Chapter 23: The Confederates Win Again at II Manassas

While Jackson hopes to be reinforced by Longstreet’s I Corps, the fact is that he stands alone on August 28. Still this doesn’t stop him from launching his 6,200 men at 6:30pm against General James Gibbon’s 2,100 Black Hat Brigade, as they march past John Brawner’s farm, two miles east of the Junction. The fight goes on until the stalemate end at 9:30pm, with around 1200 casualties on each side.

The next day, John Pope, with 77,000 men, is confident that the rebels are vulnerable, and he opens an attack at 7:00am, north and east of Brawner’s Farm on the same ground fought over in July 1861. Until Pope arrives on the site around 1:00pm, the Union troops are led by Franz Siegel’s often inept I Corps and Samuel Heintzelman’s III Corps. A stand-off follows after Longstreet’s I Corps, with 25,000 men, joins Jackson to swell the total CSA manpower to around 50,000.

But nightfall finds Pope eager to resume an offensive before the Confederates can make an escape.

After a plague of confusing orders early on August 30, the Union attack on what Pope assumes to be the rebel’s hanging left commences around 1:00pm. By 4:30, almost the entire Blue Army is north of the Warrenton Pike when Lee and Longstreet decide to advance the right wing. For the next three hours they roll up the Blue forces until Pope is finally able to stabilize a defensive line around Henry House Hill. His losses at 14,462 are almost double the enemy’s at 7,298.

As Pope flees, Lee advances some 20,000 men on September 1 eleven miles northeast of Manassas to Chantilly in an attempt to block him from reaching McClellan’s troops in DC. The action proves inconclusive but Lee now prepares for his first invasion of the north.

That will bring him face to face with George McClellan, whom Lincoln reluctantly names to replace General Pope on September 12, after just over three months of command.