am the only
earthly stay of my parents; there is a young woman whose happiness I
regard as dearer than my own: yet I could ask no better death than to
fall next week before Sumter. I am not better than other men. You will
find that patriotism is not dead, even if it sleeps."

Sumter fell, and the sleeping awoke. The spirit of Ellsworth, cramped by
a few weeks' intercourse with politicians, sprang up full-statured
in the Northern gale. He cut at once the meshes of red tape that had
hampered and held him, threw up his commission, and started for New York
without orders, without assistance, without authority, but with the
consciousness that the President would sustain him. The rest the world
knows. I will be brief in recalling it.

In an incredibly short space of time he enlisted and organized a
regiment, eleven hundred strong, of the best fighting material that ever
went to war. He divided it, according to an idea of his own, into
groups of four comrades each, for the campaign. He exercised a personal
supervision over the most important and the most trivial minutiae of the
regimental business. The quick sympathy of the public still followed
him. He became the idol of the Bowery and the pet of the Avenue. Yet not
one instant did he waste in recreation or lionizing. Indulgent to all
others, he was merciless to himself. He worked day and night, like an
incarnation of Energy. When he arrived with his men in Washington, he
was thin, hoarse, flushed, but entirely contented and happy, because
busy and useful.

Of the bright enthusiasm and the quenchless industry of the next few
weeks what need to speak? Every day, by his unceasing toil and care, by
his vigor, alertness, activity, by his generosity, and by his relentless
rigor when duty commanded, he grew into the hearts of his robust and
manly followers, until every man in the regiment feared him as a Colonel
should be feared, and loved him as a brother should be loved.

On the night of the twenty-third of May, he called his men together,
and made a brief, stirring speech to them, announcing their orders to
advance on Alexandria. "Now, boys, go to bed, and wake up at two o'clock
for a sail and a skirmish." When the camp was silent, he began to work.
He wrote many hours, arranging the business of the regiment. He finished
his labor as the midnight stars were crossing the zenith. As he sat in
his tent by the shore, it seems as if the mystical gales from the near
eternity must