ELLSWORTH.

The beginnings of great periods have often been marked and made

memorable by striking events. Out of the cloud that hangs around the

vague inceptions of revolutions, a startling incident will sometimes

flash like lightning, to show that the warring elements have begun their

work. The scenes that attended the birth of American nationality formed

a not inaccurate type of those that have opened the crusade for its

perpetuation. The consolidation of public sentiment which followed the

magnificent defeat at Bunker's Hill, in which the spirit of indignant

resistance was tempered by the pathetic interest surrounding the fate

of Warren, was but a foreshadowing of the instant rally to arms which

followed the fall of the beleaguered fort in Charleston harbor, and of

the intensity of tragic pathos which has been added to the stern purpose

of avenging justice by the murder of Colonel Ellsworth.

Ephraim Elmer Ellsworth was born in the little village of

Mechanicsville, on the left bank of the Hudson, on the 23d day of April,

1837. When he was very young, his father, through no fault of his own,

lost irretrievably his entire fortune, in the tornado of financial ruin

that in those years swept from the sea to the mountains. From this

disaster he never recovered. Misfortune seems to have followed him

through life, with the insatiable pertinacity of the Nemesis of a Greek

tragedy. And now in his old age, when for a moment there seemed to shine

upon his path the sunshine that promised better days, he finds that

suddenly withdrawn, and stands desolate, "stabbed through the heart's

affections, to the heart." His younger son died some years ago, of

small-pox, in Chicago, and the murder at Alexandria leaves him with his

sorrowing wife, lonely, amid the sympathy of the world.

The days of Elmer's childhood and early youth--were passed at Troy

and in the city of New York, in pursuits various, but energetic and

laborious. There is little of interest in the story of these years. He

was a proud, affectionate, sensitive, and generous boy, hampered by

circumstance, but conscious of great capabilities,--not morbidly

addicted to day-dreaming, but always working heartily for something

beyond. He was still very young--when he went to Chicago, and associated

himself in business with Mr. Devereux of Massachusetts.[A] They managed

for a little while, with much success, an agency for securing patents to

inventors. Through the treachery of one in whom they had reposed great

confidence they suffered severe losses which obliged them to close

their business, and Devereux went back to the East. The next year of

Ellsworth's life was a miracle of endurance and uncomplaining fortitude.

He read law with great assiduity, and supported himself by copying,

in the hours that should have been devoted to recreation. He had no

pastimes and very few friends. Not a soul beside himself and the baker

who gave him his daily loaf knew how he was living. During all that

time, he never slept in a bed, never ate with friends at a social board.

So acute was his sense of honor, so delicate his ideas of propriety,

that, although himself the most generous of men, he never would accept

from acquaintances the slightest favors or courtesies which he was

unable to return. He told me once of a severe struggle between

inclination and a sense of honor. At a period of extreme hunger, he

met a friend in the street who was just starting from the city. He

accompanied his friend into a restaurant, wishing to converse with him,

but declined taking any refreshment. He represented the savory fragrance

of his friend's dinner as almost maddening to his famished senses,

while he sat there pleasantly chatting, and deprecating his friend's

entreaties to join him in his repast, on the plea that he had just

dined.

[Footnote A: Arthur F. Devereux, Esq., now in command of the Salem

Zouave Corps, Eighth Massachusetts Regiment, distinguished for the

gallant part borne by it in opening the route to Washington through

Annapolis, and in the rescue of the frigate Constitution, "Old

Ironsides," from the hands of the rebels.]

