While it is impossible to re-create the tumultuous Washington DC of the Civil War, Civil War Washington sets out to examine the nation’s capital during the Civil War along with the digital platform (civilwardc.org) that reimagines it during those turbulent years. Among the many topics covered in the volume is the federal government’s experiment in compensated emancipation, which went into effect when all of the capital’s slaves were freed in April 1862. Another essay explores the city’s place as a major center of military hospitals, patients, and medical administration. Other contributors reflect on literature and the war, particularly on the poetry published in hospital newspapers and Walt Whitman’s formative experiences with the city and its wounded. The digital project associated with this book offers a virtual examination of the nation’s capital from multiple perspectives. Through a collection of datasets, visual works, texts, and maps, the digital project offers a case study of the social, political, cultural, and scientific transitions provoked or accelerated by the Civil War. The book also provides insights into the complex and ever-shifting nature of ongoing digital projects while encouraging others to develop their own interpretations and participate in the larger endeavor of digital history.

An in-depth account of the Civil War people and events that left their mark on the city at the heart of the Union, shaping its historic legacy. When the first shots of the Civil War were fired in 1861, Washington, DC, was a small, essentially Southern city. The capital rapidly transformed as it prepared for invasion—army camps sprung up in Foggy Bottom, the Navy Yard on Anacostia was a beehive of activity, and even the Capitol was pressed into service as a barracks. Local citizens and government officials struggled to accommodate the fugitive slaves and troops that crowded into the city. From the story of one of the first African American army surgeons, Dr. Alexander Augusta to the tireless efforts of Clara Barton, historian Lucinda Prout Janke renders an intimate portrait of a community on the front lines of war. Join Janke as she guides readers through the changing landscape of a capital besieged. Includes photos!

Washington Roebling is well known as the man who supervised construction of the Brooklyn Bridge. His path to overseeing that monumental task began during the Civil War. In addition to his brave, dramatic actions at Gettysburg, his Civil War service was remarkable: artilleryman, bridge builder, scout, balloonist, mapmaker, engineer, and staff officer. His story reveals much about Gettysburg but also about Civil War intelligence and engineering and the politics and infighting within the Army of the Potomac’s high command. Roebling’s service—leadership, engineering, decision-making, and managing personalities and politics—prepared him well for overseeing the Brooklyn Bridge.

In 1872, just seven years after his emancipation, a thirty-four-year-old former slave named John Washington penned the story of his life, calling it "Memorys of the Past." One hundred and twenty years later, in the early 1990s, historian Crandall Shifflett stumbled upon Washington's forgotten manuscript at the Library of Congress while researching Civil War Fredericksburg. Over the ensuing decade, Shifflett sought to learn more about this Virginia slave and the people and events he so vividly portrays. John Washington's Civil War presents this remarkable slave narrative in its entirety, together with Shifflett's detailed annotations on the life-changing events Washington records. While joining the canon of better-known slave narratives by Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, and Solomon Northup, Washington's account illuminates a far different world. The son of a slave woman and an unknown white man, Washington never lived outside the seventy-five-mile radius that included Richmond and Fredericksburg, until his emancipation. His narrative spans his experiences as a household slave, a laborer in the Fredericksburg tobacco factory, and a hotel servant on the eve of the Civil War. He also tells of his bold venture across Union lines and his experiences as a slave under Union officers. Washington's recollections allow for a singular look at the more personal aspects of slave life. Forced attendance at the slaveowner's church, much-anticipated gatherings of neighboring slaves at harvesttime, even a brief episode of courtship among slaves are among the events described in this remarkable narrative. On a broader scale, Washington was a witness to key moments of the Civil War, and his chronicle includes his thoughts about the wider political turmoil surrounding him, including his dramatic account of watching the Union Army mass around Fredericksburg as it prepared to invade the town. An excellent introduction and expert annotations by Shifflett reconstruct Washington's life through his death in 1918 and provide informative historical background and context to Washington's recollections. An unprecedented window into the life of a Virginia bondsman, John Washington's Civil Warcommunicates with real urgency what it meant to be a slave during a period of extreme crisis that sounded the notes of freedom for some and the end of a way of life for others.

