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In the Northern Virginia Campaign, Barksdale's brigade was stationed at Harpers Ferry and thus did not participate in the Second Battle of Bull Run. In the Maryland Campaign, the brigade was assigned to the division of Maj. Gen. Lafayette McLaws in Lt. Gen. James Longstreet's First Corps of the Army of Northern Virginia.
- Overview
- The Northern Virginia Campaign
- The armies gather
- The first day
- The second day
- Casualties and assessment
Second Battle of Bull Run, (August 29–30, 1862), in the American Civil War, the second of two engagements fought at a small stream named Bull Run, near Manassas in northern Virginia. (Civil War battles often had one name in the North, which was usually associated with a prominent nearby physical feature, and another in the South, usually derived fr...
Military operations in Virginia in the spring and summer of 1862, which included the Second Battle of Bull Run (Second Manassas), were a showcase of Confederate generalship. From Maj. Gen. Stonewall Jackson’s masterful performance in the Shenandoah Valley Campaign to Gen. Robert E. Lee’s triumph in the Seven Days’ Battles, Confederate forces consistently engaged much larger Union armies and emerged victorious. With the failure of Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan’s Peninsular Campaign, commanding Union Gen. Henry Halleck ordered McClellan’s Army of the Potomac to assist Maj. Gen. John Pope’s newly created Army of Virginia in central Virginia. Until the two Union armies could be combined for a renewed assault upon the Confederate capital of Richmond, it fell upon Pope to defend Washington, D.C., and to engage Confederate forces in the area.
American Civil War Events
Battle of Fort Sumter
April 12, 1861 - April 14, 1861
Shenandoah Valley campaigns
July 1861 - March 1865
Jackson began his march around the right of Pope’s army early on August 25. The column passed through Thoroughfare Gap on August 26, and it reached Bristoe Station, directly in Pope’s rear, that evening. Jackson’s “foot cavalry” had covered an astonishing 54 miles (87 km) in just two days. A Confederate detachment drove the Federal defenders from Manassas Junction; after thoroughly plundering the Union supply depot there, Jackson’s men set fire to the rail yard and the remaining Federal stores. When Pope became aware of Jackson’s departure, he arranged for an immediate attack on Longstreet, thinking that Jackson had withdrawn his force to the Shenandoah Valley. However, when the direction of Jackson’s march on Thoroughfare Gap became clear, Pope fell back in order to engage him.
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On the evening of August 27, Union Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker’s division met Brig. Gen. Richard Ewell’s division of Jackson’s corps near Bristoe Station. A private with the 15th Alabama Infantry Regiment said of the ensuing encounter, “If I had held up an iron hat I could have caught it full of bullets in a short time.” The brief but brutal engagement left the Union attackers bloodied, and Ewell retired to Manassas. Pope now realized that he had Jackson’s entire corps in front of him at Manassas Junction. At once he took steps to concentrate all of his forces for a decisive strike against Jackson. When he arrived at Manassas on August 28, however, Pope found nothing but the charred ruins of his supplies.
Jackson had no intention of awaiting Pope at Manassas. Having made several feints to mislead Federal scouts, Jackson withdrew to a hidden position in the hills between Groveton and Sudley Springs, northwest of the 1861 battlefield. There he awaited the arrival of Lee and Longstreet, who, taking the same route as Jackson, arrived on August 28 at Thoroughfare Gap. There Longstreet engaged a hopelessly outnumbered Union division under Brig. Gen. James Ricketts, driving it back to Gainesville. That evening Jackson’s corps held a 2-mile (3.2-km) line from Sudley Springs to Groveton, with his right wing near Groveton opposing Union Brig. Gen. Rufus King’s division. Longstreet held Thoroughfare Gap, facing Ricketts at Gainesville. On Ricketts’s right was King near Groveton, and the Union line was continued by the remaining division of Maj. Gen. Irvin McDowell’s corps and by Maj. Gen. Franz Sigel’s corps to the Stone Bridge.
Pope was at Centreville, 7 miles (11 km) away, with three divisions; a fourth was northeast of Manassas Junction, and Maj. Gen. Fitz-John Porter’s corps was at Bristoe Station. Thus, while Ricketts continued to occupy Longstreet at Gainesville, Pope could concentrate a superior force against Jackson, who he now believed to be meditating a retreat to Thoroughfare Gap. However, a series of misunderstandings resulted in the withdrawal of Ricketts and King, so that no force now remained to oppose the union of Longstreet and Jackson. Meanwhile, Sigel and McDowell alone remained to face Jackson until such time as Pope could bring up the rest of his scattered forces.
