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History of the Old Town Holiday Inn Select

 The General Washington Tavern, a hostelry and stage coach stop, was located in 1799 at the southeast comer of King  and Pitt Streets "at the sign of General Washington on a White Horse".  By the 1860's, the tavern had become a small hotel known as The Marshall House, now the site of The Old Town Holiday Inn Select.  The Marshall House attracted the attention of the entire country when the first blood of the Civil War was shed within its walls.

Accounts of what happened at the Marshall House graphically demonstrate the depth of emotions which split the Union asunder, resulting in the "irrepressible conflict' between North and South. Colonel Elmer E. Ellsworth of the New York Fire Soaves and personal friend to President Abraham 'Lincoln, had been ordered to bring his crack regiment to Washington for the defense of the Capital City. Tradition states that the young colonel had sworn to Mrs. Lincoln, who could see the Confederate flag flying from the roof of the Marshall House through a spyglass, that he

would return the flag to her as a souvenir if his regiment could be the first one ordered to occupy Alexandria.

On May 24th, 1861, the New York Soaves reached the foot of Cameron Street by water, under cover of darkness. The proprietor of the Marshall House, James W. Jackson, was determined not to lower the. Confederate flag. Ellsworth and his men proceeded to the roof of the hotel, however, and cut the flag down from its pole.  As Ellsworth descended the stairs, the flag in his hands, Jackson met him with a gun in his hand. Accounts of what happened next differ.   According to one account, Ellsworth held up the flag and cried,  "See, I have a trophy!"  Others maintain that

Ellsworth, absorbed in folding the flag, never even noticed Jackson, but was killed instantly by the shot from Jackson's gun.  Corporal Francis E. Brownell of the Soaves immediately returned fire and shot Jackson to death in retaliation. As a result of this tragic incident, Alexandria became for a time a place of unusual partisan bitterness.

The Marshall House represents a memorial to the greatest fratricidal conflict in human history, the War 'Between the States, whose bitterness is fortunately gone forever.