The Daily Dispatch: may 28, 1861., [Electronic resource]

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The Zonaves.

The Puritan propensity for humbug shows itself in military as much as in commercial life. We have all learned by sad experience the wooden nutmeg practices of New England traders, the brown paper and chip soled shoes, the hollow brass rivets of trunks, and the million of hollownesses and artifices which they have imposed upon us for generations. Humbug in trade, literature, education, has been the universal order of the day. No trick has been more enormous and profitable than that of giving big names to little things, calling every school a college, every teacher a professor, every quack a doctor, every miserable mineral puddle, a delightful watering-place, every demagogue a statesman, and every rich black guard a gentleman. They are now trying to bully the South and the world by the application to their New York rowdies of the noble title of Zouaves, which the veterans of France have made immortal. They are about as much like Zouaves as they are like angels. The Zouaves of France are the best infantry in the world. We doubt whether the world has ever seen such perfect soldiers.--Though small in stature, they have the souls of lions, and have performed feats almost unexampled in the history of war. What disgusting affectation and impudence in a regiment of New York firemen to assume such a name; to dress up their as mine carcasses in the lion's skin, and expect to frighten the whole South from its propriety by a terrific bray!