Freedom rising: Washington in the Civil War

Before 1861, Washington was a dusty, muddy city of 60,000, joked about by urban sophisticates from New York and Boston. But at the onset of war, thousands of soldiers, job seekers, nurses, good-time girls, gamblers, newly freed slaves–all kinds of Americans–poured in. For days, Washington was cut off from the North, and no one was sure whether it would become the capital of the Union or the Confederacy.