Plate 9. Ruins at Manassas
date: label: date made
content: 1862-03
name: label: maker
content: Gardner, Alexander
notes: label: Description
content: Text and photograph from <i>Gardner's Photographic Sketchbook of the War</i>, Vol. II. Negative by Barnard & Gibson, text and positive by Alexander Gardner.
label: Description
content: Early in March, 1862, the rebel army, under Gen. Johnson, evacuated Centreville and Manassas, (their Northern line,) and commenced a retreat towards Richmond. It was orderly and well conducted for several days, but as the last trains were leaving, some of the soldiers fired a bridge south of the junction, supposing that all the trains had gone. Two, however, had not left, and these were at once fired, together with the surrounding buildings, used by the Railroad Company for depot, machine and repair shops, &c. Everything was destroyed, except half a dozen cars, which contained flour and some camp equipage of a South Carolina Brigade, and which for some reason escaped the conflagration. The old wooden turn-table was uninjured, and is a fair sample of the old fashioned equipage of the Orange and Alexandria Road, at that period. A few mud huts, and about fifty broken down wagons, and the usual debris of a winter's camp, were the sole remnants of the rebel army, which, like the Arabs, had folded its tents, and silently stolen away. Manassas Junction was but a level plain, as seen by the photograph, and with neither natural or artificial works of any strength, the fortifications at that time consisting only of rude mud banks.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
place: label: place made
content: United States: Virginia, Manassas
topic: label: related event
content: Civil War
setName: label: See more items in
content: Work and Industry: Photographic History
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content: Gardner's Sketchbook
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content: Military
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content: Engineering, Building, and Architecture
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content: Photography
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content: Transportation
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: 1986.0711.0334.09
label: accession number
content: 1986.0711
label: catalog number
content: 1986.0711.0334.09
objectType: label: Object Name
content: albumen photograph
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: paper (overall material)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 6 3/4 in x 8 15/16 in; 17.145 cm x 22.64842 cm