IX.
 

5NE of the most remarkable chapters in the history of the
liOld New York Fire Department was the formation, at
jthe beginning of the" late Civil War, of the Ellsworth
(Zouaves, a band of brave and daring fellows selected
exclusively from the different companies of the old volunteer organi¬
zation.

A year or two before the war, Elmer Ellsworth, of Chicago, a
young lawyer with no practice, organized a company of Zouaves,
the members of which — lawyers, merchants, clerks, etc.— agreed to
abstain from all sorts of immorality, including therein the wine-cup,
and, I believe, tobacco. These young fellows Ellsworth drilled
until they resembled a machine rather than a body of men, so accu¬
rate were all their movements. With his zouaves he traveled
through the principal cities of the United States, sleeping on gymna¬
sium floors, and giving public exhibition drills.

The fame of the Chicago Zouaves spread through the length
and the breadth of the land, and Ellsworth became at once a well-
known character. He came to Washington in President Lincoln's
suite, when that gentleman journeyed to the national capital in Febru¬
ary, 1861. When the war broke out, and the unprepared North was
crippled for troops to protect Washington, Ellsworth at once saw a
source from whence troops could be created with almost magical
celerity. He arrived in New York with a commission to recruit a
regiment.    He appealed to the  Fire  Department to form   a Fire