The Battlefield In 1862

At the time of the Civil War, this battlefield was a largely agricultural landscape of fields, pastures, woods, modest farmsteads, and middling plantations, and in 1862 its roads, narrow lanes, open rolling hills, the cleared Brawner Farm, and the embankments of an unfinished railroad shaped military movement, artillery deployment, and defensive fighting. On August 29, 1862, Confederate General Robert E. Lee arrived on Monroe Hill, now known as Stuart's Hill, to assume command of the battle that had begun the previous evening at Brawner Farm, using the vantage point to receive reports from James Longstreet and Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson while his staff prepared orders and sorted information from messengers, couriers, cavalry, and signalmen; aide Charles Marshall even climbed a tree to extend his view. During the Second Battle of Manassas, the hill also served as an important signaling station, where Captains Richard E. Wilbourn and Joseph L. Bartlett used wigwag signals to maintain a vital communication link between Lee's command post and Jackson's headquarters north of the Brawner Farm on Stony Ridge.

Virginia · United States