In August 1862, Confederate Gen. Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson led his command around Union Gen. John Pope's right flank to cut Federal communication lines and open the way for the rest of Gen. Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia to follow from the Rappahannock River. At sunset on August 26, Jackson occupied Bristoe Station on the Orange & Alexandria Railroad just east of here to intercept and destroy Union supply trains headed to Alexandria, and he ordered Gen. Richard S. Ewell to destroy the railroad bridge over Kettle Run to slow Pope's advance from the south. Pope then ordered Capt. Harman Bliss and the 72nd New York Infantry, 3rd Excelsior, to board a train at Warrenton Junction and head toward Bristoe Station. Before dawn the next morning, Bliss stopped short of Kettle Run, marched forward, saw flaming wreckage at the station, withdrew across the run after some skirmishing, and prepared to defend the bridge. When a large Confederate force advanced, he reboarded his men as artillery shots ricocheted near the locomotive and escaped to Warrenton Junction despite pursuit by Capt. G. Campbell Brown, Ewell's stepson and staff member. Ewell then destroyed the bridge, delaying Union troops and supplies and contributing to Pope's defeat at the Second Battle of Manassas.
