First Fallen: The Life of Colonel Elmer Ellsworth, the North’s First Civil War Hero by Meg Groeling

First Fallen: The Life of Colonel Elmer Ellsworth, the North’s First Civil War Hero by Meg Groeling published by Savas Beatie (2021)

Elmer Ellsworth is a figure that all of us know about, but few know well. A good-looking celebrity soldier, he was almost literally the “First Fallen” of the Union war dead. That he did not die in battle, but in a boarding house dispute over a Confederate flag, has not diminished his fame. In fact, perhaps the shedding of blood over a Confederate flag adds a modern appeal to this 160 year old story.

I was up at the New York State Military Museum in Saratoga a few years ago. The museum has an impressive collection of Civil War objects, but the biggest draw is Ellsworth’s shirt he was wearing when James Jackson, the master of the Marshall House, blew a hole in the young man’s chest as he was coming down the stairs after tearing down the flag. Marshall himself was quickly blown away by “Ellsworth’s Avenger,” Pvt. Francis E. Brownell, himself only twenty.

Ellsworth grew up not far from the present-day museum that preserves his death-shirt, but as soon as he was able, he left small-town Upstate New York for Chicago. Just out of his teens, he created the Zouave Craze by drilling a demonstration team of militia to carry out the athletic and artistic French North African Zouave drill. The team travelled to cities across the Midwest and North East, and a country only a couple of years away from war welcomed the spectacle of extravagant military entertainment. The fact that neither Ellsworth nor his men had any actual combat experience did not slow his meteoric climb to military celebrity. What the public did not know, and what author Meg Groeling uncovers, is that the toast of every town he visited often didn’t have enough money to buy enough bread to keep himself fed.

Groeling’s new biography of Elmer Ellsworth gives us a life of a man on the make. Ellsworth came from poverty and he lived most of his life poor. Military celebrity offered him a rare chance for escape from obscurity, and he took it. After his Zouave team took the North by storm, Ellsworth was sought out by the great and powerful as a military advisor, or at least as someone powerful men wanted to be seen as consulting. He befriended Abraham Lincoln’s influential young secretaries, John Hay and John Nicolay, and eventually became part of Abraham and Mary’s extended family.

When Lincoln campaigned for president, Ellsworth provided the Republicans with the appearance of paramilitary muscle. When Lincoln was elected, Ellsworth advised the president elect on the organization of the Northern militias for service in the likely Civil War. As Lincoln travelled from Springfield to Washington in 1861, Ellsworth coordinated with local militia in cities along the way to make sure Lincoln was not mobbed by secessionists.

Lincoln was very impressed by Ellsworth and he looked for a way that the neophyte soldier could prove himself. Groeling describes the steps the president took on Ellsworth’s behalf. In the end though, Ellsworth’s promotion depended on his own ability to raise a regiment in New York among the city’s firemen. With my own brother a New York City fireman, I can attest to the physical strength and courage of these men’s modern counterparts. Ellsworth was just as impressed by their abilities to work together in teams. Ellsworth’s Fire Zouaves were so successful at recruiting that his unit exceeded the limit on the number of men in a regiment.

From here on, the story is familiar to most Civil War readers. Ellsworth crossed over into enemy territory, across the Potomac into Alexandria, Virginia to occupy the small city. There he impulsively decided to himself tear down the Marshall House Confederate flag which, in view of the White House, had taunted Abraham Lincoln for weeks. The bloody end of that decision led to an unimaginable outpouring of popular grief well beyond Washington. Lincoln himself was greatly moved by the death of a man he had only known for two years.

Groeling’s story is well told. She has done significant original research into Ellsworth’s brief life. His relations with his parents, who would lose both Ellsworth and his younger brother in too short a time, is enlightening as is his courtship of his teenaged girlfriend. Groeling also looks at the Zouave Craze phenomenon and the militia system during the lead up to the war.

Ellsworth himself is depicted as a man so obsessed with all things military that he nearly sacrifices his health and security to studying the military arts. Although he was a staunch Republican, Groeling could find no writings by him on the great issue of the day, slavery. While the author provides a straightforward exposition of Ellsworth’s life, she debunks some hoary myths and offers some speculations about his thoughts and desires. She also gives an accurate account of the behavior of Ellsworth’s men after his death, and of the different ways the death of Ellsworth was remembered.

This was an engaging and well-written book about a famous man. Now I know how he got to be famous.

 

 

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