Washington City, United StatesWinter 1848.
Snow quietly covered the streets of Washington.
Not enough to stop the city from moving.
Not enough to shut things down.
But enough to make the mornings feel quieter for a little while before the factories woke up again.
The capital looked different now compared to how it looked before the war.
Busier.
Heavier.
Richer too, in some ways.
New warehouses stood near the river where older buildings used to be. Rail lines cut through parts of the city that had once been calm neighborhoods. Smoke stacks rose above entire districts where foundries and machine workshops now operated almost nonstop under government contracts.
Even the air smelled different.
Coal smoke.
Steel.
Burned oil.
America was changing fast.
The war forced it to change.
And while the country looked stronger from the outside, people living there could feel the exhaustion underneath everything.