What would have killed an ordinary man did not injure Ellsworth. His

iron frame seemed incapable of dissolution or waste. Circumstance had no

power to conquer his spirit. His hearty good-humor never gave way. His

sense of honor, which was sometimes even fantastic in its delicacy,

freed him from the very temptation to wrong. He knew there was a better

time coming for him. Conscious of great mental and bodily strength, with

that bright outlook that industry and honor always give a man, he was

perfectly secure of ultimate success. His plans mingled in a singular

manner the bright enthusiasm of the youthful dreamer and the eminent

practicality of the man of affairs. At one time, his mind was fixed

on Mexico,--not with the licentious dreams that excited the ragged

_Condottieri_ who followed the fated footsteps of the "gray-eyed man of

Destiny," in the wild hope of plunder and power,--nor with the vague

reverie in which fanatical theorists construct impossible Utopias on

the absurd framework of Icarias or Phalansteries. His clear, bold, and

thoroughly executive mind planned a magnificent scheme of commercial

enterprise, which, having its centre of operations at Guaymas, should

ramify through the golden wastes that stretch in silence and solitude

along the tortuous banks of the Rio San José. This was to be the

beginning and the ostensible end of the enterprise. Then he dreamed of

the influence of American arts and American energy penetrating into the

twilight of that decaying nationality, and saw the natural course of

events leading on, first, Emigration, then Protection, and at last

Annexation. Yet there was no thought of conquest or rapine. The idea was

essentially American and Northern. He never wholly lost that dream.

One day last winter, when some one was discussing the propriety of an

amputation of the States that seemed thoroughly diseased, Ellsworth

swept his hand energetically over the map of Mexico that hung upon the

wall, and exclaimed,--"_There_ is an unanswerable argument against the

recognition of the Southern Confederacy."

But the central idea of Ellsworth's short life was the thorough

reorganization of the militia of the United States. He had studied with

great success the theory of national defence, and, from his observation

of the condition of the militia of the several States, he was convinced

that there was much of well-directed effort yet lacking to its entire

efficiency. In fact, as he expressed it, a well-disciplined body of five

thousand troops could land anywhere on our coast and ravage two or three

States before an adequate force could get into the field to oppose them.

To reform this defective organization, he resolved to devote whatever

of talent or energy was his. This was very large undertaking for a boy,

whose majority and moustache were still of the substance of things hoped

for. But nothing that he could propose to himself ever seemed absurd. He

attacked his work with his usual promptness and decision.

The conception of a great idea is no proof of a great mind; a man's

calibre is shown by the way in which he attempts to realize his idea. A

great design planted in a little mind frequently bursts it, and nothing

is more pitiable than the spectacle of a man staggering into insanity

under a thought too large for him. Ellsworth chose to begin his work

simply and practically. He did not write a memorial to the President, to

be sent to the Secretary of War, to be referred to the Chief Clerk, to

be handed over to File-Clerk No. 99, to be glanced at and quietly thrust

into a pigeon-hole labelled "Crazy and trashy." He did not haunt the

anteroom of Congressman Somebody, who would promise to bring his plan

before the House, and then, bowing him out, give general orders to his

footman, "Not at home, hereafter, to that man." He did not float, as

some theorists do, ghastly and seedy, around the _Adyta_ of popular

editors, begging for space and countenance. He wisely determined to

keep his theories to himself until he could illustrate them by living

examples. He first put himself in thorough training. He practised the

manual of arms in his own room, until his dexterous precision was

something akin to the sleight of a juggler. He investigated the theory

of every movement in an anatomical view, and made several most valuable

improvements on Hardee. He rearranged the manual so that every movement

formed the logical groundwork of the succeeding one. He studied the

science of fence, so that he could hold a rapier with De Villiers, the

most dashing of the Algerine swordsmen. He always had a hand as true as

steel, and an eye like a gerfalcon. He used to amuse himself by shooting

ventilation-holes through his window-panes. Standing ten paces from the

window, he could fire the seven shots from his revolver and not shiver

the glass beyond the circumference of a half-dollar.

I have seen a photograph of his arm taken at this time. The knotted coil

of thews and sinews looks like the magnificent exaggerations of antique

sculpture.

His person was strikingly prepossessing. His form, though

slight,--exactly the Napoleonic size,--was very compact and commanding;

the head statuesquely poised, and crowned with a luxuriance of curling

black hair; a hazel eye, bright, though serene, the eye of a gentleman

as well as a soldier; a nose such as you see on Roman medals; a light

moustache just shading the lips, that were continually curving into

the sunniest smiles. His voice, deep and musical, instantly attracted

attention; and his address, though not without soldierly brusqueness,

was sincere and courteous. There was one thing his backwoods detractors

could never forgive: he always dressed well; and sometimes wore the

military insignia presented to him by different organizations. One of

these, a gold circle, inscribed with the legend, NON NOBIS, SED PRO

PATRIA, was driven into his heart by the slug of the Virginian assassin.

