But Oh, Did You See All the Dead of Manassas?
On preservation, conservation, and the living history of nature and landscapes
On July 18, 1861, approximately 31,000 Union soldiers were gathered in Centreville, Virginia — 20 miles outside Washington, DC — awaiting orders. The Civil War had commenced only a few months earlier as Confederate forces attacked Fort Sumter in South Carolina. Now, the American army under President Lincoln had decided to press southward from the nation’s capital city, which had recently become a border town.
The Confederate Army had been reportedly stationed at Bull Run, a creek running north-south just east of the towns of Manassas and Groveton in Virginia, separating them from Centreville. And many in Washington dreamed of a swift march toward Richmond to seize the southern nexus of power and end the war — so onwards, the boys in blue went, to the south.
On the morning of July 21, Union soldiers began to cross Bull Run to the north of the rebel army, attempting to catch them on the far left flank of their position. As they did, they walked through a landscape of farms, forests, and hills, dotted by occasional houses. This landscape would play a key role in the battle’s progression.
One of the Union army’s branches emerged out of the woods and onto the Dogan Ridge, a long and narrow hill behind the Confederate front line covered in fields. From this position, they pushed the Southern soldiers into a retreat across a creek to the south.
By midday, the battle was in full gear, and Union soldiers had nearly surrounded the Confederates and were squeezing them back toward Bull Run — and closer to Washington. But before they could push the Southerners all the way to the river, they needed to get past Henry Hill. The Union soldiers approaching were walking through agricultural fields, open and grassy. At the top of the hill was a forest, however, and on the edge of that forest blocking their way, was Confederate General Thomas Jackson.
As the American army pushed onward, Jackson held his brigade firm at the edge of the woods on Henry Hill. The Union set up two rows of cannons at the hill and attempted to break the southern lines but could not do so — and Jackson’s men would not budge, leading to his infamous nickname of “Stonewall” Jackson.
Eventually, the South captured the cannons and by 4 PM, the Union army had fled in retreat back to the woods around Bull Run, failing at their initial attempt to break the Southern forces. All in all, more than 800 soldiers were killed (plus another 1,200 missing), and more than 2,500 men were injured. The war was only beginning.
A few hundred years earlier, the hills and creeks around Manassas may not have looked too much different. Sure, there were no railroads crisscrossing the landscape, but it’s likely that northern Virginia — like much of the mid-Atlantic coast — was already a mosaic of forests and open prairies. The grasslands were created by occasional wildfires, both natural (like from a lightning strike) and human-caused, as many Native Americans would use fire to help shape the landscape.
After European colonization, the land changed drastically and started to lose those regular fires. But in many places, a general mosaic of grasslands and forests remained, as woods were chopped down to make way for fields.
Throughout this period, the landscape was likely home to many birds who enjoy such a habitat — in particular, the eastern meadowlark and the grasshopper sparrow. Both species evolved to prefer low, open, and grassy areas like prairies and grasslands, but can often be found on cultivated farms and hayfields, too, trilling in the early morning light. And let me tell you: if you have never been blessed enough to hear the watery song of a meadowlark as the newly risen sun casts long shadows in tall grass on a chilly morning — boy, have you been missing out.
For hundreds (thousands, millions, etc) of years, these birds were quite happy to take advantage of the continent’s open space in all its forms. But by the 20th century, the landscape of the East Coast began to change more substantially, according to a recent paper published in the journal Wildlife Management. Forests started to regrow, farms started focusing more on row crops than pasture, and — perhaps most intensely — the cities started to sprawl.
Today, the Manassas area is less a mosaic of forests and fields and more a mosaic of highways and developments. Bolstered by the local economy in the nation’s capital, the city and its neighboring towns like Centreville, Gainesville, and Warrenton have grown into genuine exurbs and commuter towns, with many a strip mall to boot. For three years, I lived in Washington but commuted out to Warrenton every weekday for work — passing both forest patches and office parks, farms and parking lots. I usually got on the interstate at Gainesville, and within a few minutes would zip past the bloody fields of Manassas to the north, driving right over Bull Run after passing the rest stop.
These changes the grassland birds could not abide, and populations of both eastern meadowlarks and grasshopper sparrows have declined precipitously in the past few decades in much of the East.
But there is one place, in particular, amid the bustle of northern Virginia, that hasn’t changed much in the past 160 years: the fields of Manassas. The battlefields are now federal property and managed by the National Parks Service — with the mandate to keep them very much a relic of what the landscape looked like in the 1860s. As a result, while cars may now fly down the Warrenton Turnpike instead of marching soldiers, the battle's landscape is still much the same.
