Elmer E. Ellsworth

Elmer Ephraim Ellsworth was born 11 April 1837 in Malta, New York. As a young man he became the country’s leading evangelist of the Zouave drill — a French-Algerian colonial infantry style featuring elaborate uniforms and acrobatic close-order drill — and the U.S. Zouave Cadets that he led on a celebrated 1860 national tour brought him to wide public attention. He read law in Abraham Lincoln’s Springfield, Illinois office in 1860, accompanied Lincoln to Washington as part of the inaugural entourage, and at the outbreak of war returned to New York to recruit a regiment of New York City firemen as the 11th New York Infantry (“Fire Zouaves”) ^[1] Source 1 Wikipedia, Elmer E. Ellsworth Website .

On the morning of 24 May 1861 — the day after Virginia formally seceded — Federal troops crossed the Potomac and occupied Alexandria. Ellsworth’s regiment was among them. Riding into the city he observed a large Confederate “Stars and Bars” still flying from the roof of the Marshall House inn at the southeast corner of King and Pitt Streets — a flag reportedly visible from the White House across the river. Ellsworth went into the building with a small party, climbed to the roof, and cut the flag down. Coming back down the stairs he was shot at point-blank range by the innkeeper, James W. Jackson; Corporal Francis E. Brownell of Ellsworth’s regiment killed Jackson on the spot. Ellsworth died on the stair landing, the first conspicuous Union officer killed in the Civil War.

His body was returned to Washington and lay in state at the White House on 25 May 1861, with Lincoln in attendance. “Remember Ellsworth” became a recruiting slogan across the Northern states; James W. Jackson, killed defending the flag, became a parallel martyr-figure for the Confederate side, and the Marshall House site in Alexandria remained politically contested for the rest of the nineteenth century.