The captured documents confirmed Lee’s belief that Pope was too strong for frontal assaults. Lee could either retreat or advance, but if he withdrew, he jeopardized the Piedmont region and probably the Shenandoah Valley. If he waited, troops from McClellan would combine with Pope, giving the Federals a decisive edge in manpower. As Lee said later, “The disparity. . . between the contending forces rendered the risks unavoidable.” On the afternoon of the 24th, he directed Jackson to sever the Orange & Alexandria Railroad, Pope’s supply artery. Longstreet’s wing would hold the Federals in place along the Rappahannock.

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Jackson’s 23,000-man force started from Jeffersonton at first light on the 25th, marching through Amissville, across the Rappahannock beyond the Union right flank to near Salem in Upper Fauquier. The vaunted “foot cavalry” swiftly covered 25 miles. As they approached Salem, Jackson, standing on a large rock, quietly remarked to his staff, “Who could not conquer with such troops as these?”

The pace resumed again at dawn on the following morning: eastward from Salem, to The Plains, through Thoroughfare Gap to Haymarket, and on to Gainesville on the Warrenton Turnpike. Jackson pushed the column toward Bristoe Station on the railroad, arriving about sunset–50 miles since leaving Jeffersonton. Stuart’s cavalrymen overtook the infantry and halted along the tracks. After derailing a train, Jackson sent Brig. Gen. Isaac Trimble with two infantry regiments and some cavalry to secure Manassas Junction, Pope’s main supply depot.

Brigadier General William B. Taliaferro’s Stonewall Division and Powell Hill’s Light Division started for Manassas Junction on the morning of the 27th. When the lean, hungry graycoats arrived at the depot, they found a veritable cornucopia. One of the Southerners remembered that the warehouses contained “all the delicacies,” from lobster to oranges. They happily gorged themselves, carrying away what they did not devour.

Jackson’s first order at the junction was to break open hundreds of barrels of whiskey, wine and brandy, and dump the contents. “I shall never forget the scene,” admitted a Confederate. “Streams of spirits ran like water through the sands of Manassas and the soldiers on hands and knees drank it greedily from the ground.”

During the activities, a brigade of New Jersey troops approached from the north. Hill directed part of his division forward, and the Southerners repulsed the Federals. Ewell’s division arrived from Bristoe Station at sunset, and Jackson ordered a night march toward Groveton on the Warrenton Turnpike west of Bull Run Creek. There Jackson could cover the roadway, keeping open Aldie Gap in his rear until Lee and Longstreet reunited the army.

By midday on August 28, Jackson’s men had reached the Groveton area, filing behind a low ridge north of the turnpike. During the march, Hill’s division moved to Centreville before turning back toward Groveton. The soldiers lay down behind the ridge, rested and awaited further orders. One of them recalled that they were “packed [in there] like herring in a barrel.”

When Pope learned on the night of the 26th of Jackson’s march to Bristoe Station, he was exultant over the prospect of a divided Confederate army. The Union commander decided early the next morning to abandon the Rappahannock line, ordering a convergence of his corps on the isolated Jackson. His army had been augmented by the belated arrival of Burnside’s IX Corps under Maj. Gen. Jesse Reno, and the III and V Corps of the Army of the Potomac commanded by Maj. Gens. Samuel P. Heintzelman and Fitz-John Porter, respectively. Directing Banks’ corps to act as a rear guard, Pope hastened the other corps toward the Manassas Junction­Centreville area.

Throughout the 27th and 28th, the Federals shifted northeastward in search of the elusive Rebels. The weather was hot and dry, and the marchers suffered mightily. A Massachusetts officer complained that his men were “scorched by a noonday sun and almost stifled by dust, which lay ankle deep in the road, and sick at heart of General Pope and his strategy which he so bombastically told us was going to turn the tide of war in Virginia.”

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