On Saturday, people again sought out the fields around Manassas,
searching for insight into the bloody Civil War battle and
marking its sesquicentennial. The battle from Aug. 28 to 30,
1862, was spread over the same ground as a major clash a year
earlier. The second was much deadlier, although both were
triumphs for the Confederacy. The annals of the Civil War
contain any number of major turning points, conflicts with bold-
faced names such as Shiloh, Antietam and Gettysburg. But it was
Second Bull Run — or Second Manassas, as the battle came to be
known in the South — that sparked the events that led several
weeks later to the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. Last
year’s commemoration of the First Battle of Bull Run featured
thousands of spectators and reenactors who perspired through
soaring temperatures on a hot day in July. Saturday’s events,
under cloudy skies, were much more low-key. There was no full-
scale reenactment of the battle, but reenactors participated in
an artillery demonstration and oth