Second Bull Run/Manassas

The summer of 1862 witnessed the struggle between Northern Republican and Democratic ideologies embodied in the Army of Virginia and the Army of the Potomac even as Union and Confederate armies faced off in the Second Manassas Campaign. Formed to protect Washington while Maj. Gen. George McClellan advanced on Richmond, the Army of Virginia and its leader, Maj. Gen. John Pope, implemented a Republican or “hard war” policy of military occupation by confiscating civilian property and imposing loyalty oaths. Northern and Southern Democrats (characterized by McClellan and Maj. Gen. Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson, respectively) recognized the threat that Pope’s ideology posed and sought to crush it, either by delaying reinforcement or decisive battlefield defeat. The defeat of Pope and his army by Confederate forces at Second Manassas delayed but did not destroy the twin Republican agendas of emancipation and destruction of the Confederacy. Pope and his political generals prefigured the total-war policies of the war’s last year.