"...upon which the battle of Bull Run was fought, I saw pretty, pure, delicate flowers growing out of the empty ammunition boxes, and a wild rose thrusting up its graceful head through the top of a broken drum, which doubtless sounded its last charge in that battle, and a cunning scarlet verbena peeping out of a fragment of a bursted shell, in which strange pot it was planted? Wasn’t that peace growing out of war?
Even so shall the beautiful and graceful ever grow out of the horrid and terrible things that transpire in this changing but ever advancing world. Nature covers even the battlegrounds with verdure and bloom. Peace and plenty spring up in the track of the devouring campaign, and all things in nature and society shall work out the progress of mankind.”
— Frank Leslie, Illustrated Newspaper, May 6, 1865
While Manassas National Battlefield Park preserves the sites of the First and Second Battles of Manassas, it also protects over 4,000 acres of natural habitat. Nearly half the park is grassland that provides crucial habitat for grassland birds and pollinators including monarch butterflies. The other half is forests from early-successional Virginia pine stands to relatively mature oak-hickory forests.
