Pope, thinking that Jackson would remain at Manassas, wrote McDowell on the 27th, "If you will march promptly and rapidly at the earliest dawn upon Manassas Junction, we shall bag the whole crowd." Jackson, however, was too active an antagonist "to bag" on demand. Burning all the captured stores that his army could not use, he withdrew from Manassas with the celerity and secrecy that marked all his independent actions, and took position north of the Warrenton turnpike, on the battlefield of First Manassas. Pope spent all the 28th in a search for his missing foe. About sunset that night, Jackson disclosed himself by fiercely striking, at Groveton, the flank of King’s division of McDowell’s corps while on its march to Centreville, where Pope then thought Jackson was. This attack was made by the divisions of Ewell and Taliaferro. It was gallantly met by Gibbon and Doubleday, both fine soldiers, and lasted until 9 o clock. The opposing forces fought, as Gibbon states, at a distance of 75 yards, and the engagement was a most sanguinary one. Trimble s brigade, containing the Twenty-first North Carolina and Wharton s battalion, took a conspicuous part, and met with a brigade loss of 310 men. The loss in the North Carolina commands was 26 killed and 37 wounded. Among the killed was Lieut.-Col. Saunders Fulton, commanding the Twenty-first, who had greatly distinguished himself by coolness and daring.
The next day began the two days of desperate fighting at Second Manassas, or Bull Run. North Carolina had eleven regiments and one battalion of infantry and two batteries of artillery engaged in these battles: In Law’s brigade was the Sixth regiment, Maj. R. F. Webb; in Trimble’s, the Twenty-first and First battalion; in Branch s brigade, the Seventh, Capt R. B. MacRae; the Eighteenth, Lieutenant-Colonel Purdie; the Twenty-eighth, Col. J. H. Lane; the Thirty-third, Lieut.-Col. R. F. Hoke, and the Thirty-seventh, Lieut-Col. W. M. Barbour; in Pender’s brigade, the Sixteenth, Capt. L. W.
