Elmer E. Ellsworth, born in 1837 in Malta, New York, the son of a tailor, swapped his first and middle names as a teenager. After the wealthy father of his fiancee Carrie Spafford demanded he find respectable work, he studied law in Chicago and built the Zouave Cadets of Chicago, a drill team in baggy trousers, sashes and fezzes modeled on French colonial troops, which toured the country. In 1860 he studied law with Abraham Lincoln in Springfield, worked on the campaign, and traveled with the president-elect to Washington.

After Fort Sumter he raised the 11th New York, the Fire Zouaves, from New York’s volunteer firefighters. On May 24, 1861, as Union troops occupied Alexandria, Virginia, Ellsworth and seven men climbed to the roof of the Marshall House and cut down the large Confederate flag visible from Washington. On the stairs, innkeeper James W. Jackson, who had posed as a boarder, killed him with a shotgun, and Private Francis E. Brownell shot and bayoneted Jackson. Ellsworth, 24, lay in state in the East Room of the White House.

• Lincoln called Ellsworth the greatest little man he ever met.
• Remember Ellsworth became a recruiting slogan, and the 44th New York called itself the Ellsworth Avengers.
• Souvenir hunters stripped the Marshall House of stair pieces, bloodstained oilcloth and a letter from its sign.
• Brownell received the Medal of Honor, and in 1894 his widow sold fragments of the flag for $10 to $15.
• A 1936 Ellsworth flagpole in Christopher Park stands within the Stonewall National Monument and has flown a Pride flag since 2017.