Battles of Manassas • Tour the Battlefield • Monuments • Facts • The Armies
The 2nd Wisconsin Infantry trailside marker is on the Brawner Farm loop trail at Stop One on the Manassas Battlefield Driving Tour. The regiment lost 298 men killed and wounded out of 500 men on the field in a brutal stand-up firefight with the Confederate Stonewall Brigade. Colonel Edgar O’Connor was mortally wounded. Major Allen was hit twice but stayed on the field.
From the trailside marker:
August 28, 1862
7:00 p.m.
4th Brigade (Gibbon), First Division (King)
Third Corps (McDowell), Army of Virginia, USA
2nd Wisconsin Infantry
Col. Edgar O’Conner
“Rebel infantry poured from the woods by the thousands. We were precisely on the brow of the hill in an open field. For an hour and fifteen minutes the most terrific fire imaginable was kept up; the hill top, the valley, and the wooded side of the hill beyond was a continuous sheet of flame. Darkness came on, the stars came out, and still the bullets filled the air.”
-Pvt. Nathaniel Rollins
USA Second Battle of Manassas
See more on the history of the 2nd Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry Regiment in the Civil War.