A city transformed: War's effect on Washington

The Civil War transformed Washington from a sleepy, Southern shantytown riddled with malaria to a boomtown of bureaucracy as the government expanded to handle all the tasks necessitated by a conflict which sprawled from Manassas, Va., to Brownsville, Texas. And along the way, it provided the city with one of its enduring symbols — red tape.

The war produced 2 million veterans, and the newly created Bureau of Pensions used actual red tape to seal their documents — unwittingly helping to define the relationship between bureaucrat and citizen.