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Exhibit honors Yankee who rallied 'round the flag [Capital Newspapers Division of The Hearst Corporation, Albany, N.Y.]
Home > News > Exhibit honors Yankee who rallied 'round the flag [Capital Newspapers Division of The Hearst Corporation, Albany, N.Y.]
Military Museum display features "Fighting Zouaves" and hero who started units
DENNIS YUSKO, Staff writer First published: Saturday, December 11, 2004
SARATOGA SPRINGS, NEW YORK -- A bullet transformed a flamboyant local soldier into one of the first symbols of the Civil War.
Visitors to the state Military Museum and Veterans Research Center can now see the uniform that Col. Elmer E. Ellsworth of Mechanicville wore 143 years ago, when he was killed for hauling down a Confederate flag that could be seen from Abraham Lincoln's White House.
A hole just above the heart in Ellsworth's jacket marks the spot where a Virginia hotel owner fatally wounded him with a shotgun for ripping the flag from the hotel roof. A soldier from Troy then shot the hotel owner dead.
"To see this is like, whoa, amazing," 23-year-old Marine Sgt. Charles Tyler of Watervliet said during a recent museum tour. "That's good work right there to preserve that."
The now-cleaned jacket is the most dramatic offering of the museum's first exhibit of 19th-century French Zouave units, mostly Union Army regiments that conducted elaborate marching drills and military displays styled after French troops in North Africa. (The word rhymes with suave.)
Ellsworth left Mechanicville at a young age and later popularized the Zouaves, which he used as an effective military recruiting tool for Lincoln, his close friend and confidant, prior to and during the Civil War. Crowds in the tens of thousands would turn out to see the Zouaves march.
"The regular Army command requested a performance of Ellsworth's Zouaves be held at West Point so that our future officers could see what a real military unit was supposed to look like," Mechanicville historian Paul Loatman said.
Last month, to commemorate the Zouave fighters from New York, the museum hung historic Zouave flags at the state Capitol in Albany. Its own exhibit features the Zouaves' stylish vests, baggy pants, fezzes, weapons, art and more. Both displays will last a year.
The Saratoga Springs exhibit stars Ellsworth, the best-known member. It interprets the events of May 24, 1861 -- the day Ellsworth died -- his uniform, his sword, military kit, knapsack and eating utensils.
"Ellsworth was considered by many to be the first martyr to the Union," museum director Michael Aikey said. Ellsworth's death made headlines all over the country because of his leadership in the Zouaves and relationship to Lincoln, he said.
The museum also owns the approximately 15- by 20-foot Confederate garrison flag that Ellsworth tore from the Marshall Hotel in Alexandria, Va., shortly after Virginia voted to secede from the Union. The flag is too big to display, Aikey said.
Elmer Ellsworth wa sborn in Malta in 1837, and moved to Mechanicville at age 11. He worked as a newspaper boy, store clerk and laborer during his youth. Before turning 20, he dashed to Illinois, where he helped organize Zouave units around 1859 and worked as a clerk in Lincoln's law office.
Ellsworth campaigned with the Zouave militia for Lincoln's presidency. Donning a cape and wearing his hair long, the soldier typified the romantic 19th-century hero, Loatman said.
Ellsworth's ability to rally troops and voters so impressed Lincoln that the newly elected president asked him to accompany him to Washington in 1861. When war broke out later that year, Ellsworth recruited the 11th New York Volunteer Infantry. The unit later became known as the "Fire Zouaves" because it contained so many New York City Fire Department recruits, Aikey said.
Ellsworth met his fate after crossing the Potomac River to personally remove the flag that he considered an offense to Lincoln.
When he reached the hotel, Ellsworth charged up its stairs into the attic and cut down the flag. James Jackson, the hotel proprietor, shot Ellsworth as he descended the final set of stairs. Francis Brownell of Troy, one of Ellsworth's soldiers, then shot and killed Jackson, Aikey said.
Ellsworth was the first Union officer killed in the Civil War. The incident shocked the nation and Lincoln to tears. Ellsworth, dead at 24, lay in state at the White House on May 25, 1861; Brownell received the Medal of Honor; and everyone wanted relics from the Marshall House.
The Smithsonian ultimately acquired Jackson's shotgun, Brownell's rifle and Medal of Honor and a sliver of the notorious flag.
Ellsworth became the first American to be embalmed, according to Saratoga County's Brookside Museum in Ballston Spa. His body was taken by train to New York City Hall, where 10,000 New Yorkers mourned him. A steamship took his body to Albany on May 27, where he lay in the state Capitol. His body arrived in Mechanicville on May 28 by train and was buried nearby in the Hudson View Cemetery.
Part of Ellsworth's zeal was his resentment of slavery, Loatman said. "While slavery's moral repugnance is easily recognized today, in Ellsworth's time ... it was risky business," Loatman said. "Ellsworth knew this. Ellsworth realized that this was a dangerous position to take. And Ellsworth knew that, morally, he had to follow his conscience wherever it led him, even if to an early grave."
City leaders dedicated a monument to Ellsworth in 1873, and still consider the short and slender Union fighter a hero. The city's stationery contains his profile; the city's VFW post bears his name; and a historical marker memorializing his achievements was recently unveiled near Ellsworth Avenue.
"This is the first time I have heard of it, and I think that it's awesome," said Tyler, the Marine from Watervliet. "As a leader, most would send a subordinate, but he did the job. That's a great show of leadership. He was a brave leader."
2004-12-11
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