The man Lee called his 'right arm' was accidentally shot by his own men at Chancellorsville and died of complications relating to the injury. Beauregard camped near Manassas Junction, Virginia (25 miles from Washington, D.C.) along a little river known as Bull Run.ĭid you know? After First Manassas, Stonewall Jackson further distinguished himself in the Shenandoah Valley, Second Manassas and Fredericksburg.
The offensive would begin with an attack on more than 20,000 Confederate troops under the command of General P.G.T. Encouraged by early victories by Union troops in western Virginia and by the war fever spreading through the North, President Abraham Lincoln ordered Brigadier General Irvin McDowell to mount an offensive that would hit quickly and decisively at the enemy and open the way to Richmond, thus bringing the war to a mercifully quick end. Prelude to the First Battle of Bull Run (Manassas)īy July 1861, two months after Confederate troops opened fire on Fort Sumter to begin the Civil War, the northern press and public were eager for the Union Army to make an advance on Richmond ahead of the planned meeting of the Confederate Congress there on July 20.
