As thousands of men from across the South converged on Manassas Junction, Confederate leaders in Richmond concluded that northern and southern forces would eventually oppose one another there. Confederate President Davis ordered General P.G.T. Beauregard from Charleston to command the military forces in Northern Virginia. Arriving on June 1, the trained engineer immediately directed improvements to the existing forts around the rail junction. Using hills and ridges, engineers laid out defensive positions around the junction and along Bull Run, whose steep banks made it a natural defensive barrier. By the fall of 1861, more than a dozen fortifications and hundreds of yards of connecting earthworks had been built, devastating the landscape and nearby farms. Many enlisted men worked on the forts alongside enslaved people from local farms. Although many owners resisted renting their enslaved people to the military, Beauregard insisted and began forcing farmers to send their workers to the forts, and this forced labor enabled the Confederates to build strong defenses quickly.
