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When Hylan Downs and his friends decided to go off to war, they knew exactly how they wanted to go about it. As he recalled long after the war had ended, “a member of our company named Sanders and myself had repeatedly witnessed the drilling of the Ellsworth Zouaves in the old Garrett Block, corner of Randolph and State, [and] we decided that we must all join the Nineteenth [Illinois Infantry] because they knew all about soldiering and, of course, would stand a better show in the future.”1 Downs was hardly alone in seeking a place with the old Zouaves. John A. Page was a student at Northwestern University when, on Saturday night, April 13, 1861, the news broke that the rebels were ¤ring on Fort Sumter. First attending a student rally where everyone pledged their allegiance to a®ag made of calico (all of the real ®ags and bunting were already sold out), he and his friends arose bright and early Monday morning to catch the train downtown to enlist. The cars were already ¤lled to over®owing with “country boys on the same mission as ourselves” and, as it turned out, they were all too late. Heading for State Street and the armory of the Zouaves, they found “the crowd so dense that we could not get near it.”2 Chicago’s Zouave Cadets were the remarkable creation of a driven and charismatic young man named Elmer E. Ellsworth. In April 1859, just turned twenty-two, the young man, an impoverished clerk from upstate New York, decided to seek his fortune in the West. Soon after, by force of personality and imagination, Ellsworth took over and quickly transformed a moribund Chicago militia company into a drill team of national renown.3 Organizations of the sort had existed around the country for decades—young men’s fraternities, in effect, many of them holding dances and banquets as 3 The Men I don’t know what effect these men will have on the enemy, but, by God, they frighten me! —Lord Wellington often as martial exhibitions. However, as war fever grew during the 1850s, there were never so many such companies, North and South, as in 1859 and 1860.4 Ellsworth’s own talents “were not those that bring their greatest success in a business career.” Nor, perhaps, would they have brought success in the prewar Regular Army, where innovation and creativity were not the greatest of attributes, for he brought a refreshing verve and many new members to his Chicago club by adopting the extravagant uniforms and the style of drill, “a kind of rapid gymnastics,” thought to have been used by victorious French troops in North Africa and the Crimea. Aided by a friend, a French doctor named Charles DeVillers, Ellsworth studied the drill of the French as well as that contained in the books of tactics written by Win¤eld Scott and William Hardee for the United States Army. From those he worked out his own routines, always seeking to shorten and quicken movements and to improve the physical condition of his men. His volunteers at ¤rst drilled three evenings a week, then, as enthusiasm took hold, four hours every night except Sundays, with fast sandwiches for supper. They abstained from alcohol, tobacco , and even from entering pool halls, lest temptation prove too strong. Ellsworth cashiered twelve of the best for imbibing strong drink.5 Ellsworth gave purpose to this rigor and boosted the club’s elitism and esprit de corps by parading the Zouaves at public events. Their ¤rst performance took place on July 4, 1859, in front of Chicago’s Tremont House. With their ®ashy uniforms and crisp movements, they became an instant hit. That September, only ¤ve months after Ellsworth had taken over, they entered a competition at the National Agricultural Fair, where the promoters offered a stand of colors for the “championship of militia.” They won. Afterward, Ellsworth showed a genius for self-promotion that would be with him to the moment he died. Chided because only one other unit had entered the contest, Ellsworth issued a challenge to all comers. If any militia unit would come to Chicago and best his company, the cadets would pay all the visitors’ expenses .6 When, despite national advertising of the challenge, no one came, Ellsworth decided to go on the road. First he grabbed the spotlight performing at the Republican National Convention in Chicago in May 1860. Forced to postpone their departure for two...

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