Manassas

Manassas. A Critical Junction. , If you had been here in July 1861, you could have seen Confederate soldiers jumping down from one train after another at the junction half a mile in front of you. The trains were bringing Gen. Joseph E. Johnston's army from the Shenandoah Valley on the Manassas Gap Railroad to join Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard's army here at Manassas Junction. They arrived just in time to tip the balance of battle., A small collection of railroad shops, a telegraph office, a hotel, and a few farms were clustered around the junction. The few residents' lives revolved more around the rhythm of the seasons than the train schedule. One-third of Prince William County's population was enslaved, men, women, and children whose labor brought comfort and profit to their owners. Except for the occasional train, life here was quiet., With war, that all changed as the rail lines that intersected here made Manassas strategically important. The Orange and Alexandria Railroad linked Manassas by roundabout route to Richmond and also offered the Union army a promising avenue of advance into Virginia from Washington, D.C. The Manassas Gap Railroad connected Manassas Junction to the Shenandoah Valley, Breadbasket of the Confederacy. The quiet times were over., [Captions:] , One of the earliest known photographs of Manassas Junction, taken shortly after the Confederates burned the place and evacuated on March 8-9, 1862, shows the Union troops surveying the damage., This pencil and watercolor drawing depicts Confederate reinforcements arriving in Manassas on July 21, 1861, the first time in history that troops were transported to battle by train.