ECWS Preview: Second Manassas and Never Such a Campaign

We’re showing off the covers of some of the books we have coming up later this year in the Emerging Civil War Series. Next up: Never Such a Campaign: The Battle of Second Manassas, August 29 – September 1, 1862 by Robert Orrison and Dan Welch.

The image on the cover comes from Battles and Leaders of the Civil War (vol. 2) and depicts A. P. Hill’s men hurling rocks in their desperate defense of an unfinished railroad bed.

About the Book:

July, 1862. General Robert E. Lee, now in command of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, had driven back the massive Federal Army of the Potomac from the very gates of the Confederate capital. Richmond was safe—at least for the moment.

But soon, new threats emerged against Lee’s army and the Confederate war effort in Virginia. Rumors swirled that a Federal command headed towards Fredericksburg, and a new Federal army, the Army of Virginia, under Maj. Gen. John Pope, was shifting operations towards Confederate communications and supply points.

Pope had come from the west, where he had scored successes along the Mississippi River. He brought with him a harder philosophy of war, one that would put pressure not just on Lee’s army but on the population of Virginia itself.

Not only alarmed but also offended by “such a miscreant as Pope,” Lee began moving his own forces. He intended to not just counter the new threat but to “suppress” it.

In Never Such a Campaign: The Battle of Second Manassas, August 29 – September 1, 1862, historians Robert Orrison and Dan Welch follow Lee and Pope as they converge on ground once-bloodied just thirteen months earlier. Since then the armies had grown in size and efficiency, and combat between them would dwarf that first battle. For the second summer in a row, forces would clash on the plains of Manassas, and the results would be far more terrible.



1 Response to ECWS Preview: Second Manassas and Never Such a Campaign

  1. Glad to see the end date of September 1, and the coverage of Chantilly – a more important engagement than many people realize.

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