Wartime Manassas

Wartime Manassas. "Defend that point against an attack". , During the Civil War, two railroads , the Manassas Gap and the Orange and Alexandria , intersected here. Manassas Junction was strategically important to both the Union and the Confederacy as a supply depot and for military transportation. Two of the war's great battles were fought nearby. Diaries, letters, and newspaper articles documented the war's effects on civilians as well as the thousands of soldiers who passed through the junction., You are facing the historic location of Manassas Junction, for which the Union and Confederate forces contended. Both sides found the junction strategically significant. The Orange and Alexandria, which also intersected the Virginia Central Railroad at Gordonsville, provided the only complete railroad link between Washington and Richmond. Whoever controlled the line also controlled transportation and communication between the two capitals. The Manassas Gap Railroad provided access to the produce and livestock of the fertile Shenandoah Valley. Furthermore, control of the Manassas Gap Railroad helped protect the northern end of the Shenandoah Valley from Union attack, while enabling the Confederates to move troops to attack Harpers Ferry and disrupt service on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, which connected Washington to the West., Gen. Robert E. Lee, who planned the state's defense against invasion, wrote to Col. Philip St. George Cocke on May 6, 1861: "Colonel: You are desired to post at Manassas Gap Junction a force sufficient to defend that point against an attack likely to be made against it by troops from Washington. It will be necessary to give this point your personal attention." Soon, Confederate forces protecting the junction fought the first of two major battles nearby. A year later, just before the Second Battle of Manassas, Confederate Gen. Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson led a raid against the massive Federal supply depot here, destroying support buildings and camps., "On the track and sidelings stood the hot and smoking remains of what had been train cars laden with ordnance and commissary stores. ... Immediately around the Junction, were the shops and shanties of the storekeepers, sutlers, negro refugee boarding-houses, ambrotypists ... clothiers, tack distributors, gamblers, eating and drinking saloons. .. Most of the buildings were burned, ... the tents slit into ribbons with saber strokes. ... Looking over ... the solitary chimneys, the broken engines and overthrown gun-carriages, the mouldering graves of former occupants, presented a picture of the waste of war most solemn and impressive." , Union Lt. Col. David Hunter Strother, 1867, describing the ruins of Manassas Junction after Jackson's raid, Aug. 26-27, 1862