Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Reveille in Washington 1860-65 by Reveille in Washington. Margaret Leech’s Reveille in Washington is more than a classic work of history: it is a piece of history in its own right. Leech was a fascinating woman and trailblazer: a 1915 graduate of Vassar, a devoted volunteer during the First World War, a New York magazine writer and participant in the famous Algonquin Table. A prolific historian, she was a woman with a remarkable affinity for Pulitzers: Not only did she win the Prize twice (the first woman ever to do so), but in 1928 she also married a Pulitzer, Ralph, publisher of the and son of the who founded the Prize. Reveille is the book that won Leech her first Pulitzer, and you can see why: It is a riveting history of the capital city at war, with a brilliant eye for every detail, from the methods of military government in the capital to the location of the brothels, from dance steps to labor strife, from the rise of a black middle class to fashions in catering. Leech’s book takes on additional power from the date of publication: 1941. We read Leech’s account of a capital transformed by war in the knowledge of the imminence of another war, and another transformation of America’s odd and unloved capital city. Reveille can be read as an extended footnote on that impromptu address of Abraham Lincoln’s I quoted in Bookshelf 54: What has occurred in this case must ever recur in similar cases. Human nature will not change. In any future great national trial, compared with the men of this, we shall have as weak and as strong, as silly and as wise, as bad and as good. Let us therefore study the incidents of this as philosophy to learn wisdom from, and none of them as wrongs to be revenged. Leech’s characters are just as Lincoln described them: weak and strong, silly and wise, bad and good. For every self-abnegating Clara Barton, there is a self-aggrandizing Joe Hooker; for every patriotic Edwin Stanton a treacherous Rose Greenhow. (Greenhow was a wealthy widow and popular hostess in the Washington of the 1850s. Her house stood about where the Hay-Adams hotel now stands — just off Lafayette Square, across the street from St. John’s Episcopal Church. Greenhow was no very great beauty, but she was a supremely gifted flatterer — a much more valuable attribute in Washington, then as now. According to Leech, Greenhow carried on flirtations, and probably much more than flirtations, with a number of important Republican leaders. One of them shared with her the Federal plan of march in advance of the Battle of Bull Run. Greenhow passed this information to the Confederate army, contributing to the first terrible Union defeat. She was detained as a spy, but treated remarkably leniently, possibly because of her sex, possibly because of her social standing … also possibly to shield her paramours.) The pompous, the corrupt, the vindictive, the incompetent, and more of the corrupt … these filled Civil War Washington — and indeed the Civil War White House. The White House head gardener was on the take, the guest rooms were filled with secessionist sympathizers, and the first lady was a compulsive shopper who failed to pay her bills. Gambling, whoring, drinking, opportunism, hysteria are not shown in the white marble monuments with which we commemorate the generation that saved the Union and overthrew slavery. Their latter-day equivalents in the “greatest generation” are likewise fading out of memory. This forgetfulness lends glory to the past — but often betrays us into error in the present. I remember reading some time ago a blogpost — I forget exactly where and cannot recover the cite — about some veterans of World War II intelligence-gathering who solemnly insisted that they never, ever resorted to rough methods. Not them! They were too fine and high-minded. Then I read in Max Hastings about an interrogation that went as follows: In the terrible winter battles of 1944-45, six captured German officers are led into a little house in eastern France. One chair was placed in the center of the main room. The first is seated in the chair. He is asked: “How many men and guns do you have in the town up ahead?” The German refuses to answer. His American interrogator does not repeat the question. He pulls out his pistol, shoots the officer in the head, and pushes the body to the floor. The next officer is seated in the same chair. “How many men and guns?” He talked. The evils of the past do not excuse the evils of the present. But accurate knowledge can at least protect us from naivety, impossible standards, and equally impossible ancestor-worship. Margaret Leech’s classic history is as fresh and lively today as in 1941 — and the shadows of the past deepen the interest of a book about a capital waging one desperate war, written on the eve of another, and read by this reader in the midst of a third. "Reveille in Washington": The city that shaped the Civil War. Margaret Leech's masterpiece explores the ways Washington's instability affected military strategy. By Katherine A. Powers. Published June 21, 2011 12:30AM (EDT) Shares. This year, as you know, marks the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War. Setting aside the brutal, drawn-out war waged against Native Americans, it was the most destructive conflict in American history. Over 625,000 soldiers, Union and Confederate, died through combat, disease, or mischance -- 100,0000 more Americans were killed in the War Between the States than in World Wars I and II combined. This four- year internecine struggle has been examined as history from countless angles, in its every aspect, and with the most diverse intent. And, of course, novels about it are legion: Margaret Mitchell's "Gone With the Wind" is certainly the most famous, but, by my lights, Gore Vidal's "Lincoln" is