Framed Death of E. E. Ellsworth by Alonzo Chappel

Death of E. E. Ellsworth by Alonzo Chappel depicts the dramatic and historically significant death of Elmer Ephraim Ellsworth, the first Union officer killed in the American Civil War. Elmer E. Ellsworth was a close friend of President Abraham Lincoln and a Union Army Colonel. On May 24, 1861, one day after Virginia officially seceded from the Union, Ellsworth led a regiment into Alexandria, Virginia, to remove a Confederate flag flying above the Marshall House Inn. As Ellsworth descended the stairs after cutting down the flag, he was shot and killed by James W. Jackson, the inn’s proprietor and a Confederate sympathizer. Ellsworth’s death shocked the North, making him a martyr for the Union cause.