With three days’ rations in haversacks, Brockenborough, on the 21st, moved towards the Rappahannock, where he found the enemy occupying the north bank in force. A severe artillery fight immediately began, and was maintained for some hours. The battery pitted against Brockenborough was Company M, United States regulars, which, towards nightfall, he succeeded in silencing and driving back with the loss of many men and an exploded caisson.
On the morning of the 22d, the artillery was thrown across the river, but soon after encountered the enemy in heavy force, and were compelled to recross after a desperate struggle. In this affair the Baltimore Light Artillery suffered a loss of four men killed—Irvin, Cox, Bradley and Reynolds—and several severely wounded.
Brockenborough finding it impossible to cross at that point, moved up to Hanson’s Ford, where a crossing was effected, and he then pursued his way through Orleans, Salem and Thoroughfare Gap, and reached Manassas on the 26th, having marched fifty miles in two days, with nothing for his men or horses to eat save the green corn gathered along the road. Here at Manassas, though, was found in the captured trains and sutlers’ stores all they could have desired, and for hours they revelled in the good things their new commissary had so bountifully supplied, and over Rhine wine and lobsters forgot for the time the privations of the past few days.
From Manassas, Jackson moved on Centreville, but finding the enemy there in force, he retraced his steps to Manassas, closely pursued, and formed his line of battle, about sunset on the 28th, upon the ground occupied by the enemy in the battle of July, 1861.
The engagement immediately commenced, and raged with great fury for some time, but the enemy was repulsed in every assault, and driven back with heavy loss. General Stephen D. Lee, who commanded the whole of Jackson’s artillery, then put the several batteries in position along the crest of a commanding hill, and there awaited the attack sure to be renewed next day.
About two o’clock on the 29th heavy columns emerged from the woods in Jackson’s front, and advanced boldly to the attack, but the storm of grape and canister which tore through their ranks was more than flesh and blood could withstand, and they were driven back with dreadful slaughter. But again and again did those devoted columns reform and return to the attack with undiminished ardor, but the same terrible fire greeted them, and strewed the ground with dead and dying.
But nevertheless Jackson’s situation was a most critical one. With but a handful of worn and wearied troops he was battling with ten times his numbers, which must necessarily soon wear him out and exhaust his ammunition; but as the hearts of his men were sinking within them, they were cheered by the clouds of dust that arose in the distance and heralded the approach of their great chieftain, Lee, with the veterans of Longstreet’s corps. At night the battle ceased, and the wearied troops threw themselves upon the ground to seek a little repose before the work of death and destruction should be resumed on the morrow.
At the break of day on the morning of the 30th of August, the troops were aroused from their slumbers and ordered to prepare for the great and decisive battle at hand. But hour after hour passed by, and except an occasional picket shot, all else was still. It was, though, but the calm which precedes the storm, for suddenly dense masses of the enemy emerged from the woods, and moved at the double-quick upon Jackson’s lines. It was a grand sight to see those three lines rush forward in the most beautiful order. For a minute a deathlike silence prevailed, when the very earth was made to tremble by the roar of Stephen D. Lee’s thirty-six pieces of artillery, fired at point blank range. The slaughter was appalling, and whole ranks melted away in an instant, but the brave survivors closed up their decimated columns, and despite that awful fire pressed on until they encountered the infantry posted in the railroad cut in front, where for a time the fight was waged hand to hand. At length they began to break and to retreat, and the batteries, which had been silent for some time owing to the proximity of the struggling columns of infantry, again belched forth into the fleeing mass their deadly discharges of grape, which was continued until the fugitives reached the shelter of the woods from which they had emerged.
Of the several batteries under General Lee that day, not one was worked more fiercely than the Baltimore Light Artillery, and none contributed more to the defeat and destruction of the enemy.
Long before nightfall the victory was won, and the braggart Pope, with the remnant of his army, was seeking safety in the defences around Washington.