the greatest. Now, having just read Margaret Leech's 1941 Pulitzer Prize-winning "Reveille in Washington: 1860-1865," it does not surprise me to learn (from James M. McPherson's fine introduction in a new edition from New York Review Books) that Vidal drew on Leech's brilliant history in writing his splendid novel. In addition to displaying a deep admiration for Lincoln and his complex nature, the two writers share a sardonic sensibility that expresses itself in a dark wit and festive appreciation of character grown rotten with power, of vanity, self-delusion, and folly -- all traits very much in evidence in Washington during the bungle and stall that marked much of the Union's campaign against the Confederacy. Leech gives us Washington's Civil War, showing both the profound ways the town changed during the course of the conflict and, most crucially, how its ever-precarious state -- internally and externally -- affected the war's conduct. In 1861, Washington was unfinished, filthy, and foul smelling. In its six decades as the nation's capital, only half a dozen official government buildings had been built; and they were separated by vast stretches of mire. The dome of the Capitol was represented by scaffolding, and the vista from that building down Pennsylvania Avenue ended in a red-brick barn. Flocks of geese joined congressmen on the thoroughfares, and hogs congregated on Capitol Hill and in Judiciary Square. "It was a Southern town," Leech writes, "without the picturesqueness, but with the indolence, the disorder and the want of sanitation." As Lincoln took office, Southern states continued to secede; when war broke out, the sympathy of a great and unknown number of Washington's inhabitants lay with the Confederacy. Rumors of conspiracy abounded, spies were busy as termites, and such unsavory characters as secessionist Baltimore "plug-uglies" roistered into town. The appalling prospect of the Union capital falling into Confederate hands brought military relief from the North, first in the glorious shape of "the kid-glove" 7th Regiment of the New York Militia. On their arrival, Leech observes with characteristic tartness, "the young gentlemen had had several days' experience of the inconvenience of war . The sandwiches prepared for them under the supervision of Delmonico, had long ago been eaten; and they had had to leave at Annapolis a thousand velvet-covered camp stools." Still: "They had come to save the capital, and were proudly aware of their own pluck and perseverance." In the words of one, "We all feel somewhat as Mr. Ceasar Augustus must have felt when he had crossed the Rubicon." Leech's description of the high spirits, color, and dash of those early volunteer regiments in all their exotic plumage takes on a hectic sparkle against the bleakness and misery we know is to come. As the wounded and captured began to flow into Washington from bloody and futile encounters with Confederate forces, public buildings not already transformed into barracks became prisons and hospitals. In the Patent Office, "[l]ike some new exhibit of ghastliness, waxy faces lay in rows between the shining glass cabinets, filled with curiosities, foreign presents and models of inventions. The nurses heels clicked on the marble floor, and all over lay the heavy smell of putrefaction and death." The city became crowded not only with troops, hale and convalescent, but with Confederate deserters, prisoners of war, quacks, prostitutes, gamblers, place seekers, profiteers, souvenir hunters, war correspondents, closet secessionists, abolitionists, fugitive slaves or "contraband," and the laborers who continued throughout the war to work on finishing government buildings and "Armed Freedom," the bronze statue destined for the Capitol dome. This teeming Washington, described in all its wonderful, eccentric detail, provides the perspective from which Leech examines the overall pursuit of the war, among whose elements were the ineptness, intransigence, and obstructive jealousies of many of the Union generals. There is a good deal of entertaining malice in her descriptions of these men, beginning with the superannuated gourmand General Winfield Scott: "He had always been vain, pompous, exacting, jealous and high-tempered. Now . his irascibility had dwindled to irritation, and his imperiousness to petulance. His love of flattery had grown . While taking a footbath, he would call on his military secretary to remark the fairness of his limbs." Needless to say, Scott's successor, George McClellan, fares no better. We see the "Young Napoleon" dashing about Washington on his horse "in clouds of dust or fountains of mud," idolized by soldiers, by civilians, and, not least, by himself. Alas, as Leech wryly observes, the "enemy was the one blot on McClellan's achievement." He would not engage it. The book is richly supplied with character sketches of military and political figures, including an appreciative and subtle portrayal of Lincoln and a devastating one of his poor, unhinged wife. And there are also cameos of well-known civilians: Frederick Law Olmsted pursuing the work of the Sanitary Commission; Andrew Carnegie supervising telegraph lines and rail transport; the "portly, graying and quietly dandified" William Howard Russell reporting for the London Times; "shy little spinster" Clara Barton organizing supplies and succoring the wounded -- as, too, were nurse volunteers Walt Whitman and Louisa May Alcott, the latter momentarily taken aback by being told to give a soldier a sponge bath. This is a character-driven history and a chronicle of a city, but it is, also, a deft review of military strategy and of political maneuvering between and within political parties. It is, too, a fast-paced account of the developing exigencies that resulted in, among other things, the suspension of habeas corpus, the