During the Civil War, the Manassas Gap and the Orange and Alexandria railroads intersected at Manassas Junction, making it strategically important to both the Union and the Confederacy as a supply depot and for military transportation. Two of the war’s great battles were fought nearby, and diaries, letters, and newspaper articles recorded the war’s effects on civilians as well as the thousands of soldiers who passed through the junction. More than 34,000 Confederate soldiers camped on and near this spot during the first months of the Civil War in 1861. Thousands of young men joined local companies throughout the South to fight in what most believed would be a single decisive battle to defend their independence, and those who came here were treated as heroes en route. As the weeks and months passed at this once-quiet rural railroad junction, twenty-seven miles from Washington, green recruits slowly adjusted to the reality of a soldier’s daily camp life, filling letters home with accounts of discomfort and boredom while they eagerly awaited the glory of victory in the great battle still to come.
