposing his army to attack while on the move. Jackson set out on August 25 and reached Salem, known today as Marshall, by nightfall.
The following evening, having slipped around Pope's right flank through Thoroughfare Gap, Jackson's column struck the railroad at Bristoe Station. Before sunrise on August 27, his men pushed on to seize and burn the enormous Union supply depot at Manassas Junction. The surprise assault forced Pope to abandon his defensive line on the Rappahannock and retreat in haste. Overnight between August 27 and 28, Jackson shifted his divisions north to the old First Bull Run battlefield, settling his men behind an unfinished railroad bed beneath Stony Ridge. The location offered clear tactical advantages: dense woods hid the Confederates from view while still allowing them to watch the Warrenton Turnpike, the route Union troops would likely use, just a few hundred yards away. Roads nearby gave Longstreet an easy path to join Jackson, or, failing timely reinforcement, offered Jackson a way to retreat into the Bull Run Mountains. The unfinished grade itself, with its cuts and embankments, doubled as natural fortification.
Then, on August 28, at the Battle of Thoroughfare Gap, Longstreet's wing overcame scattered Union resistance and pushed through to link up with Jackson. Though it appeared to be a minor skirmish at the time, this action sealed Pope's fate in the battles ahead, since it allowed Lee's two wings to unite on the Manassas battlefield.
While Union forces gathered at Centreville, Lee weighed his options for what came next. He dispatched Jackson on yet another flanking maneuver, hoping to wedge his army between Pope and Washington. Pope responded to this maneuver, and on September 1 the opposing armies met one last time at Chantilly, sometimes called Ox Hill. Without pause, Lee launched his next operation on September 3, sending the leading elements of the Army of Northern Virginia across the Potomac River. This movement set the stage for a decisive meeting with the Army of the Potomac during the Maryland campaign, culminating in the Battle of Antietam.
Command of Pope's forces ended on September 12, when he was relieved, and his troops were absorbed into the Army of the Potomac as McClellan led it northward into Maryland. For the rest of the war, Pope served in the Department of the Northwest in Minnesota, where he handled matters connected to the Dakota War of 1862. Rather than accept responsibility for the loss, Pope looked to place blame elsewhere. This led to the arrest of Fitz John Porter on November 25, followed by a court-martial concerning his conduct on August 29. The proceedings concluded on January 10, 1863, with a guilty verdict on charges of disobedience and misconduct, and Porter was formally dismissed from the Army on January 21. Much of his remaining life was devoted to clearing his name. That effort finally succeeded in 1878, when a special commission led by General John M. Schofield cleared him, concluding that his hesitation to move against Longstreet had likely spared Pope's Army of Virginia from a far worse outcome. Eight years afterward, President Chester A. Arthur overturned the sentence entirely.
James Longstreet's conduct during the fighting drew sharp criticism, and later Lost Cause writers pointed to his hesitation, unwillingness to attack, and defiance of Lee's orders on August 29 as an early sign of the disputed role he would play on July 2, 1863, at Gettysburg. Reflecting on this, Lee's biographer Douglas Southall Freeman observed that the roots of much of the tragedy at Gettysburg could be traced to that very moment, when Lee gave way to Longstreet and Longstreet realized he had the latitude to do so.
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