MANASSAS, Va. — The Manassas National Battlefield Park features several sites that chronicle the events and actions of the Civil War in and around the Manassas area.
Portici was the plantation house of Francis Lewis and served as the Confederate headquarters during the First Battle of Manassas. The surrounding grounds were the site of the 1861-1862 winter encampment for a brigade of Confederate troops. On Aug. 30, 1862, during the Second Battle of Manassas, Union cavalry stopped the Confederate cavalry as they sought to cut off the Union army's line of retreat.
Located on "Hazel Plain," the two-and-a-half-story frame farmhouse of Benjamin Chinn and his family overlooked the Warrenton Turnpike and Young's Branch. During both battles of Manassas, the plantation was engulfed by war and witnessed some of the heaviest fighting.
In 1860, the crossroads hamlet of Sudley Springs consisted of fewer than a dozen households but featured a prosperous mill, a prominent church, and a hotel for visitors attracted to the mineral waters of a nearby spring. During the Second Battle of Manassas, on Aug. 29, 1862, Federal troops repeatedly attacked Stonewall Jackson's left flank in this area, and only darkness prevented a fatal collapse of the Confederates. Today, only the Sudley Church remains as a testament to times past.
