When South Carolina seceded and Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers to save the Union, Daniel Sickles saw a chance to salvage honor and prestige. Commanding men in battle earned far more glory than orating in the U.S. Capitol, and the public loved a military hero, so Sickles immediately petitioned New York Governor Edwin Morgan for permission to raise eight companies of volunteers, the bulk of a regiment.

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Morgan, a Republican governor in a state whose largest city was overwhelmingly Democratic, needed help from across the aisle and granted Sickles’ request. Immediately, the former congressman went to work. From his headquarters in City Hall Park, Sickles and second-in-command Captain William Wiley pulled many of their old Tammany Hall strings to drum up men. They contacted newspapers for press coverage and touted their unit as being composed entirely of “‘picked men,’ Democratic…in politics, but Union to the very marrow of the back bone.” Within two weeks, Sickles’ eight companies were full and Governor Morgan authorized Sickles to recruit an additional four regiments to form a brigade.

In the early days of 1861, when more men were enlisting than there were experienced military men to command them, whoever recruited a unit was likely to become its commander. As commander of a brigade, Sickles would likely become a general when his men were mustered into service. The pursuit of that rank would become Sickles’ obsession in the coming months. From disgraced politician to respected general was a phoenix’s rebirth, and Sickles worked feverishly to complete his transformation. Sickles called on men of importance for support and spoke wherever potential recruits might assemble. An old friend of his, Charles K. Graham, was persuaded to take charge of a regiment. Graham had served in the U.S. Navy during the Mexican War and was working as a construction engineer at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, a position of considerable power and patronage. Graham brought with him not just military experience and managerial expertise, but also more than 400 Navy Yard workers and sailors. They would constitute the core of the 5th Regiment of Sickles’ Brigade. Sickles persuaded an independent regiment, which had been recruiting since April, to join his brigade. These men became the 2nd Regiment. Sickles had connections with the New York Fire Department, and an entire regiment of firemen became the brigade’s 4th Regiment. They were Zouaves, imitators of colorful French Algerian troops. Sickles also found real Zouaves, French veterans of the Crimean War who were living in New York. These men joined an independent Zouave Company that would become Co. B of the Fifth Regiment.

Over the course of the spring, Sickles continued to pull strings, speak wherever possible, and hold recruitment drives. The congressman’s past disgrace forgotten in a time of crisis, men signed up to be part of the brigade the famous Sickles promised would be the best in the Union. Whole companies poured into New York to serve under the politician. Sickles’ secretary boasted “no fewer than seventeen regiments, and one hundred and twenty additional companies, making in all twenty-nine thousand men, have applied within six weeks to form part of the Excelsior Brigade.” It was an exaggeration, certainly, but indicative of considerable success nonetheless.

This boast, however, was contained in a letter to the editor of the New York Times as refutation to “unprovoked and ungenerous sentiments” published the day before. A correspondent from Washington had written, “Mr. Sickles could not raise a regiment, much less a brigade.” Even when recruiting volunteers for the Union, Sickles attracted controversy. For all his charms, it was apparent he was driven by more than mere patriotism. He was a Democrat, many of whose former political friends were now in the service of the Confederacy. He was from New York City, whose economy rested on Southern merchandise and whose streets teemed with poor immigrants. He represented Tammany Hall, the corrupt political machine that relied on the votes of those very immigrants. In short, many viewed Sickles’ city, his background and his brigade as morally bankrupt. A newspaper cartoon from a Baltimore newspaper depicts the brigade—surrounded by madams, liquor stores and cheap cigars—being recruited at Manhattan’s notorious slum Five Points, which years later provided the setting for Martin Scorsese’s film Gangs of New York. The recruits are shown to be Irish and blacks, considered the absolute dregs of 1861 Northern society.

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