Manassas National Battlefield Park
The site of two major Civil War battles

The 5,000-acre tract bordered by Bull Run was the scene of two Confederate victories. The First Battle of Manassas, fought July 21, 1861, was the opening engagement of the Civil War and pitted Union Brigadier General Irvin McDowell's unseasoned troops against ill-trained but spirited Confederates under Joseph E. Johnston and Brigadier General P. G. T. Beauregard. The naive, unprepared troops would soon have their hopes of a short war dashed as they came face to face with the horrors and carnage of war. The Union attack was repulsed by Confederates inspired by General Thomas J. Jackson and his Virginians, who stood against the enemy like a "stone wall," earning Jackson his famous epithet. By the day's end, nearly 900 men lay dead and dying on what the day before had been the peaceful farms of Northern Virginia.

Thirteen months later the same armies, now much larger and battle hardened would again clash over the same ground. Second Manassas, fought on August 28-30, 1862, cleared the way for General Robert E. Lee's first invasion of the North. This time, the destruction would be far greater, more than 23,000 killed, missing or wounded. Federal forces under General John Pope retreated to fortifications around Washington, D. C.  Lee led his Army of Northern Virginia across the Potomac into Maryland near Frederick; the invasion was thwarted at Antietam. Surviving landmarks at Manassas include the Dogan house, once in the line of fire; the Stone House, a Union field hospital during both battles; the unfinished railroad; and the stone bridge, blown up in 1862 but reconstructed in the 1880s.