Second Battle of Bull Run

Only a heroic, desperate stand by Union regulars on the high grounds near the Stone Bridge prevented the absolute destruction of Pope's army before darkness allowed them to flee across the swollen waters of Bull Run towards the fortifications of Washington.

Second Manassas was a strategic and tactical masterpiece.

In two weeks, Lee and Jackson had transferred the war from the gates of Richmond to the outer defenses of Washington.

They had outmaneuvered, outmarched, and outgeneraled an army of 75,000 men, crushing it, inflicting over 15,000 casualties, capturing 30 pieces of artillery, and sending the Lincoln administration into a pit of despair.

Noting as much, Douglas Southall Freeman writes in volume two of his biography of Lee, quote, It cannot positively be asserted that Lee should have given Longstreet a peremptory order to attack, or would have been sure of a greater victory if he had.

His yielding to Longstreet probably had a less disastrous effect on the battle than on the mind of that officer.

It cost little, perhaps, at Second Manassas, but it cost much at Gettysburg.

For it is a dire thing in war for a subordinate to believe that if he is stubborn enough in holding out against his superior's orders, he can have his own way.

I didn't get that much training." But then he kept b- being put in charge of things in the s- American Civil War and kept messing them up.

Sigel messed up major commands at Wilson's Creek, Missouri, in 1861, and Second Bull Run in 1862.

His worst humiliation came in 1864, when his army was routed by the teenage VMI cadets at the Battle of New Market, Virginia.

Sigel was also a difficult personality.

He was just kinda average.

Schurz commanded a mostly German division.

Several of his regiments were led by Forty-Eighters, and they performed well in their first battle at Second Bull Run.

Soon, this division joined the Army of the Potomac, the main Union Army in the Virginia theater of the war.

But though their temperament may have differed, the outcome was much the same.

Pope immediately led his army into Virginia and straight into a disastrous defeat at the Second Battle of Bull Run.

It was the bloodiest defeat of the war to date, and Lincoln removed Pope from his command, replacing him with George McClellan, the very man Pope had been sent to replace.

Removed from office and in disgrace, Pope was sent west to put down the Dakota, But the humiliation burned deep inside him.

Chapter 6.

Battle of Second Manassas.

Camp near Winchester, Virginia, October the 8th, 1862.

My last letter to you was mailed at Richmond sometime in July.

A Soldier's Letters to Charming Nelly by J.B. Polly.

Chapter seven.

Second Manassas continued.

Letter of October the eighth, eighteen sixty-two continued.

What are you afraid of?

Course, I ain't been much afraid of anything since the Second Battle of Bull Run.

That so?

No.

Therefore, West Virginia is a state.

Rosecrans was then transferred to the West in early 1862 and mainly served under John Pope, who wins quite a bit of infamy in the East in August 1862 during the Battle of Second Bull Run and Ulysses S.

Grant.

His performance of the Battle of Iuka and the Battle of Corinth in early-mid-1862 made him a hero in the northern press.

I think there's a lot of really good evidence that indicates that the Confederacy had a decent chance to win in 1864.

But Chickamauga kind of reveals a weakness in the Confederate war-making philosophy, I suppose.

Like these big, aggressive attacks, while they can be extremely successful, they're very successful in the East, they're very successful at Battle of Second Bull Run, they're very, they're legendarily successful at the Battle of Chancellorsville, Stonewall Jackson's attack there.

And this attack by Longstreet on the Union right flank deserves to be considered as spectacular a success as either of those other attacks or any other attack in the war.

Their violent conflict shattered the quiet of Maryland's countryside.

when the hot september sun finally set upon the devastated battlefield twenty three thousand americans had fallen nearly eight times more than fell at tarawa's beaches in world war two this single fact with the heroism and suffering it implies gives the monuments and markers their meaning no longer do they presume upon the land rather their mute inadequacy can only hint of the great event that happened here and of its even greater consequences across the potomac on september fourth to seven eighteen sixty two a ragged host of nearly fifty five thousand men in butternut and gray splashed across the potomac river at white's ford near leesburg virginia this was general robert e lee's army of northern virginia embarked on the confederacy's first invasion of the north though thousands of lee's men were shoeless though they lacked ammunition and supplies though they were fatigued from the marching and fighting just before the historic crossing into maryland they felt invincible only a week before august twenty eighth to the thirtieth they had routed the federals at the battle of second manassas driving them headlong into the defenses of washington With this event, the strategic initiative so long held by Union forces in the East had shifted to the Confederacy.

But Lee recognized that Union power was almost limitless.

It must be kept off balance, prevented from reorganizing for another drive on Richmond, the Confederate capital.

They lacked training and were deficient in arms.

Others had just returned from the Peninsular Campaign, where Lee's army had driven them from the gates of Richmond in the Seven Days Battle, June 26 to July 2nd.

Still others were the remnants of the force so decisively beaten at Second Manassas.

In McClellan, the Union Army had a commander who was skilled at organization.