Lightning Struck Twice: Preserving a key portion of the Second Manassas Battlefield

A hand painted lithograph by New York printmaking company Currier & Ives depicting the Confederate and Union forces fighting during the Battle of Second Manassas in August of 1862.

Currier & Ives, circa 1862, Library of Congress

Recipient: Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation

Amount: $268,259.00
Acres: 3.11

Throughout the course of the Civil War, the eastern theater saw the same ground fought over repeatedly as Union and Confederate armies maneuvered against one another in Northern Virginia. An important supply center, Manassas Junction and its surrounding farmland were a military target for both sides and would witness two of the most important battles of the war. The violent struggle of the First Battle of Manassas in July of 1861 shattered any illusions that the war would be over in a few months. The second occurred in August 1862, as President Lincoln formed the Union Army of Virginia and sent them southwards to aid in the Union siege of Richmond.

On August 27-28, Confederate troops camped on land adjacent to the sloping embankment of an unfinished railroad near the First Manassas Battlefield to stop the Union advance. After a vicious night battle between the two sides on August 28, Union troops attempted to advance in a series of massive frontal assaults along the railbed for two more days. At times fighting without ammunition, the Confederates held the line until a sweeping counterattack to the south forced the Union army to withdraw. Disorganized and sustaining heavy casualties, the Union Army of Virginia was unable to prevent the Confederate invasion of Maryland that followed, and the events leading up to the bloodiest single day of the Civil War at the Battle of Antietam just two weeks later.

This 2023 Battlefield Land Acquisition Grant awarded by the National Park Service’s American Battlefield Protection Program supports the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation to acquire three acres of land that Confederate forces camped on the nights of August 27-28, and used to launch counterattacks against Union forces as they attacked the unfinished railroad the following two days. The property’s acquisition will ensure that a core potion of the battlefield is protected from future suburban development in perpetuity.

Battlefield Land Acquisition Grants from the NPS American Battlefield Protection Program empower preservation partners nationwide to acquire and preserve threatened Revolutionary War, War of 1812 and Civil War battlefields. In addition, the program administers three other grants: Preservation Planning Grants, which are open to all sites of armed conflict on American soil, the newly authorized Battlefield Restoration and Battlefield Interpretation Grant programs. This financial assistance generates community-driven stewardship of historic resources at the state, tribal and local levels.