Eight months after their victory at the First Battle of Manassas, the Confederates abandoned Manassas Junction, burning more than a million pounds of provisions and destroying the railroad line as they withdrew. Days later the Union army arrived to find the machine shops, station houses, commissary and quartermaster storehouses in ashes, along with the wreck of a locomotive and burned freight cars. Many local residents viewed the Union troops as hostile invaders and feared their advance, but many enslaved people saw the Union army as a path to freedom. In the following months, thousands of enslaved people from Prince William and nearby counties fled into Union lines, where soldiers called them contrabands.
