{"id":3907,"date":"2011-05-11T15:00:41","date_gmt":"2011-05-11T20:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/?p=3907"},"modified":"2011-05-11T15:07:15","modified_gmt":"2011-05-11T20:07:15","slug":"new-york-zouaves-in-washington-dc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/2011\/05\/11\/new-york-zouaves-in-washington-dc\/","title":{"rendered":"New York Zouaves in Washington, DC"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a> One hundred fifty years ago today<\/a> the Cleveland (OH) Herald<\/em> published<\/a> a\u00a0report from the\u00a0Philadelphia (PA) Press<\/em> on how the New York Zouaves in Washington, DC<\/a> were called in to put out a fire at the famous Willard\u2019s Hotel. As the soldiers were unable to find any ladders, the Press<\/em>‘ correspondent\u00a0described how<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The New York boys\u2026sprang to the windows of the telegraph office, between the burning store and the main entrance to the hotel; from the window they raised members of the company on their shoulders to the next window, and thence they continued from window to window until the top of the building was gained \u2013 an adventure worthy of great commendation, as it was accomplished only through heroic daring and effort. Hose pipes were immediately handed up, and water applied to the flames, which had then broken out on the roof of the wing\u2026. The New Jersey and New York men worked heroically, and a prospect of saving the main building began to be realized.<\/p>\n

John Hay<\/a>, who worked as President Abraham Lincoln’s<\/a> secretary, noted in his diary<\/a> that \u201cEllsworths Zouaves covered themselves with glory\u2026 in saving Willard\u2019s Hotel and quenching a most ugly looking fire.\u201d \u201cThey are utterly unapproachable in anything they attempt,\u201d as Hay concluded. Yet almost two weeks later the New York Zouaves\u2019 commander, Elmer E. Ellsworth, was killed after he removed a Confederate flag<\/a> from a building in Alexandria, Virginia. \u201cSo much of promised usefulness to one’s country, and of bright hopes for one’s self and friends, have rarely been so suddenly dashed as in his fall,\u201d as President Lincoln told Ellsworth\u2019s parents<\/a>. You can learn more about Ellsworth in John Hay’s “Ellsworth<\/a>,” Atlantic Monthly<\/em> (1861) and Ruth Painter Randall’s Colonel Elmer Ellsworth: A Biography of Lincoln’s Friend and First Hero of the Civil War<\/em> (1960).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One hundred fifty years ago today the Cleveland (OH) Herald published a\u00a0report from the\u00a0Philadelphia (PA) Press on how the New York Zouaves in Washington, DC were called in to put out a fire at the famous Willard\u2019s Hotel. As the soldiers were unable to find any ladders, the Press‘ correspondent\u00a0described how: The New York boys\u2026sprang […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[80,171,172],"tags":[161],"class_list":["post-3907","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-civil-war-1861-1865","category-historic-periodicals","category-letters-diaries","tag-battles-soldiers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3907","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3907"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3907\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3912,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3907\/revisions\/3912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}