Second Battle of Bull Run
In July of 1862, President Abraham Lincoln and freshly-appointed Union Army commander-in-chief Henry Halleck ordered the Army of the Potomac led by George McClellan and the newly-formed Army of Virginia led by John Pope to unite in Washington, D.C. for a combined offensive toward the Confederate capital at Richmond.
In response, Confederate commander Robert E. Lee resolved to draw first blood before the two Union armies could bring to bear an overwhelming numerical advantage. After dividing his Army of Northern Virginia into two units commanded by Stonewall Jackson and James Longstreet, on August 27th, Jackson’s 24,000-man force attacked a Union supply depot at Manassas Junction Virginia, some 25 miles behind Pope’s rear, which in turn threatened Pope’s communication with Washington, D.C.
John Pope’s Fatal Mistake
Turning his army to confront Jackson’s force, the opposing armies clashed in a stalemate at sunset on August 28th near Brawner’s Farm, and while Pope wrongly surmised that Jackson would retreat in an effort to complete his unification with Longstreet’s men, Pope failed to wait for reinforcements before sending small divisions to attack Confederate positions on the morning of August 29th, leading to heavy casualties on both sides, followed by a Union retreat against Jackson and Longstreet’s now combined forces.
Pope again misread Confederate troop movements as another all-out retreat, leading to pitched battles on August 30th that witnessed punishing artillery attacks on Union positions, followed by an aggressive counterattack by Longstreet’s men that forced the Union army back to Henry House Hill, the same ground which saw the hardest fighting during the First Battle of Bull Run some 11 months prior.
Who Won the Second Battle of Bull Run?
Despite heavy Confederate losses—1,096 killed and 6,202 wounded—the Second Battle of Bull Run, or the Second Manassas as it is known in the South, proved to be a decisive victory for the Confederates, against Union forces nearly twice the size of the Rebel army. This victory prompted Lee’s near immediate push into western Maryland on September 5th, leading to the Battle of Antietam two weeks later, which would prove to the costliest single day of fighting in American history.
For his ineptitude at the three-day Second Battle of Bull Run, which saw 1,747 Union deaths, 8,452 wounded and 4,263 captured or missing, John Pope was relieved of command, before being sent to the Union Army’s hinterland Department of the Northwest for the remainder of the war, making the Second Battle of Bull Run, an important morale boost for the Confederate cause.