levying of income tax, conscription, and, most momentously, in the emancipation of slaves, first in Washington and then universally. Leech also traces minutely the rackety, hate-laced conspiracy that led ultimately to Lincoln's assassination. The book, which begins in a rather merry, ironical vein, ends in sorrow and regret and with a certain fatalistic mordancy: Outside Washington: "Rich with the wastage of armies, the perennial fields were green. On the Capitol dome, Armed Freedom rested on her sheathed sword." Reveille in Washington, 1860-1865 (1941) Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. I picked up this book in a used bookstore, with no previous knowledge of it. What a serendipitous choice! I thoroughly enjoyed this book as a portrait of Washington in the 1860s. The author's choice of words is a bit out of kilter with the words we would use today (her terms of reference to African Americans would not be today's choice) but her description of the electrifying impact of the Emancipation Proclamation could have been written yesterday. Hats off to Margaret Leech for a well-written and engaging book. ( ) Writing 76 years later, Margaret Leech, a Pulitzer-Prize winning historian (she married Pulitzer) describes Washington, D.C. during the American Civil War, 1860-1865. We listen to her voice as many years again after the 1941 publication. Provides a lot of material on Abraham Lincoln and his wife, along with Rose Greenhow, the Confederate spy whose work was helpful to the Southern forces winning the Battle of Bull Run, the War's first significant engagement. But the city of Washington, its conditions and people, are the star of her detailed descriptions drawn from contemporary accounts, news articles, and scholarly studies. The Bibliography is impressive, as well as the Index and Bibliographical section. This is not dull "history". It is as suspenseful, ironic, and colorful as any biography of a city I have read. ( ) Reveille in Washington : 1860-1865. 1860: The American capital is sprawling, fractured, squalid, colored by patriotism and treason, and deeply divided along the political lines that will soon embroil the nation in bloody conflict. Chaotic and corrupt, the young city is populated by bellicose congressmen, Confederate conspirators, and enterprising prostitutes. Soldiers of a volunteer army swing from the dome of the Capitol, assassins stalk the avenues, and Abraham Lincoln struggles to justify his presidency as the Union heads to war. Reveille in Washington focuses on the everyday politics and preoccupations of Washington during the Civil War. From the stench of corpse- littered streets to the plunging lace on Mary Lincoln’s evening gowns, Margaret Leech illuminates the city and its familiar figures—among them Abraham Lincoln, , Robert E. Lee, William Seward, and Mary Surratt—in intimate and fascinating detail. Leech’s book remains widely recognized as both an impressive feat of scholarship and an uncommonly engrossing work of history. Отзывы - Написать отзыв. LibraryThing Review. I picked up this book in a used bookstore, with no previous knowledge of it. What a serendipitous choice! I thoroughly enjoyed this book as a portrait of Washington in the 1860s. The author's choice . Читать весь отзыв. LibraryThing Review. This is a thorough history of the District of Columbia during the Civil War years. Although it generally kept my interest, I read it over a period of time while reading other books. It was difficult to read straight through perhaps since it was a vast survey of persons and material. Читать весь отзыв. Избранные страницы. Содержание. Другие издания - Просмотреть все. Часто встречающиеся слова и выражения. Об авторе (2011) Margaret Leech (1893–1974) was an American novelist, biographer, and historian. She was the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for History and one of only two people to win it twice, first in 1942 for Reveille in Washington and again in 1960 for In the Days of McKinley (for which she also won the Bancroft Prize). Leech was born in Newburgh, New York, and graduated from in 1915. She then moved to , where she found work in the advertising and publicity departments of Condé Nast. Following World War I, she served on the American Committee for Devastated France and took up journalism and fiction, eventually publishing three novels, The Back of the Book (1924), Tin Wedding (1926), and The Feathered Nest (1928), before turning to history. A member of the celebrated Algonquin Round Table, where she was known for her sharp tongue, she collaborated with Heywood Broun on a biography of Anthony Comstock (1927) and with Beatrice Kaufman on a play, Divided by Three (1934). In 1928 Leech married Ralph Pulitzer, editor and publisher of The New York World. At the time of her death Leech had begun work on a new history, The Garfield Orbit . Completed by Harry J. Brown, the book appeared in 1978. James M. Mcpherson was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1989 for Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era . Among his other books are For Cause and Comrades , Drawn with the Sword , What They Fought For , Gettysburg , and Fields of Fury . A professor at Princeton University, he lives in Princeton, New Jersey. Reveille in Washington, 1860-1865. I picked up this book in a used bookstore, with no previous knowledge of it. What a serendipitous choice! I thoroughly enjoyed this book as a portrait of Washington in the 1860s. The author's choice . Читать весь отзыв. LibraryThing Review. This is a thorough history of the District of Columbia during the Civil War years. Although it generally kept my interest, I read it over a period of time while reading other books. It was difficult to read straight through perhaps since it was a vast survey of persons and material. Читать весь отзыв.