During the 1850s, the Orange & Alexandria and Manassas Gap railroads intersected at a small Prince William County village that became known as Manassas Junction. In 1861, more than 20,000 Confederate troops from across the South gathered in what is today downtown Manassas and, working alongside slaves requisitioned from local farms, built a ring of earthen fortifications around the junction, including defenses with naval cannon captured in Norfolk and manned by Confederate sailors. The First Battle of Manassas, also known as Bull Run, was fought five miles northwest of here on July 21, 1861. After their victory, Confederate forces occupied the fortifications through the winter of 1861-62 and built the world’s first military railroad between Manassas and Centerville seven miles to the north. When Confederates evacuated Manassas Junction in March 1862, the site became a major Union supply base. Southern troops under Gen. Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson destroyed it on August 27, 1862, before the Second Battle of Manassas on August 28-30. The area remained under Union control for the rest of the war, though railroad operations were periodically disrupted by Confederate partisans under Col. John S. Mosby. Despite the desolation caused by the war, Manassas quickly recovered as a prosperous agricultural and transportation center in the Northern Virginia Piedmont. The city’s only surviving Civil War earthworks are the Mayfield Confederate Fort and the Union’s Cannon Branch Fort.
