SECOND BULL RUN, HEAVY UNION ASSAULTS

Second Bull Run, heavy Union assaults

On August 29th, 1862, Union forces under Major General John Pope hurled repeated attacks against Confederate positions near an unfinished railroad grade outside Manassas, Virginia. Convinced he was facing a retreating enemy, Pope believed he could smash Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson’s wing before the rest of Robert E. Lee’s army arrived. Instead, Jackson’s veterans were dug in, using the cuts and embankments of the half-built railroad as ready-made breastworks. Federal brigades charged again and again through fields and woods, suffering heavy casualties as musketry and artillery tore the ranks. To the south, James Longstreet’s divisions were arriving and deploying for a massive counterblow that would fall the next day. The punishing struggle on August 29th helped set the stage for a major Confederate victory, opening the door to Lee’s first invasion of the North and deepening Union war weariness in the summer of eighteen sixty two.