SUMMARY
Centreville is an unincorporated community in Fairfax County, Virginia, settled by the English in the 1720s. During the American Civil War (1861–1865), its elevated topography and its proximity to Washington, D.C., made Centreville attractive to both the Union and Confederate armies. So, too, did the junction of the Orange and Alexandria Railroad with the Manassas Gap line, a few miles to the southwest, which allowed the village to be used as a supply depot throughout the war. The First Battle of Manassas (1861) and the Second Battle of Manassas (1862) were fought nearby, and the Confederate partisan John S. Mosby used the village as a base during the war.
The Northern Virginia Campaign
Military operations in Virginia in the spring and summer of 1862, which included the Second Battle of Bull Run (Second Manassas), were a showcase of Confederate generalship. From Maj. Gen. Stonewall Jackson’s masterful performance in the Shenandoah Valley Campaign to Gen. Robert E. Lee’s triumph in the Seven Days’ Battles, Confederate forces consistently engaged much larger Union armies and emerged victorious. With the failure of Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan’s Peninsular Campaign, commanding Union Gen. Henry Halleck ordered McClellan’s Army of the Potomac to assist Maj. Gen. John Pope’s newly created Army of Virginia in central Virginia. Until the two Union armies could be combined for a renewed assault upon the Confederate capital of Richmond, it fell upon Pope to defend Washington, D.C., and to engage Confederate forces in the area.
The armies gather
In the days following the Battle of Fort Sumter, the Union capital at Washington, D.C., strengthened its defenses and secured its railway connection with the North through Baltimore via the Baltimore and Ohio (B&O) railway. Washington’s other significant rail line, the Orange and Alexandria, ran southwest to Lynchburg, Virginia; control of this line would be much contested in the days to come. It was joined at Manassas Junction, 30 miles (48 km) southwest of Washington, by the Manassas Gap railway from Strasburg in the Shenandoah Valley.
Robert E. Lee, commanding the Virginia state forces, was loath to become the aggressor in the expanding conflict and refrained from attacking Washington or supporting Confederate sympathizers in Baltimore. U.S. Pres. Abraham Lincoln had proclaimed a blockade of Confederate ports (April 19) and called for 42,000 three-year volunteers and 40,000 more men to join the regular army and navy (May 3). Lincoln was awaiting the result of
Casualties
29,600 (approximate) (27,500 killed and wounded, 2,100 caputred or missing)
ENTRY
SUMMARY
The Peninsula Campaign, fought during the spring and summer of 1862, was an attempt by Union general-in-chief George B. McClellan to capture the Confederate capital at Richmond from the southeast during the American Civil War (1861–1865). Pressured by United States president Abraham Lincoln to mount an offensive Union forces had been dormant since the previous July McClellan steamed his Army of the Potomac down the Chesapeake Bay, landed it at Fort Monroe, and marched it up the Peninsula between the James and York rivers. He was confronted at Yorktown by Confederates under John B. Magruder, who convinced McClellan that Confederate forces were stronger than they actually were. Consequently, on April 5 McClellan began a siege rather than attacking, providing time for Joseph E. Johnston‘s Army of Northern Virginia to arrive. Union and Confederate forces next fought each other at
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