Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies

In late August 1862 Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia and John Pope’s Army of Virginia found themselves fighting over nearly the exact same land the South and North fought over in the First Battle of Bull Run, the first major land battle of the Civil War. Fresh off forcing George McClellan’s Army of the Potomac to quit its Peninsula Campaign, Lee’s army struck north, and John Pope hoped to smash Stonewall Jackson’s corps before James Longstreet’s could link back up with it. 

However, miscommunication by the Union allowed Lee to take the initiative, and as the North failed to dislodge Stonewall Jackson, Longstreet delivered a crushing flank attack that routed the Northerners and sent the army scurrying back towards Washington, much the same way the Union soldiers retreated to the capital after First Bull Run. The Confederates’ decisive victory paved the way for Lee’s invasion of Maryland, which culminated with the Battle of Antietam.

Before all of the generals relived the Battle of Second Manassas or Bull Run in their memoirs, they wrote official accounts of the campaign to their superiors, and those accounts were preserved in the Official Records. This collection of Confederate generals’ accounts of the battle includes the accounts of Lee, Stonewall Jackson, Longstreet, JEB Stuart, and Cadmus Wilcox. It is specially formatted with a Table of Contents for each general’s account, and pictures of the generals who fought in it.