The stirring history of a president and a capital city on the front lines of war and freedom. In the late 1840s, Representative Abraham Lincoln resided at Mrs. Sprigg’s boardinghouse on Capitol Hill. Known as Abolition House, Mrs. Sprigg’s hosted lively dinner-table debates of antislavery politics by the congressional boarders. The unusually rapid turnover in the enslaved staff suggested that there were frequent escapes north to freedom from Abolition House, likely a cog in the underground railroad. These early years in Washington proved formative for Lincoln. In 1861, now in the White House, Lincoln could gaze out his office window and see the Confederate flag flying across the Potomac. Washington, DC, sat on the front lines of the Civil War. Vulnerable and insecure, the capital was rife with Confederate sympathizers. On the crossroads of slavery and freedom, the city was a refuge for thousands of contraband and fugitive slaves. The Lincoln administration took strict measures to tighten security and established camps to provide food, shelter, and medical care for contrabands. In 1863, a Freedman’s Village rose on the grounds of the Lee estate, where the Confederate flag once flew. The president and Mrs. Lincoln personally comforted the wounded troops who flooded wartime Washington. In 1862, Lincoln spent July 4 riding in a train of ambulances carrying casualties from the Peninsula Campaign to Washington hospitals. He saluted the “One-Legged Brigade” assembled outside the White House as “orators,” their wounds eloquent expressions of sacrifice and dedication. The administration built more than one hundred military hospitals to care for Union casualties. These are among the unforgettable scenes in Lincoln’s Citadel, a fresh, absorbing narrative history of Lincoln’s leadership in Civil War Washington. Here is the vivid story of how the Lincoln administration met the immense challenges the war posed to the city, transforming a vulnerable capital into a bastion for the Union.

“Do you know what military glory is? It is ‘that attractive rainbow, that rises in showers of blood—that serpent's eye, that charms to destroy.'” —Abraham Lincoln The Union in dire peril! The war that began in Peter G. Tsouras's previous alternate history, Britannia's Fist, accelerates during a few desperate weeks in October 1863. From the bayous of Louisiana to the green hills of the Hudson Valley, from Chicago in flames to the gates of Washington itself, the Great War uncoils in ropes of fire. French and British armies are on the march, and heavy reinforcements have put to sea. Copperheads have risen in revolt to drag the Midwest into the Confederacy as a vital Union army stands starving and under siege in Tennessee. Meanwhile, Robert E. Lee and the Royal Navy set in motion a stroke that is boldness itself. The Union staggers under these blows. While the Grenadier Guards march into glory in upstate New York's apple orchards, from the second story of a shot-up Washington hotel Abraham Lincoln watches a forest of the red flags of rebellion waving over a Confederate column rushing across the Long Bridge. To stop them is a war-worn regiment of New York soldiers. To their backs Washington burns. But new technologies and the art of intelligence are thrown onto the scales, while Russia plans to enter the war to avenge its humiliation in the Crimean War. A Rainbow of Blood brings forward the Great War from its outbreak to the first great crisis of the embattled republic. Peopled with remarkable personalities of the age, the book rattles with the tramp of armies marching down one of the most intriguing roads not taken—or even imagined—until now.

Considered by many to be the architect of the modern U.S. Army, Union General Emory Upton commanded troops in almost every major battle of the Civil War's Eastern Theater. Witnessing some of the war's bloodiest engagements convinced him of the need for comprehensive reform in military organization, professionalism, education, tactics and personnel policies. From the end of the war to his 1881 death by suicide, Upton led an effort to modernize U.S. military culture. While much has been written about the politics of his reform campaign, this book details his wartime experiences and how they informed his intense fervor for change.

Located on the Southwest Trail that connected St. Louis to Texas, the town of Washington was established in 1824 in the southwest corner of Arkansas. Named after the first president of the United States, Washington is an example of a true American town with the city streets bearing the names of famous countrymen. American icons such as James Bowie, Sam Houston, and Davy Crockett all passed through this unique community. One of its citizens, a local blacksmith, made a knife for Bowie, which became infamously known as the Bowie Knife. During the last two years of the Civil War, Washington became the capital of the Confederate government of Arkansas. In later years, it was bypassed by the railroad, and the town faced decline. In the 20th century, concerned citizens pushed for its restoration, and today Washington consists of a state park that continues to tell the story of this unique community to future generations.

A one-volume edition, this history of Washington was originally published in two parts. Washington: Village and Capital, 1800-1878 was awarded the 1963 Pulitzer Prize for History. Originally published in 1977. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.