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Piece of bloodstained floor covering and fragment of
the Confederate flag from the Marshall House
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The Marshall House occupied the corner of King Street
and Pitt Street in Alexandria. Contemporary accounts described
it as being a second-class hotel. Yet after the Ellsworth-Jackson
shootings, the property became a mecca for sightseers.
Thousands of Union soldiers passing through Alexandria
during the war toured the Marshall House, and many carried
away souvenirs of the building. Mary Henry, daughter of
the Smithsonian Institution’s secretary, Joseph Henry,
visited the Marshall House eleven days after the shootings.
She noticed that the banisters and two of the stairs near
where Ellsworth had fallen, as well as pieces of the windows
and doors, “have already been carried off as relics.”
And she admitted to walking away with “a small piece
of the flag staff.”
Shown here is a piece of bloodstained floor covering
and a fragment of the Confederate flag, which Ellsworth
removed from a flagpole on the roof.
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History of Technology, Armed Forces History
National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution
Behring Center
Gift of M. F. Healy
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