Thomas Ewing Jr.: Frontier Lawyer and Civil War General Reprint Edition
By Ronald D. Smith
University of Missouri Press
Copyright © 2008 The Curators of the University of Missouri
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8262-2179-7
Contents
Preface,
Acknowledgments,
Abbreviations,
Part One HARDSCRABBLE,
1. The Judgment of Heaven on a Country,
2. Le Grand Détour,
3. Mortgages, Press Books, and Office Boys,
4. Mr. Chief Justice and a Man Named Lincoln,
Part Two THEY'D AS SOON FIGHT THE DEVIL AS TO FIGHT KANSAS MEN,
5. A World Was Watching,
6. Ewing's Light Artillery,
7. Exterminate Them, Root and Branch,
8. The Visible Interposition of God,
9. Thermopylae of the West,
Part Three THE POLITICS OF MONEY,
10. Dr. Mudd's Trial and Widow Adie's Cotton,
11. The Gathering of Evil Birds,
12. The Crédit Mobilier and "His Fraudulency",
13. Sweaty Old Coins and Last Hurrahs,
Bibliography,
Index,
CHAPTER 1
THE JUDGMENT OF HEAVEN ON A COUNTRY
Scottish-born Thomas Ewing, the first of several Thomas Ewings of America, settled in Greenwich, New Jersey, just before the Revolutionary War. Although Ewing's ancestry was traceable to Cadet Finley Colquhoun, an Orangeman allied with William of Orange in 1690 at the Battle of the Boyne, a century later during the American Revolutionary War Thomas's son, George Ewing, distinguished himself at Brandywine as a common soldier leading a section of artillery. George mustered out of the Continental army a dirt-poor captain who sold his inheritance to make ends meet. Destitute, like many new Americans the soldiers found fortune and a life in the West — the West at that time being western Virginia. George Ewing moved his family to a dirt farm in West Liberty, although some of his relatives complained that he "read too much" to become a good farmer. In 1787 the Founding Fathers were crafting the Constitution, with its slavery compromises prompting delegate George Mason to predict that the institution in America was a "slow poison," which would in time bring the "judgment of heaven on a country" where great sins would be punished with "national calamities." Two years later, a second Thomas Ewing in Finley Colquhoun's line was born. In 1792 George Ewing moved on, taking his young family further west, to Lancaster in central Ohio. This is where the family's meandering ended.
Lancaster at the time was not much more than a fortified stockade to deter marauding Indian bands. In politics George Ewing embraced federalism. Like the politics of the time, factionalism was taken seriously and could be virulent. When Aaron Burr happened to visit Lancaster in 1805, the young Thomas Ewing saw George Ewing being uncharacteristically rude to the former vice president. Only after the stranger left did the boy learn Burr's role in the dueling death of Alexander Hamilton.
By day Thomas Ewing labored on his father's farm and taught himself to read. Indeed he read books so rapidly that the family suspected some sort of genius within him. He was among the first American college graduates west of the Alleghenies. In 1816 Thomas was admitted to the Bar after studying with Philemon Beecher. When "Pa" Beecher went to Congress in 1818, Thomas Ewing began a renowned legal career. He was first a local prosecutor before building his civil practice in real estate law. While lawyers helped the less fortunate through pro bono cases, his important efforts were reserved for cases involving men of business. In January 1828 Thomas Ewing was admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court.
A patient man, he approached all things methodically. In 1819 he had to find a way to bridge the chasm between his own Presbyterianism and the Roman Catholicism of Maria Boyle, the daughter of the local court clerk and the woman he wanted to marry. He tolerated Catholicism because she demanded it of him. In return she bore him seven children, over seventeen years, all in the big house at High and Main streets in Lancaster. Three of his children became strong Catholics like Maria. Eleanor was known as Ellen to the family. Hugh, the second youngest boy, was a scrapper throughout his young life. Their daughter Maria eventually led a Catholic nunnery. Tom Jr. took on more of his father's deist ways. The oldest and the youngest were boys: Philemon and Charles, respectively. Furthermore, Thomas and Maria also raised three children of Ewing's sister Rachel, and a second cousin, Lewis Wolfley. For Thomas Ewing Sr. the phrase "devoted family man" was an understatement.
In addition Thomas Ewing took into his home nine-year-old Tecumseh Sherman, the sixth child of their neighbors Charles and Mary Sherman. The Shermans were also Revolutionary War refugees and had immigrated to Ohio after British Tories burned them out of colonial Connecticut. Charles Sherman had a small law practice that he was using to pay off debts from ill-timed efforts as a state tax collector in 1816. In Ohio in that era, Supreme Court justices were elected by the legislature, and Ewing had used his power there to get Sherman a position on the Ohio Supreme Court. The salary helped with the family debts, but then Charles Sherman died suddenly from a heart attack in 1829. Times had been hand-to-mouth even on Sherman's court salary. Now life became unbearable, and Mary Sherman had to divide her eleven children among relatives and friends. Extraordinarily loyal to his friends, Thomas Ewing took over Sherman's debts and volunteered to take Cump Sherman into his home. This was fine with Maria Ewing, except she insisted that no boy would live in the Ewing house without a proper first name, so the Christian name William was given to the redheaded boy.
Hugh Boyle Ewing was born on the last day of October 1826, and the attachment to the Catholic holiday All Saints Day colored much of his life. While All Hallows Eve had a pagan origin, Hugh Ewing always felt something very Catholic about his birthday. Much of his life he gave to the Catholic Church or at least its outward trappings. His religion formed patterns in his life, one of which was his dedicated journalizing of his every day. From him we learn much about the Ewing family, and that his earliest memories were religious in nature, a characteristic he shared with his older sister, Ellen, to whom he grew the closest. There was no Catholic church in Lancaster (the nearest was in Somerset, a half-day's ride away), thus Sunday mass was not always celebrated. When they stayed home the children and servants assembled in the big house, and Maria Ewing read aloud the mass prayers and led them in reciting the rosary. Catechism was rooted in reading Butler's Lives of the Saints
Although he was devout during his youth, Catholicism did not take root with Hugh until later in life. He was not the model son; this role was filled by Phil, the eldest. Hugh and Tom Ewing were three years apart and exceptionally normal, indeed ornery, in all respects. Hugh terrorized Tom and little Charley with whoppers about "hooper" snakes that could anatomically coil into a wheel and roll down hills, then skewer gullible younger brothers with their tail.
Smaller than his peers, Hugh was the "runt" of his crowd. The nickname infuriated him so much that he made up for it with an innate aggressiveness. If their gang needed a ringleader, Hugh was usually the one chosen. His first school was in a red frame building on Main Street run by Williamson Wright, a parson's son, a thoroughly unpopular and gloomy man. Wright's unusual ideas for punishment included forcing...
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