Dying for the Stars and Bars

   Symbols---they can make one swell with pride, or wretch in disgust. Take that flap about flying the Confederate flag above the state house in South Carolina, for instance. That may have been the most recent fight over that symbol, but it won't be the last, and it certainly wasn't the first.
   The guns had barely quieted at Fort Sumter when President Lincoln ordered that Alexandria, Virginia, just across the Potomac, be taken from the Rebel hands. After all, there staring him in the face each morning was the Confederate flag flying atop the Marshall House, and he wanted it taken down.
   The soldier who was placed in charge of this detail was Colonel Elmer Ellsworth, one of the four soldiers who formed the president's body guard. Ellsworth's orders were simple. Take the town and remove that flag. the former was easy, but the latter had its price.
   Ellsworth's troops landed early in the morning of May 24, 1861. There was no resistance, so the Colonel marched directly to the Marshall House, where the offending bit of bunting waved in the breeze. Flanked by a quartet of soldiers, Ellsworth climbed to the second story of the hotel unmolested.
   From one of the top windows he clambered out onto the roof and cut the flag from its staff. With the emblem in hand, Ellsworth then made his way back to the stairs from which he intended to descend and make secure his occupation of Alexandria.
   He had no more than reached the top step when from out of the shadows lurched an enraged Rebel who would not stand for such an abominable sacrilege as the desecration of the Confederate flag. He raised a gun to Ellsworth's heart and fired, killing him instantly. Needless to say, the assassin was quickly dispatched as well.
   They brought Ellsworth to Washington where Lincoln mourned the fallen soldier, calling him the "greatest little man I ever met." In the meantime, the Confederate flag went back up on the Marshall House, but it flew in thousands of other places, and as recent events show, it still stirs the emotions of partisans, almost 140 years after that first forced removal of the stars and bars.