Last updated: January 30, 2023
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Battle of Manassas Gap (Wapping Heights)
Following the Battle of Gettysburg, Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s battered but resilient army retreated across the Potomac River, then back into Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. U.S. General George G. Meade’s army crossed further east in pursuit, marching south on the eastern side of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Towards late July 1863, Meade saw a chance to cut off Lee’s retreat near Front Royal. This attempt would result in the Battle of Manassas Gap (or Wapping Heights) on July 23.
Confederate Defense at Manassas Gap
As Lee’s much depleted army marched south, through Front Royal into the Luray Valley, Confederate forces guarded the various Blue Ridge gaps, preventing Meade’s army from interfering with the Southern withdrawal. But on July 23, 1863, following Meade’s orders, new 3rd Corps commander General William H. French, who had replaced the badly wounded General Daniel Sickles, sent his 2nd Division, now under General Henry Prince, into Manassas Gap, in an attempt to cut off the enemy retreat. Leading Prince’s division was the Excelsior Brigade, New Yorkers now commanded by General Francis B. Spinola.
Guarding Manassas Gap that morning was Colonel E.J. Walker’s Georgia brigade, formerly commanded by General Ambrose Wright, and around 9 a.m., as the New Yorkers advanced west towards the gap, Walker positioned his men in defensive positions on the high ground on both sides of the gap. The Manassas Gap Railroad ran through the gap.
Finding the Confederates defending the gap, French didn’t force the issue. “About 11 a.m. the enemy appeared in the valley in our front in force,” Captain C.H. Andrews of the 3rd Georgia wrote later. Instead of then testing the Confederate line, French delayed several hours, allowing more of Lee’s army to continue its withdrawal south.
Captain Andrews called for help, but Confederate reinforcements wouldn’t arrive in time. “The enemy’s advance was very determined from the first,” he reported, “and after hard fighting, forced the left and center of our line to retire.”
By 4 p.m., with the gap now in Federal hands, French hesitated again, waiting nearly an hour before ordering Spinola to continue his attack. “We were put in line of battle and there told what we had to do,” Private James Dean, 72nd New York, remembered. “...The word was given to advance.”
“With a yell that would have done credit to a band of demons, our boys sprang to their feet and rushed the foe,” an officer in the 72nd New York wrote later. General Spinola, riding in front of his men, encouraged them, yelling: “Now boys of the Excelsior Brigade, give them hell!”
The New Yorkers swarmed over the Confederate earthworks, freely using the bayonet. “We resisted them to the utmost of human capacity,” Captain Andrews recalled, “’till our ammunition was exhausted, and, to enable us to fight at all, the ammunition was taken from the killed and wounded and distributed.”
Pursuing the Georgians, Spinola’s New Yorkers came on another Confederate line, this one held by General Edward O’Neal’s Alabamians, part of General Robert Rodes’s division. Here Spinola was wounded, and the Federal attack began to falter. “The first and second heights were carried in the face of a severe fire,” the 72nd New York after-action report read, “...the men, who were now completely exhausted, were ordered to hold the position.”
General Prince brought up the rest of his division, but with darkness falling, the fighting died down. The Federals prepared to continue their push the next morning, but they wouldn’t find any Confederates there. “After dark. under orders from General Ewell, we commenced our march through Front Royal,” Captain Andrews wrote. They then crossed the Shenandoah River, the pontoon bridges were pulled up, and the retreat into the Luray Valley proceeded as planned.
Meade’s attempt to cut off Lee’s retreat had failed, mainly the result of tentativeness of Generals French and Prince. Confederate casualties amounted to about 170, while Federal losses probably reached 130. The next day, July 24, 1863, Meade withdrew from Manassas Gap, resumed his march south to the Rappahannock River. Lee continued his retreat, south through the Luray Valley, then east through several of the Blue Ridge gaps, and the war would go on for nearly two more years.