Tammy Borko Photography
The Battlefield - No One Wins!
Manassas National Battlefield
Manassas. Bull Run. The first major battle of the Civil War, plus a second battle a little over one year later. Manassas Junction, just twenty miles west of Washington, D.C., became the site of two struggles to solve the split in the Federal government started with South Carolina secession and the bombardment of Fort Sumter. It was a struggle that many thought would be over quickly, so much so, that when it was learned that a battle was brewing along the edge of the stream known as Bull Run, picnics were packed and bonnets were tightened amongst the political class and aristocracy of the city. By the end of one hour amongst the hail of bullets, cannon fire, and the shrieks of the wounded and dying, it was pretty clear that the callousness and lack of seriousness that the citizens of the city thought about the strife, would be gone forever. Fours years later and over 700,000 citizens and soldiers dead would make the first day at the first battle of Bull Run, in Manassas, Virginia, far from a quick and easy problem to solve. Remember, that those casualties caused on the fields from this suburb of the District of Columbia to Vicksburg and Atlanta, to Gettysburg and Shiloh, came in a nation not of three hundred million residents, but one of thirty-one million people as of the 1860 census in all the states and territories.
The Battlefield - No One Wins!
Manassas National Battlefield
Manassas. Bull Run. The first major battle of the Civil War, plus a second battle a little over one year later. Manassas Junction, just twenty miles west of Washington, D.C., became the site of two struggles to solve the split in the Federal government started with South Carolina secession and the bombardment of Fort Sumter. It was a struggle that many thought would be over quickly, so much so, that when it was learned that a battle was brewing along the edge of the stream known as Bull Run, picnics were packed and bonnets were tightened amongst the political class and aristocracy of the city. By the end of one hour amongst the hail of bullets, cannon fire, and the shrieks of the wounded and dying, it was pretty clear that the callousness and lack of seriousness that the citizens of the city thought about the strife, would be gone forever. Fours years later and over 700,000 citizens and soldiers dead would make the first day at the first battle of Bull Run, in Manassas, Virginia, far from a quick and easy problem to solve. Remember, that those casualties caused on the fields from this suburb of the District of Columbia to Vicksburg and Atlanta, to Gettysburg and Shiloh, came in a nation not of three hundred million residents, but one of thirty-one million people as of the 1860 census in all the states and territories.