A most remarkable prelude to the war was the performance through the
Northern States of the Chicago Zouaves. The name came from the
irregular regiment in the French Algerian service, composed of men
worthy of being drummed out of the regular corps; they dressed like the
Arabs in the small bolero jacket and baggy red, trousers familiar
since. They drilled gymnastically, not to say theatrically. Ellsworth,
a clerk in the Lincoln & Herndon law office, had a martial turn, and
hearing daily in that quasi-political vortex of the impending crisis,
determined to be forearmed in case of the differences coming to blows.
He raised, uniformed _à la Zou-zou_, a score of young men like himself
and proceeded to give exhibitions at home and then in the East. The
writer retains a vivid memory of the odd and fantastic show, which,
however, was regarded as "not war, though magnificent." But Captain
Ellsworth was in earnest. Mustered in with his company, he started the
Zouave movement which led to two or more regiments being formed. His
being the first volunteers at the fore, he claimed the right of the
reconnoitering force sent out in May, against Alexandria, to break up
railroads held by the rebels. Seeing a rebel flag on a hotel top, he
entered the building, and was shot by the landlord in coming down from
cutting it away. He was slain instantly, and the like fate befell the
murderer, the host, from Ellsworth's guard. Apart from four men killed
at Sumter and two in the Baltimore riots, the Chicago Zouave was the
first victim of the rebellion. But the position was regained by the
secessionists, and the rebel flag replaced the removed one, to the
grief of President Lincoln. He could see it from his residence, and
Murat Halstead, without knowing the melancholy association of the young
officer, being a familiar in his office, reports seeing him dwell with
spyglass bent on the flag, for hours.
Elmer Ellsworth, in his last speech, made to the men he was leading out
to the front, proves that he imbibed Lincoln's humanity with legal
precepts in the office: "Show the enemy that I want to kill them with
kindness."
* * * * *
"FLY AWAY, JACK!"
At the end of 1860, South Carolina took the lead in seceding, and in
the opening of the next year six other Southern States allied
themselves with her. The timid feared hasty acting would precipitate
the marshaling of the waverers under the same flag. To a committee
urging a pause to see "how the cats would jump," the President observed:
"If there be three pigeons on the fence, and you fire and kill one, how
many will there be left?"