He had great tact and executive talent, was a good mathematician,

possessed a fine artistic eye, sketched well and rapidly, and in short

bore a deft and skilful hand in all gentlemanly exercise.

No one ever possessed greater power of enforcing the respect and

fastening the affections of men. Strangers soon recognized and

acknowledged this power; while to his friends he always seemed like a

Paladin or Cavalier of the dead days of romance and beauty. He was so

generous and loyal, so stainless and brave, that Bayard himself would

have been proud of him. The grand bead-roll of the virtues of the Flower

of Kings contains the principles that guided his life; he used to read

with exquisite appreciation these lines:--

"To reverence the King as if he were

Their conscience, and their conscience as

their King,--

To break the heathen and uphold the

Christ,--

To ride abroad redressing human wrongs,--

To speak no slander, no, nor listen to it,--

To lead sweet lives in purest chastity,--

To love one maiden only, cleave to her,

And worship her by years of noble deeds,

Until they won her";

and the rest,--

"high thoughts, and amiable words,

And courtliness, and the desire of fame,

And love of truth, and all that makes a man."

Such, in person and character, was Ellsworth, when he organized, on the

4th day of May, 1859, the United States Zouave Cadets of Chicago.

This company was the machine upon which he was to experiment.

Disregarding all extant works upon tactics, he drew up a simpler system

for the use of his men. Throwing aside the old ideas of soldierly

bearing, he taught them to use vigor, promptness, and ease. Discarding

the stiff buckram strut of martial tradition, he educated them to move

with the loafing _insouciance_ of the Indian, or the graceful ease of

the panther. He tore off their choking collars and binding coats, and

invented a uniform which, though too flashy and conspicuous for actual

service, was very bright and dashing for holiday occasions, and left the

wearer perfectly free to fight, strike, kick, jump, or run.

He drilled these young men for about a year at short intervals. His

discipline was very severe and rigid. Added to the punctilio of the

martinet was the rigor of the moralist. The slightest exhibition of

intemperance or licentiousness was punished by instant degradation and

expulsion. He struck from the rolls at one time twelve of his best men

for breaking the rule of total abstinence. His moral power over them was

perfect and absolute. I believe anyone of them would have died for him.

In two or three principal towns of Illinois and Wisconsin he drilled

other companies: in Springfield, where he made the friends who best

appreciated what was best in him; and in Rockford, where he formed an

attachment which imparted a coloring of tender romance to all the days

of his busy life that remained. This tragedy would not have been perfect

without the plaintive minor strain of Love in Death.

His company took the Premium Colors at the United States Agricultural

Pair, and Ellsworth thought it was time to show to the people some fruit

of his drill. They issued their soldierly _défi_ and started on their

_Marche de Triomphe_. It is useless to recall to those who read

newspapers the clustering glories of that bloodless campaign. Hardly had

they left the suburbs of Chicago when the murmur of applause began. New

York, secure in the championship of half a century, listened with quiet

metropolitan scorn to the noise of the shouting provinces; but when the

crimson phantasms marched out of the Park, on the evening of the 15th of

July, New York, with metropolitan magnanimity, confessed herself utterly

vanquished by the good thing that had come out of Nazareth. There was no

resisting the Zouaves. As the erring Knight of the Round Table said,--

"men went down before his spear at a touch,

But knowing he was Lancelot; his great name conquered."

There were one or two Southern companies that issued insulting

defiances, but, after a little expenditure of epistolary valor,

prudently, though ingloriously, stayed afar,--as is usual in New

Gascony. With these exceptions, the heart of the nation went warmly out

to these young men. Their endurance, their discipline, their alertness,

their _élan_, surprised the sleepy drill-masters out of their propriety,

and waked up the people to intense and cordial admiration. Chicago

welcomed them home proudly, covered with tan and dust and glory.

Ellsworth found himself for his brief hour the most talked-of man in

the country. His pictures sold like wildfire in every city of the land.

