From my growing up I had heard about Zouave units associated with the American Civil War but didn’t know much more about it. According to Wikipedia it wasn’t until 1859 that Zouaves were brought to the American public attention when Elmer Ellsworth toured nationally with a Zouave drill company. Apparently it caught on. One of the first things I noticed after the Civil War Sesquicentennial began was a large number of clippings from Seneca County, New York newspapers about a Zouave unit organized by James E. Ashcroft, a resident of Seneca Falls, that gave public demonstrations of its skill in light infantry tactics. Mr. Ashcroft organized a non-Zouave company for the 19th New York Infantry after the shooting started at Fort Sumter. Both the Union and Confederacy fielded Zouave units during the Civil War.
According to that Wikipedia link Zouaves “gradually vanished from the U.S. military in the 1870s and 1880s, as the militia system slowly transformed into the National Guard.” Nevertheless, according to the August 15, 1868 issue of Harper’s Weekly, 150 years ago this summer a company of Zouaves from Boston traveled to Manhattan for a drill competition against a New York City unit.