Second Manassas 1862 by John Langellier

Author:John Langellier
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Second Manassas 1862: Robert E Lee’s Greatest Victory
ISBN: 9781472800060
Publisher: Osprey Publishing

THE BATTLE OF MANASSAS

THE FIRST DAY, 29 AUGUST 1862

On the morning of Friday 29 August, one of Stuart’s fellow cavalry officers, Captain W.W. Blackford, surveyed the aftermath of the drama that had unfolded almost on the doorstep of John Brawner’s home. He recorded the Union position was “marked by the dark rows of bodies stretched out on the broomsedge field, lying just where they had fallen, with their heels on a well defined line.” These men would not be the only casualties of fighting in the area. Even as Captain Blackford took stock of the previous evening’s engagement, troops under Sigel and Reynolds were closing on Jackson’s forces. Reynolds’s Division was near Groveton, on the south side of the Warrenton Turnpike. North of the pike were Sigel’s two divisions under Robert Schenck and Carl Schurz, with Robert Milroy’s independent brigade further to the east, near the crossing of the Sudley Springs Road. At daylight Union troops opened the attack.

Jackson had positioned his command along a line running from Catharpin Creek, near Sudley Springs in the north to the heights above the turnpike near Groveton, facing east and south-east. Jackson’s old division held the right; Ewell’s Division under Alexander Dawton, Ewell having been wounded the evening before, held the center, with A.P. Hill’s Division on the left. Their main line rested on the excavation of an unfinished railroad; a project started in the 1850s as the Independent Line of the Manassas Gap Railroad, but abandoned before tracks could be laid. These embankments ran in a north-easterly direction toward Sudley Mill and provided ready-made defense works for the Confederates. In front of the greater part of this old railroad were relatively thick woods, which were occupied by Southern skirmishers.

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