School-girls dreamed over the graceful wave of his curls, and shop-boys

tried to reproduce the _Grand Seigneur_ air of his attitude. Zouave

corps, brilliant in crimson and gold, sprang up, phosphorescently, in

his wake, making bright the track of his journey. The leading journals

spoke editorially of him, and the comic papers caricatured his drill.

So one thing was accomplished. He had gained a name that would entitle

him hereafter to respectful attention, and had demonstrated the

efficiency of his system of drill. The public did not, of course,

comprehend the resistless moral power which he exercised,--imperiously

moulding every mind as he willed,--inspiring every soul with his own

unresting energy. But the public recognized success, and that for the

present was enough.

He quietly formed a regiment in the upper counties of Illinois, and made

his best men the officers of it. He tendered its services to Governor

Yates immediately on his inauguration, "for any service consistent with

honor." This was the first positive tender made of an organized force in

defence of the Constitution. He seemed to recognize more clearly than

others the certainty of the coming struggle. It was the soldierly

instinct that heard "the battle afar off, the thunder of the captains,

and the shouting."

Still intent upon the great plan of militia reform, he came to

Springfield. He hoped, in case of the success of Mr. Lincoln in the

canvass then pending, to be able to establish in the War Department a

Bureau of Militia, which would prove a most valuable auxiliary to his

work. His ideas were never vague or indefinite. Means always presented

themselves to him, when he contemplated ends. The following were the

duties of the proposed bureau, which may serve as a guide to some future

reformer: I copy from his own exquisitely neat and clear memorandum,

which lies before me:--

"First. The gradual concentration of all business pertaining to the

militia now conducted by the several bureaus of this Department.

"Second. The collection and systematizing of accurate information of the

number, arm, and condition of the militia of all classes of the several

States, and the compilation of yearly reports of the same for the

information of this Department.

"Third. The compilation of a report of the actual condition of the

militia and the working of the present systems of the General Government

and the various States.

"Fourth. The publication and distribution of such information as is

important to the militia, and the conduct of all correspondence relating

to militia affairs.

"Fifth. The compilation of a system of instruction for light troops for

distribution to the several States, including everything pertaining to

the instruction of the militia in the school of the soldier,--company

and battalion, skirmishing, bayonet, and gymnastic drill, adapted for

self-instruction.

"Sixth. The arrangement of a system of organization, with a view to the

establishment of a uniform system of drill, discipline, equipment, and

dress, throughout the United States."

His plan for this purpose was very complete and symmetrical. Though

enthusiastic, he was never dreamy. His idea always went forth fully

armed and equipped.

Nominally, he was a student of law in the office of Lincoln and Herndon,

but in effect he passed his time in completing his plans of militia

reform. He made in October many stirring and earnest speeches for the

Republican candidates. He was very popular among the country people.

His voice was magnificent in melody and volume, his command of language

wonderful in view of the deficiencies of his early education, his humor

inexhaustible and hearty, and his manner deliberate and impressive,

reminding his audiences in Central Illinois of the earliest and best

days of Senator Douglas.

When the Legislature met, he prepared an elaborate military bill, the

adoption of which would have placed the State in an enviable attitude

of defence. The stupid jealousy of colonels and majors who had won

bloodless glory, on both sides, in the Mormon War, and the malignant

prejudice instigated by the covert treason that lurked in Southern

Illinois, succeeded in staving off the passage of the bill, until it was

lost by the expiration of the term. Many of these men are now in the

ranks, shouting the name of Ellsworth as a battle-cry.

He came to Washington in the escort of the President elect. Hitherto he

had been utterly independent of external aid. The time was come when he

must wait for the cooperation of others, for the accomplishment of his

life's great purpose. He wished a position in the War Department, which

would give him an opportunity for the establishment of the Militia

Bureau. He was a strange anomaly at the capital. He did not care for

money or luxury. Though sensitive in regard to his reputation, for the

honor of his work, his motto always was that of the sage Merlin,--"I

follow use, not fame." An office-seeker of this kind was an eccentric

and suspicious personage. The hungry thousands that crowded and pushed

at Willard's thought him one of them, only deeper and slier. The

simplicity and directness of his character, his quick sympathy and

thoughtless generosity, and his delicate sense of honor unfitted him for

such a scramble as that which degrades the quadrennial rotations of our

Departments. He withdrew from the contest for the position he desired,

and the President, who loved him like a younger brother, made him a

lieutenant in the army, intending to detail him for special service.

