Paul Loatman, Jr., City Historian
One-hundred and sixty years after his birth, Elmer E. Ellsworth has been thrust once
again into the limelight. In 1861, he first appeared on the public stage due to his
combination of bravery and bravado. Now, our attention is drawn to him not by any act of
bravery; rather, his name comes before A again because of an act of cowardice perpetrated
by the basest of human instincts, that of graverobbing.
When a local teacher dismissed the possibility that the theft of Ellsworth's eagle could not be an adolescent prank because most students today do not even know who Ellsworth is, it brought home to me the fact that before we can learn from the mistakes of the past, we must first have some sense of what that past is all about. The general outline of Ellsworth's life used to be fairly well-known for its stark simplicity and the way it lent credence to the American Dream. Small-town boy raised in genteel poverty goes to the big city (in this case, New York), gets noticed by rising political star (in this case, Abraham Lincoln), and pays for momentary act of bravery by being killed in defense of his country, thus earning the gratitude of his fellow Americans (at least those north of the Mason-Dixon line) who immortalize him as the embodiment of heroism. There is nothing wrong with this story and it deserves to be remembered by later generations, including our own. But maybe this story remembers Ellsworth too much for the way he died rather than for the way he lived, and it is in the latter respect that he deserves to be not only remembered but celebrated.
When Ellsworth boarded the train to take the President-elect to his Inaugural in February 1861, he was second only to Lincoln in fame and popularity throughout the country. Crowds of over 70,000 throughout the nation had thrilled to see the "lightning drills" of his fabled Zouaves. In less than two years, Ellsworth had taken an Illinois militia company about to be abandoned for lack of interest and discipline and turned it into the most crack military drill unit in the country. 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. The unusually tall President was fascinated by the unusually short Colonel and treated him like his own son. Nominally appointed as a law clerk in Lincoln's law office, Ellsworth used his popularity and powerful speaking presence to campaign for Lincoln throughout the North in the election of 1660. Faced with damping secessionist fever after the firing on Fort Sumter in April of 1861, Lincoln planned on appointing Ellsworth as Inspector General for Militia Affairs, regarding him as the most creative military leader in the nation at this time, not a bad reputation to have earned by the ripe old age of 24. Fate would deal Ellsworth (and Lincoln) another hand, however.
On May 24, 1861, Elmer E. Ellsworth was shot dead by a hotel-keeper in Alexandria, Virginia, after the Colonel had ascended to the roof of the hotel to remove a secessionist flag which had been flying there for some weeks. Earlier in the day, Ellsworth had led a force of 10,000 men to capture the city across the Potomac from Washington, the nation's capital, driving off a rebel force without firing a shot. The Colonel personally attended to the removal of the offensive flag from the roof because it could be viewed from the White House and was a constant reminder to Lincoln that Virginians were prepared to defy federal authority. To this point in time, the contest between North and South was like shadow-boxing, with no real blows having been struck. Thus, when word spread like wild fire that Colonel Ellsworth had been killed, Lincoln and the nation were shocked and horrified. Without the advantage of hindsight yet, no one -North or South- believed that secession would be followed by a bloody Civil War. Later, while Ellsworth's body lie in state in the White House, Lincoln was so visibly shaken that he could not control his grief and shed tears publicly for the only time in his life. He would write Elmer's parents a few days later while the funeral cortege made its way to Mechanicville by train that "my affliction here is scarcely less than your own."
We come full circle to our own day and the monument which stands in our local cemetery, honoring Ellsworth for his bravery and leadership skills. Once described by Lincoln's secretary as a man "made of tempered steel, it no one could doubt his bravery or his willingness to serve. But, boiled down to its essence, Elmer E. Ellsworth died because he believed in a better future, not only for himself but for others like himself who had been denied opportunity simply because they were too poor or too powerless to be taken seriously by "the powers that be." Ellsworth tied his fate and his future to a man and a cause which were much larger than his own personal well-being. His mentor, Mr. Lincoln, believed that human slavery was a moral evil whose existence gave the lie to the ringing endorsement of freedom penned by Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence when he wrote, "all men are created equal." While slavery's moral repugnance is easily recognized today, in Ellsworth's time, attacking an institution protected by the Constitution, endorsed by the Supreme Court, and practiced by more than half of our Presidents to that point in time was risky business. 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.
The proverbial "thief in the night" who stole off with the eagle recently did more than desecrate a grave. He -or they- in a strange way was mimicking the behavior of those whom Lincoln and Ellsworth opposed, acting like a slave-master who is earning his bread from the sweat of another man's brow. Elmer E. Ellsworth would recognize this behavior as unworthy of any American in his own day. So should we.