First Blood

In late May of 1861, some five weeks after the shelling and surrender of Fort Sumter, the voters of Virginia made their decision to join the Confederacy. On May 24, the day after the referendum, Union troops moved across the Potomac River to occupy Alexandria and create a buffer to protect the Capital. Col. Elmer Ellsworth’s 44^th New York Zouaves were among the units marching into Alexandria.

Elmer E. Ellsworth
Author: Unknown, 1861 (published 1911)

A large Confederate flag was flying over the Marshall House, an Alexandria hotel, and Ellsworth decided he was going to remove it. Followed by a few of his men, the colonel made his way to the roof and took down the flag. As he was coming down the stairs the hotel manager and vocal secessionist James W. Jackson leveled his shotgun on Ellsworth and killed him. Jackson in turn was shot and killed by one of Ellsworth’s men, Corporal Francis Brownell.

Ellsworth was not just any Union officer. He had made a name for himself training a Zouave unit in Illinois, famous for their colorful uniforms and precision drill. He had also worked for a short time in the in the Springfield law office of Abraham Lincoln and had supported his presidential campaign, becoming a family friend.

After the incident, Ellsworth’s body laid in state at the White House and his death quickly became national news as he was recognized as the North’s first martyr of the war. Ellsworth’s life and death was commemorated with images on stationary, sheet music, lithographs and other items. Jackson was recognized in similar ways in the South.

The National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian is organizing four year-long exhibits in one of its alcoves to coincide with the Civil War’s sesquicentennial. The first of these is the 150^th Commemoration of the Civil War: The Death of Ellsworth. It’s a small exhibit with some twenty five objects, that helps bring to life this early incident in the war and explain some of its impact on the nation.

The centerpiece of the exhibit is Alonzo Chappel’s 1862 painting, The Death of E. E. Ellsworth depicting the Union officer slumped against the wall on the staircase just after being shot by Jackson. In cases on each side of the painting, are the actual weapons used in the incident, Jackson’s shotgun and Francis Brownell’s 1855 U.S. percussion rifle and saber bayonet, which were bequeathed by Brownell to the Smithsonian.

Next to Jackson’s shotgun is a copy of a book entitled Life of James W. Jackson, the Alexandria Hero, the Slayer of Ellsworth, the First Martyr in the Cause of Southern Independence from 1862. There is also a small piece of the Marshall House Confederate Flag and the Marshall House flagpole. Once the incident had been publicized, the house became a huge tourist attraction. A plaque on the Hotel Monaco in Alexandria today marks where the Marshall House once stood. It names James W. Jackson the “first martyr to Southern Independence” and makes no mention of Ellsworth.

Two of the first deaths of the war were widely remembered over the course of the conflict, but in the four years to follow, the suffering would be more personal, as nearly everyone in country would have a family member or acquaintance killed or wounded in the firestorm that was to come. The exhibit runs through March 18, 2012.