The jealousy of the staff-officers of the regular army, who always

discover in any effective scheme of militia reform the overthrow of

their power, and who saw in the young Zouave the promise of brilliant

and successful innovation, was productive of very serious annoyance

and impediment to Ellsworth. In the midst of this, he fell sick at

Willard's. While he lay there, the news from the South began to show

that the rebels were determined upon war, and the rumors on the street

said that a wholesome North-westerly breeze was blowing from the

Executive Mansion. These indications were more salutary to Ellsworth

than any medicine. We were talking one night of coming probabilities,

and I spoke of the doubt so widely existing as to the loyalty of the

people. He rejoined, earnestly,--"I can only speak for myself. You know

I have a great work to do, to which my life is pledged; I am the only

earthly stay of my parents; there is a young woman whose happiness I

regard as dearer than my own: yet I could ask no better death than to

fall next week before Sumter. I am not better than other men. You will

find that patriotism is not dead, even if it sleeps."

Sumter fell, and the sleeping awoke. The spirit of Ellsworth, cramped by

a few weeks' intercourse with politicians, sprang up full-statured

in the Northern gale. He cut at once the meshes of red tape that had

hampered and held him, threw up his commission, and started for New York

without orders, without assistance, without authority, but with the

consciousness that the President would sustain him. The rest the world

knows. I will be brief in recalling it.

In an incredibly short space of time he enlisted and organized a

regiment, eleven hundred strong, of the best fighting material that ever

went to war. He divided it, according to an idea of his own, into

groups of four comrades each, for the campaign. He exercised a personal

supervision over the most important and the most trivial minutiae of the

regimental business. The quick sympathy of the public still followed

him. He became the idol of the Bowery and the pet of the Avenue. Yet not

one instant did he waste in recreation or lionizing. Indulgent to all

others, he was merciless to himself. He worked day and night, like an

incarnation of Energy. When he arrived with his men in Washington, he

was thin, hoarse, flushed, but entirely contented and happy, because

busy and useful.

Of the bright enthusiasm and the quenchless industry of the next few

weeks what need to speak? Every day, by his unceasing toil and care, by

his vigor, alertness, activity, by his generosity, and by his relentless

rigor when duty commanded, he grew into the hearts of his robust and

manly followers, until every man in the regiment feared him as a Colonel

should be feared, and loved him as a brother should be loved.

On the night of the twenty-third of May, he called his men together,

and made a brief, stirring speech to them, announcing their orders to

advance on Alexandria. "Now, boys, go to bed, and wake up at two o'clock

for a sail and a skirmish." When the camp was silent, he began to work.

He wrote many hours, arranging the business of the regiment. He finished

his labor as the midnight stars were crossing the zenith. As he sat in

his tent by the shore, it seems as if the mystical gales from the near

eternity must have breathed for a moment over his soul, freighted with

the odor of amaranths and asphodels. For he wrote two strange letters:

one to her who mourns him faithful in death; one to his parents. There

is nothing braver or more pathetic. With the prophetic instinct of love,

he assumed the office of consoler for the stroke that impended.

In the dewy light of the early dawn he occupied the first rebel town.

With his own hand he tore down the first rebel flag. He added to the

glories of that morning the seal of his blood.

The poor wretch who stumbled upon an immortality of infamy by murdering

him died at the same instant. The two stand in the light of that

event--clearly revealed--types of the two systems in conflict to-day:

the one, brave, refined, courtly, generous, tender, and true; the other,

not lacking in brute courage, reckless, besotted, ignorant, and cruel.

Let the two systems, Freedom and Slavery, stand thus typified forever,

in the red light of that dawn, as on a Mount of Transfiguration. I

believe that may solve the dark mystery why Ellsworth died.