of truth, and all that makes a man."

Such, in person and character, was Ellsworth, when he organized, on the
4th day of May, 1859, the United States Zouave Cadets of Chicago.

This company was the machine upon which he was to experiment.
Disregarding all extant works upon tactics, he drew up a simpler system
for the use of his men. Throwing aside the old ideas of soldierly
bearing, he taught them to use vigor, promptness, and ease. Discarding
the stiff buckram strut of martial tradition, he educated them to move
with the loafing _insouciance_ of the Indian, or the graceful ease of
the panther. He tore off their choking collars and binding coats, and
invented a uniform which, though too flashy and conspicuous for actual
service, was very bright and dashing for holiday occasions, and left the
wearer perfectly free to fight, strike, kick, jump, or run.

He drilled these young men for about a year at short intervals. His
discipline was very severe and rigid. Added to the punctilio of the
martinet was the rigor of the moralist. The slightest exhibition of
intemperance or licentiousness was punished by instant degradation and
expulsion. He struck from the rolls at one time twelve of his best men
for breaking the rule of total abstinence. His moral power over them was
perfect and absolute. I believe anyone of them would have died for him.

In two or three principal towns of Illinois and Wisconsin he drilled
other companies: in Springfield, where he made the friends who best
appreciated what was best in him; and in Rockford, where he formed an
attachment which imparted a coloring of tender romance to all the days
of his busy life that remained. This tragedy would not have been perfect
without the plaintive minor strain of Love in Death.

His company took the Premium Colors at the United States Agricultural
Pair, and Ellsworth thought it was time to show to the people some fruit
of his drill. They issued their soldierly _defi_ and started on their
_Marche de Triomphe_. It is useless to recall to those who read
newspapers the clustering glories of that bloodless campaign. Hardly had
they left the suburbs of Chicago when the murmur of applause began. New
York, secure in the championship of half a century, listened with quiet
metropolitan scorn to the noise of the shouting provinces; but when the
crimson phantasms marched out of the Park, on the evening of the 15th of
July, New York, with metropolitan magnanimity, confessed he