Inside Lee's Second Manasas Strategy

The Second Manassas Campaign, fought August 13–September 3, 1862, during the American Civil War (1861–1865), was one in a long line of Confederate victories that year. Following George B. McClellan‘s attack on the Confederate capital at Richmond during the Peninsula Campaign and the Seven Days’ Battles, Confederate general Robert E. Lee regained the strategic initiative through a bold campaign of maneuver. He split his Army of Northern Virginia into two—one half led by Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson, the other by James Longstreet. In a risky move, Lee sent Jackson around Union general John Pope’s flank and cut his supply lines with Washington, D.C. Longstreet’s wing of the army later followed. Jackson succeeded splendidly, bringing Pope to battle near Manassas Junction, the site of the First Battle of Manassas, which had been fought the summer before. With the defeat of Pope’s Army of Virginia at the Second Battle of Manassas on August 28–30, a route north lay open for the Army of Northern Virginia. Lee decided to take it, bringing the war into Maryland and eventually defeating Union troops at the Battle of Antietam on September 17.