"Reveille in Washington: 1860-1865" by Margaret Leech, with three sections of monochrome plates, and endpaper maps of the city, published by Harper & Brothers, First Edition, early printing with Harper code I-Q [September 1941] on the copyright page. This work was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for History in 1942.

Hard boards, original publisher's dark blue cloth with a red frame on the front board and gold lettering on spine; [some surface wear- mostly spine, some shelf wear]; 6.1/2" x 9.1/2"; endpapers are maps; small label with names and dates + a vintage picture of Washington on the verso of the front endpaper [see photo], stain and thin with a small hole on the half-title page [see photo]; 482 pages + colophon + three blocks of photographs on glossy paper, very good condition.

Washington D.C. during the U.S. Civil War- The city was transformed into a sort of army camp, with troops bivouaced wherever space could be found: in the Capitol rotunda, even in the corridors of the U.S. Patent Office.

This book is both- an interesting story and an historical documentary. It is the time of Abraham Lincoln on the verge of Civil War. The title "Reveille in Washington" refers to the five-year transition, or awakening, from peace to war and America's awakening from a fragmented 'Union' to a modern and united nation.

"Washington was built on a swamp. Things 'got worse before they got better.' First, in come the soldiers, with prostitutes, gamblers, and liquor vendors until the 1863 backlash to eradicate corruption and vice, and then came "the huge expansion of the civil service necessary to mobilize the war effort" that leads to the need for housing, services, and a city plan. This book covers the beginning of this change, the first steps in the need for order from chaos.

""Leech wrote and published the book just before WWII transformed a rather provincial capital city (aptly described by JFK as "a city of Southern efficiency and Northern charm") into a world capital. As the book opens, Washington, D.C. barely qualified as a city, let alone a nation's proud capital. As the Civil War began there was no dome on the Capitol and the Washington Monument was not much more than a pile of granite. The streets were dirty and unkempt, open drainage ditches carried raw sewage across most of the avenues, and the town was filled with bawdy houses and transients. The book highlights not just the progress of the war but also the transformation of the city into a true national Capital." [a review]

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