There are still woods by Bull Run where the Union army crossed the waters to attack the Confederates’ northern flank. Dogan Ridge is still open fields that lay mostly unbroken to the southeast until you hit Henry Hill — where there is still a forest edge, just as there was when Stonewall Jackson got his name.
And as a result, there are still meadowlarks and grasshopper sparrows, too. The new paper in Wildlife Management reiterated what local wildlife biologists have known for years — that this landscape is home to steady populations of both bird species. In addition, both species also seem to live at other nearby battlefields like Antietam.
Here, the 1860s are still alive in more ways than one.
What drives us to conserve landscapes, to preserve them in time?
For wildlife, that answer may be obvious — we wish to avoid extinction. We preserve a landscape to keep the right combination of habitat features available for these animals, so that they may continue to live on the land.
For battlefields, that answer may be more nebulous. Maybe we want to hold onto the landscape as a slice of history, a relic preserved in stasis as a landscape museum to a distant era. Just as we hold on to and conserve artifacts from the war, so too are we holding onto the artifact of the land, preventing it from falling prey to the passage of time that would likely have tipped it into developments or strip malls.
But what does a relic landscape hold for us, beyond sentimental or educational value? Is the eastern meadowlark really a relic of the past, or is it a living animal? Where would it live if we did not choose to remember the Battle of Bull Run?
And what about the things we do not remember about the battle — like the names and stories of every man who died that day? What about the things that go unsaid in the story of Bull Run — like the fact that Stonewall Jackson, despite having a badass nickname, was fighting for the disgusting cause of slavery? Some aspects of the landscape have not only remembered the people who shaped that bloody battle, but honored them. Warrenton Turnpike itself, where Union soldiers marched that day, was later renamed “Lee Highway,” after that other Confederate leader.
Thirteen months after the Battle of Bull Run pushed the Civil War into overdrive, Union and Confederate forces met again on these fields and forests. This time, the battle was even bloodier — more than 2,500 dead — and again the South would emerge victorious. The Americans would not start to win the war until a year later when they held off the invading rebels at Gettysburg (a couple of months after Stonewall Jackson had been killed by friendly fire), but the war would not be over for almost three more years.
The morning after the carnage, it is to be sure, an eastern meadowlark likely sang from his perch above the fields of death, just as it did every morning.
This morning, I received some news about birds. The American Ornithological Society has decided to rename bird species that are named after humans, beginning with a few dozen species native to the US and Canada. This comes after years of organizing and pressure, driven in large part by the fact that many of the humans these birds were named after did some horrible things — especially when it came to supporting slavery.
The McCown’s Longspur also likes to live in grasslands, but mostly in the middle of the continent. It was named in honor of John McCown, an officer in the US Army who captured the individual bird that ornithologists used to classify the species. The bird was named as such in 1851, but a decade later McCown would no longer be in the US Army, as he decided to join the Confederates. His name would remain on the bird until 2020 when the AOS renamed it the “Thick-billed Longspur” as a result of McCown’s Confederate associations.
Now, other birds named after slavery defenders — like John James Audubon himself — will also be renamed. As will all birds named after all people, creating a universal system of, as one activist slogan has called for, “bird names for birds.” Wilson’s warbler, Cooper’s Hawk, and Anna’s hummingbird are all to be renamed. The possibilities should be fun — Anna’s hummingbird boasts a gorgeous pink throat and lives all over the West Coast. There’s already a ruby-throated hummingbird, so maybe the bird will be named the “Western jewel hummingbird,” to honor its pink hue. Maybe the Cooper’s hawk will become the “blue raptor,” in honor of its blue-ish back, or maybe the “backyard hawk,” to recognize how common it is in urban areas.
These names won’t change the birds. They won’t change where they live, how threatened they are with extinction, or whether or not a birder has one on her life list. But they will have new names because of a conscious choice these scientists are making in what to honor and how to honor it. Bird names for birds — the birds will be named not after something among us humans, something about who found it or who we’ve chosen to remember, but about their life history, their display of feathers, their behavior, their being.
Today, at the Manassas National Battlefield Park, you can stand on the edge of the forest where Stonewall Jackson fired upon the Union soldiers and look out on a landscape preserved in time. You can learn the history of the war, you can hike the fields and forests, and if you bring a pair of binoculars, you can spot some eastern meadowlarks and grasshopper sparrows.
But the road that cuts through it, once known as the Warrenton Turnpike and later as Lee Highway, is now simply known as “Route 29.”