Lt. Gen. Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson created this official report for the Second Manassas campaign of 1862 just days before the Army of Northern Virginia would enter into combat against a revitalized Union Army of the Potomac at the Battle of Chancellorsville. Chancellorsville would be Jackson's last battle.
During the Second Manassas campaign, Robert E. Lee had detached Jackson and his Second Corps shortly after the conclusion of the successful Seven Days Campaign outside Richmond, Va. After engaging John Pope's Army of Virginia at the Battle of Cedar Mountain, Jackson's forces, supported by JEB Stuart's cavalry, would surge into Northern Virginia on a lightning campaign to cut off Pope's supply lines. Reaching Manassas Junction, Jackson's forces would gorge themselves on captured Union stores and then set light to all that they could not carry. Jackson's aggressive moves into the Union rear had done much to unnerve the Union forces in Virginia, but his movements also left him vulnerable to the Union army, now reassembling south of Washington DC.
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