"Time Reading Program special edition."

Originally copyrighted by Margaret Leech Pulitzer, 1941.

"Reprinted by arrangement with Harper & Brothers, New York, New York."

Includes bibliographical references (pages 557-567) and index.

Washington, D.C. during the Civil War; reads almost like a storybook.

"Margaret Leech's Washington is an incredible city, a war capital seemingly without control of its own resources. Filthy, ugly and unfinished, it swarmed with prostitutes, dead horses rotted in the streets and only a brave and well-armed man would think of going out after dark. Confederate cavalry contemptuously galloped around the city. Lincoln once went out to Fort Stevens and stood on the parapet to watch a Confederate charge, whereupon young Oliver Wendell Holmes barked at the President: 'Get down, you fool!' It is Lincoln, almost without seeming intention on author Leech's part, who emerges not only as the hero of Reveille but also as a very great human being for whom the war was a continuous succession of heartbreaks. Margaret Leech is almost casual in the handling of the book's greatest moments, and it is precisely this quality that gives Reveille a continually astonishing air. When Lincoln first meets a shabby, uneasy little man named Grant at the White House, the drama is intense because no drama is attempted. Here is Miss Leech's account

"'Near the door of the Blue Room the advance of the column of callers was suddenly checked. The President, after cordially wringing the hand of one visitor, detained him in conversation. He was a short, scrubby officer, stooped and sunburned, with rough, light-brown whiskers, and he appeared scarcely worthy of signal attention. There was something seedy about him; the look of a man who is out of a job, and takes too much to drink. The stars on his shoulder straps were tarnished. But a buzz ran through the Blue Room. Everyone began to stare at the man who stood awkwardly looking up at the President, while arriving guests jostled in confusion outside the doorway. General Grant and Mr. Lincoln were meeting for the first time

"'Seward hurried to the rescue. He presented the general to Mrs. Lincoln, and led him through a lane of eager faces into the crowded East Room. Grant's entrance turned the polite assemblage into a mob. Wild cheers shook the crystal chandeliers, as ladies and gentlemen rushed on him from all sides. Laces were torn, and crinolines mashed. Fearful of injury or maddened by excitement, people scrambled on chairs and tables. At last, General Grant was forced to mount a crimson sofa. He stood there bashfully shaking the thrusting hands that wanted to touch success and glory--Donelson, Vicksburg, Chattanooga--personified in a slovenly little soldier, with a blushing, scared face.'

"And when Miss Leech describes the assassination of Lincoln, it is almost as if it were a natural and inevitable consequence of all that had gone before. Reveille makes the reader wonder how the North managed to win the war at all, while making it effortlessly clear that of course it would."--Preface, pages vii-viii, by the Editors of Time

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