War and nature in northern Virginia: an environmental history of the Second Manassas Campaign

Abstract

On 18 July 1862, after taking command of the Union Army of Virginia, Maj. Gen. John Pope delivered General Orders nos. 5 and 6. In them, he instructed his soldiers to live off of local resources. Supply wagons, he continued, would not provide the necessary produce for the troops in that part of the commonwealth. Instead, he wrote, local farmers would provide those supplies. The army would rely exclusively on local resources, which tied the Union forces, and the Confederate army that had similar orders, to local landscape. Between 26 June and 5 September 1862, two major armies, the Union Army of Virginia under Maj. Gen. John Pope and the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia under Gen. Robert E. Lee, maneuvered and fought over five counties in northern Virginia--Culpeper, Fauquier, Loudon, Prince William, and Fairfax counties. During those three months, the soldiers and officers in the two forces attempted to manipulate the local environment to their advantage. Local agriculture, water sources, and domesticated animals became part of the Union and Confederate efforts at foraging for supplies. Water, weather, and local geology prevented the soldiers from fully exploiting their local surroundings during the campaign in the summer of 1862. Previously environmental historians of the Civil War era have illustrated either the human dominance over the environment or natures power over human actions. An environmental history of the Second Manassas Campaign illustrates the cyclical relationship between the two. Human actors during the operations attempted to manipulate, control, and transform their local surroundings, but existing environmental components sculpted the actions of the soldiers and officers during the campaign. Although human behaviors in the summer of 1862 directly impacted the local landscape, those same environmental factors had its input on the operation.