Review - "Opening Manassas: The Iron Brigade, Stonewall Jackson, and the Battle on Brawner’s Farm, August 28, 1862" by Herdegen & Backus

[Opening Manassas: The Iron Brigade, Stonewall Jackson, and the Battle on Brawner’s Farm, August 28, 1862 by Lance J. Herdegen and Bill Backus (Savas Beatie, 2025). Hardcover, 8 maps, photos, footnotes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:x,264/286. ISBN:978-1-61121-761-2. $32.95]

While no one has yet attempted to surpass John Hennessy's 1993 masterpiece Return to Bull Run: The Campaign and Battle of Second Manassas, smaller pieces of the campaign and battle have received quality standalone treatment. Noteworthy works of that type include Robert K. Krick's Cedar Mountain battle study, Scott Patchan's examination of James Longstreet's August 30 mass assault that secured Confederate victory at Second Manassas, and a number of book-length accounts of the Fitz John Porter controversy. Another prominent title to add to the list is Lance Herdegen and Bill Backus's Opening Manassas: The Iron Brigade, Stonewall Jackson, and the Battle on Brawner’s Farm, August 28, 1862.

In addition to its fresh description and reappraisal of the much smaller-scale, but nevertheless bitterly contested, fighting that directly preceded (and did much to shape) the following two days of major fighting at Second Manassas, the book also adopts a novel dual-author format, one that is described by the publisher who suggested it as a "fog of war" style of approach. In it, widely acknowledged Iron Brigade expert Lance Herdegen handles the Union side, and Bill Backus unveils the action from the opposing perspective of Stonewall Jackson's wing of Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. The chain of events examined in the book unfolds through alternating Union and Confederate chapters. The one-sided viewpoint and focus of each chapter is further shaped by the writer's interpretation of how much was known about the other side's movements and intentions at the time. The transition between chapters is less than smooth at times, with narrative and chronological continuity to some extent sacrificed in service to emphasizing the friction of war.

Understanding what had to happen to place elements of two Confederate divisions of Jackson's wing and a portion of Union general Rufus King's First Division/Third Corps together on Brawner's Farm requires a pretty heavy amount of background and context, and the reader is past the volume's midpoint before the August 28 clash itself begins in earnest. Taking the long view, Herdegen traces the full length of the Iron Brigade's journey from its western origins to the bitter struggle in Brawner's field. The brigade's unusual headgear and uniform, struggles with adapting to army discipline under the leadership of John Gibbon, the physical trials of the summer campaign, and mounting frustration over a lack of battle experience are all matters discussed at some length. Covering the background for the Confederate side of things, Backus ably traces Lee's increasingly desperate attempts to come to grips with, and quickly crush, John Pope's Army of Virginia before it could combine forces with the Army of the Potomac. Ultimately, that involved the high-risk detachment of Stonewall Jackson's wing of the Army of Northern Virginia for a drive deep into the enemy rear to sow chaos and create opportunity for Pope's defeat or destruction. A striking theme that emerges from the fog of war approach is just how much in the dark both sides were as to enemy locations and intentions. Indeed, the extent of mutual confusion that persisted over the period examined in the book is pretty remarkable considering the relative proximity of the opposing forces involved, and misuse of cavalry as a contributing factor is a good point raised by Backus.

Backus's overall assessment of Jackson as a general aligns with those who rate him at his best when conducting sweeping operational maneuvers and weakest when managing affairs at the tactical level. In terms of problematic leadership traits, Backus cites Jackson's legendary operational secrecy and his frequent issuing of orders that bypassed the normal chain of command as key flaws. Both of these, especially the former, are on prime display during the August period examined in the book. Indeed, the author's analysis of Jackson's decision-making at each stage of the operation heavily emphasizes the degree to which Jackson courted disaster through his own unique command style. Though his many points of criticism raise valid concerns about Jackson's leadership style and judgment, their sheer number, especially after factoring in those involving negative repercussions that might have happened but didn't, arguably threatens to overshadow the greater significance of what Jackson and his men actually achieved during these stages of the campaign. In contrast, Backus heaps superlatives upon division commander Richard Ewell, though, unlike how the Jackson critiques are handled, it's made much less clear in the text where the reasoning is coming from. Jackson's gravest mistake, in the author's view, was his abandoning possession of Thoroughfare Gap, though Backus mitigates some of that criticism by conceding that Jackson's prioritization of his wing's concentration over assigning strong units to rear area security had merits of its own and by noting that other mountain passes were available for reestablishing communications had things truly gone south for the Confederates.

During the Civil War, infantry lines of battle arrayed against each other in the open and at short range rarely traded volleys for more than a brief period of time before one side or the other brought the proceedings to a head by either charging the enemy line or ending the exchange through withdrawal. As traditionally understood, Brawner's Farm was different, a face to face firefight lasting upwards of an hour and a half, resulting in horrendous casualties for those involved, and this volume's microhistory of the battle fully explores that atypical reality. As explained in the text, the Confederates struggled that day to harness their superior numbers, a large part of that being attributed to terrain difficulties, key leadership losses, and the battle taking place very late in the day. On the Union side, Gibbon's brigade has always garnered the lion's share of the attention for its determined and costly stand, but Herdegen also duly credits Abner Doubleday's brigade for filling in a dangerous gap in the Union line at a critical moment when the Confederates of Lawton's Brigade were finally able to launch a charge against it (which was repulsed with heavy losses all around). Support for Gibbon from the rest of the division could have been better managed, but that is typically blamed on the temporary leadership void caused by General King's untimely epileptic episode. It was what happened after the battle that caused the most controversy. The decision to march King's division away from the battlefield was, in Herdegen's opinion, a "mistake" that "played a large role in the defeat of Pope's Army of Virginia in the next two days" (pg. 263), but the reasoning behind that damning assessment is left undeveloped. One might argue that falling back was well within military prudence given how exposed King's battered division would have been on the morrow.

As the book recounts at length, officer losses on the 28th were exceptionally high, but the Confederate leadership casualties in particular (two division commanders along with a great multitude of field grade and company officers spread across four brigades) cast a long shadow. In assessing the aftermath of Brawner's Farm, this study persuasively contends that the process of  junior officer attrition in the Army of Northern Virginia was already reaching damaging levels well before the war's midpoint.

Brawner's Farm was far more than an outpost battle or mere prelude to the main event, and, like David Powell and others have recently done in altering our conception of which events should be considered integral parts of the Battle of Chickamauga, books like this one clearly demonstrate that Second Manassas should be viewed as a three-day, rather than the traditionally understood two-day, battle. In addition to providing a thorough history of the fighting at Brawner's Farm, Opening Manassas offers Civil War readers compelling historiographical points of interest in regard to ongoing debates surrounding Stonewall Jackson's generalship and the early development of the Iron Brigade's distinguished combat reputation.