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, Jefferson Davis, 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.

    Stansbury Haydon's well-researched book remains the definitive work on the creation of the United States Balloon Corps during the Civil War. Haydon explores his topic down to the last detail, from the amount of fabric used to manufacture every balloon that saw federal service, to the formula for varnish used to seal the envelopes. He explains the technical operation of mobile gas generators that T. S. C. Lowe designed to inflate balloons in the field and provides the precise cost of each rubber hose used in their construction. Military Ballooning during the Early Civil War raises large and important questions about technological change within a military bureaucracy. The book begins with an introduction to the history of military ballooning since the wars of the French Revolution, with special attention to discussions of military aeronautics in the United States since the time of the Seminole Wars. Haydon also demonstrates the complicated maneuvering among American balloonists who sought to aid the army before the Battle of Bull Run and shows how the attitudes of various officers toward the balloons changed during the ensuing months of 1861-62.First published in 1941 as Aeronautics in the Union and Confederate Armies, this volume received compliments in the Times Literary Supplement for its exploration of "the attitude of soldiers toward innovations." This edition includes a new foreword by Tom D. Crouch, senior curator of the Aeronautics Division at the National Air and Space Museum.

    Navy covers his life before the Civil War. Farragut served with Captain David Porter in the USS Essex; cruised in the Mediterranean; hunted pirates in the Caribbean; almost died of yellow fever; observed the French bombardment of Vera Cruz; sailed into Buenos Aires, Montevideo, and Rio de Janeiro when revolution threatened those cities; fought in the Mexican War; and commanded the steam sloop of war Brooklyn. During these years he slowly rose from midshipman to captain, then to the highest rank in the United States Navy.