Jackson was now prepared for battle, on the ground of his choosing. On the morning of August 29, the Confederates, posted behind a high railway embankment, repelled two sharp attacks made by Sigel. Pope arrived at noon with his divisions from Centreville, which, led by the general himself, Hooker, and Maj. Gen. Jesse Reno, made a third and desperate attack on Jackson’s line. Jackson repulsed it with difficulty, carried his counterstroke too far, and was in turn checked by Brig. Gen. Cuvier Grover’s brigade of Hooker’s division. Grover then made a fourth assault but was driven back with terrible loss. The last assault, delivered by two divisions under Maj. Gen. Phil Kearny and Brig. Gen. Isaac Stevens, drove the Confederate left out of its position; a Confederate counterattack, led by Brig. Gen. Jubal Early, dislodged the Union soldiers with a bayonet charge.
By noon of August 29 the lead elements of Longstreet’s corps had begun to deploy on Jackson’s right. Porter and McDowell, acting on various orders sent by Pope, approached the area and observed an enemy force of unknown strength. Porter had been ordered to attack Jackson’s right flank, but it was now clear that Pope was wholly ignorant of the arrival of Longstreet. To the north, the sound of Sigel’s guns indicated that he was closely engaged with Jackson. McDowell and Porter assessed the situation. The former marched off to join Sigel, while the latter remained to hold Longstreet in check. In this Porter succeeded, for Longstreet, though far superior in numbers, made no forward move, and his advance guard went into action alone. On the night of the 29th, Lee reunited the wings of his army on the field of battle. He had forced Pope back many miles from the Rappahannock, and, expecting that the Federals would retire to the line of Bull Run before giving battle, he now decided to wait for the last divisions of Longstreet’s corps, which were still approaching.
Pope, still optimistic that he held the upper hand, mistakenly believed that Jackson was retreating and ordered a “general pursuit” of the Confederates on August 30. There was some ground for his suppositions, because Jackson had retired a short distance and Longstreet’s advance guard also had fallen back. McDowell, who was in charge of the pursuit, soon recognized Pope’s error and attempted to secure his exposed flank by occupying the Bald and Henry House hills. An attack on Jackson’s right, which Pope had ordered Porter to make, was repulsed with great losses due to devastating enfilading artillery fire from Longstreet.
Shortly after 4:00 pm Lee ordered the entire Confederate army forward in a grand counterattack. Longstreet bore down on the Federal left with 28,000 men in one of the largest massed charges of the war, while Jackson pressed the right toward the Warrenton Turnpike. The left flank of the Union army was driven successively from every position it took up, and Longstreet captured Bald Hill. Jackson, though opposed by the greater part of Pope’s forces, advanced to Matthews Hill, and his artillery threatened the Stone Bridge. The Federals, driven back to the banks of Bull Run, were only saved by the spirited defense of Henry House Hill by the Pennsylvania Reserves Division of Brig. Gen. John Reynolds and the 2nd Division under Brig. Gen. George Sykes.
The Union forces present on the field on August 29–30, 1862, numbered about 70,000, while the strength of Lee’s army on the same dates was about 55,000. Total casualties for the battle topped 22,000, with Union losses numbering 13,824. Confederates killed, wounded, or missing numbered 8,353 men, Longstreet’s massive charge on the second day having accounted for the bulk of that total. While the attack was successful in collapsing the Union left flank, Longstreet lost over 4,000 men in roughly four hours.
Pope’s army and those troops of the Army of the Potomac that had been involved in the catastrophe were driven, tired and disheartened, into the Washington lines. Once they were there, accusations and recriminations swirled about who should be held responsible for the debacle. Pope placed the blame squarely on Porter, for having failed to attack Jackson’s right flank on August 29. Porter responded that Pope’s orders had been both vague and impossible to execute. Less than two weeks after the battle, Pope was relieved of command. He would spend the remainder of the war on the Western frontier, fighting the Sioux. Porter was court-martialed, found guilty, “and for ever disqualified from holding any office of trust under the government of the United States.” He would spend most of the subsequent quarter century engaging in an ultimately successful quest to exonerate himself.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
The Second Battle of Bull Run began on August 28 as a Federal column, under Jackson's observation just outside Gainesville, near the farm of the John Brawner family, moved along the Warrenton Turnpike.
- August 30-31, 1862 [2]
- Confederate victory [3]
Aug 30, 2011 · The Battle of Second Manassas (Second Bull Run) page includes battle maps, history articles, photos, and expert video on this important 1862 Civil War battle.
Barksdale was sent east, and fought in all the major early battles except the Second Battle of Bull Run. Considered a competent commander, he was recommended for promotion to brigadier general in 1862.
Jun 18, 2015 · Barksdale and his Brigade were sent to the Harpers Ferry region following the Peninsula Campaign and so did not participate in the Second Battle of Manassas. He and his men did, however, fight at the battles of Harpers Ferry and Antietam in the division of Major General Lafayette McLaws.
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Apr 5, 2011 · The Civil War's Second Battle of Bull Run, waged in northern Virginia in 1862, brought a decisive victory for the Confederates over the far larger Union forces.
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