Second Battle of Bull Run August 28–30, 1862 Confederate General Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson captured the Union supply depot at Manassas Junction, threatening the Union’s ability to communicate with Washington, D.C.

Proximity to Washington, DC

“Stonewall” Jackson at Manassas National Battlefield

Results of Second Bull Run  Pope retreated and this battle allowed Lee and his men to drive into Maryland to begin the war in the North.  The Confederates won a decisive battle resulting in 10,000 casualties.  The Union army was not destroyed. Pope was relieved of his command as a result of the loss, and again sent to the Western territories.  Pope’s remaining troops merged with McClellan’s Army of the Potomac.

Railroad at Manassas Junction

Outcomes of Bull Run  Pope – ordered troops to destroy whatever economic resources of the enemy they could not take away.  An assault upon the Confederate economy and upon the populace supporting the Confederacy was implied by Pope's orders to his troops.  Seizure of civilian property as "contraband of war," formerly a punishable act, was encouraged.  This economic assault laid a foundation for future destruction of the South’s infrastructure.

Antietam Bridge

Antietam – September 17, 1862 McClellan lost 1/6 th of his Army, but “won” a victory, by halting Lee’s invasion of Maryland McClellan’s overly cautious approach cost a more decisive victory over Lee. McClellan continued to overestimate Confederate troops numbers, leading to an approach of “not losing rather than winning” First major battle on Union soil Single bloodiest day in American history with losses of 22,717

Antietam  Colonel Ezra Carman, who survived that bloody field and later wrote the most detailed tactical study of the fighting there, had it right when he observed that on September 17, 1862, “more errors were committed by the Union commander than in any other battle of the war.”  5,500 soldiers perished at Bloody Lane in three hours of fighting, with no decisive victory for either side

Dead at Bloody Lane, Antietam

Union Strategy  Blockading Confederate ports to cut off cotton exports and prevent the import of manufactured goods; and using ground and naval forces to divide the Confederacy into three distinct theaters (or areas)  Ridiculed in the press as the "Anaconda Plan," after the South American snake that crushes its prey to death, this strategy ultimately proved successful.

Scott’s Anaconda Plan Illustrated

Emancipation Proclamation  It speaks of emancipation as a matter of "military necessity" and only once as "an act of justice."  It exempted the slaves of the border states and the occupied military districts of the South, and its language is muted and legalistic. Lincoln knew that his presidential `war powers' only ran as far as actual warfare ran, and neither the border states nor the occupied districts were at war with federal authority on January 1, 1863.

Emancipation Proclamation  Making the proclamation legally challenge-proof forced Lincoln to restrain "my oft expressed personal wish that all men every where could be free," as well as muting any flights of eloquence about justice.  The Proclamation not only provided the legal title to freedom that slaves could claim once the Union armies arrived, it also opened the gates to the enlistment of black soldiers in the Union army. And once in the uniform of the Union, Lincoln could no longer keep up the pretense of denying blacks equal civil rights. "As I live," Lincoln promised a crowd of jubilant blacks in Richmond in April, 1865, "no one shall put a shackle on your limbs, and you shall have all the rights which God has given to every other free citizen of this Republic."