Richard S. Ewell: A Soldier's Life

RICHARD S. EWELL

CIVIL WAR AMERICA

Gary W. Gallagher, editor

RICHARD S.

EWELL

A Soldier’s Life

Donald C. Pfanz

THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA PRESS

CHAPEL HILL AND LONDON

© 1998 The University of North Carolina Press

All rights reserved

Designed by Heidi Perov

Set in Adobe Garamond

by G & S Typesetters, Inc.

Manufactured in the United States of America

The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Pfanz, Donald.

Richard S. Ewell: a soldier’s life / by Donald C. Pfanz.

p. cm. — (Civil War America)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN-13: 978-0-8078-2389-7 (cloth : alk. paper)

ISBN-10: 8078-2389-9 (cloth : alk. paper)

ISBN-13: 978-0-8078-5817-2 (pbk. : alk. paper)

ISBN-10: 0-8078-5817-X (pbk. : alk. paper)

1. Ewell, Richard Stoddert, 1817–1872. 2. Generals—Confederate

States of America—Biography. 3. Confederate States of America.

Army—Biography. 4. Virginia—History—Civil War, 1861–1865—

Campaigns. I. Title. II. Series.

E467.1.E86P44 1998

973.7′3—dc21 97-21473

CIP

Frontispiece: Richard S. Ewell (Library of Congress)

02 01 00 99 98 5 4 3 2 1

10 09 08 07 06 5 4 3 2 1

THIS BOOK WAS DIGITALLY PRINTED.

TO MY PARENTS,

Harry and Letitia Pfanz,

whom I love and admire

Contents

PREFACE

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ONE Stony Lonesome

TWO West Point

THREE Not above His Merit

FOUR A Man Much Esteemed

FIVE To the Cannon’s Mouth

SIX Rayado and Los Lunas

SEVEN A Belle of the First Water

EIGHT Fort Buchanan

NINE No Orders, No Orders

TEN Hope and Love and Devotion

ELEVEN The Road to Glory

TWELVE Attack at Daylight

THIRTEEN A Question of Legs

FOURTEEN The Men Are Willing to Follow Him

FIFTEEN I Think We Have Them Now!

SIXTEEN A Little More Grape

SEVENTEEN Fallen Warrior

EIGHTEEN A Funeral and a Promotion

NINETEEN The Idol of His Corps

TWENTY High Times in Pennsylvania

TWENTY-ONE Gettysburg

TWENTY-TWO The Natural Condition of Man

TWENTY-THREE Autumn of Discontent

TWENTY-FOUR Petticoat Government

TWENTY-FIVE Strike the Enemy Wherever I Find Him

TWENTY-SIX Struggle for the Muleshoe

TWENTY-SEVEN I Am Unwilling to Be Idle at This Crisis

TWENTY-EIGHT The Department of Richmond

TWENTY-NINE The Jig Is Up!

THIRTY Fort Warren

THIRTY-ONE Cotton Fever

THIRTY-TWO Peace

EPILOGUE The Right Arm of Jackson

APPENDIX A Ewell Family Genealogy

APPENDIX B Stoddert Family Genealogy

APPENDIX C Lizinka’s Landholdings

APPENDIX D Ewell Cemetery Plots at Williamsburg

APPENDIX E Ewell’s Staff

APPENDIX F Campbell Family Genealogy

APPENDIX G The Ewell-at-Manassas Controversy

APPENDIX H A Chronology of Events on 24 May 1862

APPENDIX I Auburn and Dunblane

APPENDIX J When Was Ewell Shot?

APPENDIX K Ewell’s Capture at Sailor’s Creek

NOTES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX

Maps

The West 36

Mexican War 53

New Mexico, 1850–1857 71

Arizona, 1857–1860 94

Fairfax Court House 126

First Manassas 136

Shenandoah Valley 169

Front Royal and Winchester 184

Cross Keys and Port Republic 212

Gaines’s Mill 226

Malvern Hill 233

Second Manassas and Ewell’s Ambulance Route 255

Second Winchester 285

Gettysburg Campaign 293

Gettysburg 306

Fall 1863 340

The Wilderness 365

Spotsylvania Court House 380

Richmond and Petersburg 407

Fort Harrison 415

Richmond to City Point 433

Sailor’s Creek 438

Illustrations

Richard S. Ewell frontispiece

Col. Jesse Ewell 3

Ewell’s sword 3

Bel Air 4

Halcyon House 6

Four Chimney House 7

Benjamin Stoddert 9

Stoddert children 10

West Point, ca. 1840 23

Stephen W. Kearny 43

Lizinka as a young girl 83

Lizinka as a young woman 85

Battle of the Gila, 1857 96

Lizzie Ewell 101

Patagonia Mine 104

William and Mary faculty cemetery 111

William Extra Billy Smith 127

Campbell Brown 133

Lizinka as an older woman 147

Arnold Elzey 152

Richard Taylor 153

Isaac R. Trimble 154

Thomas J. Stonewall Jackson 163

Prayer in Stonewall Jackson’s camp 179

Ewell of the Valley 187

George H. Steuart 189

Jubal A. Early 231

Dunblane 259

Stonewall Jackson in prayer 267

James A. Walker 269

Edward Johnson 278

Robert E. Rodes 304

Joseph W. Latimer 317

Robert E. Lee 323

Morton’s Hall 358

John M. Jones 366

John B. Gordon 372

Benjamin S. Ewell 413

Ewell’s headquarters at the Chaffin farm 420

The surrender of Ewell’s corps at Sailor’s Creek 440

Mabel Appleton 457

Lizinka’s house in Nashville 462

Harriot (Hattie) Brown Turner 470

Thomas T. Turner 471

Spring Hill 473

Lizinka C. (Lily) Turner 477

Susan Polk Brown 479

The Ewells’ tomb 498

Preface

During its four-year existence, the Army of Northern Virginia had seven infantry corps commanders: James Longstreet, Stonewall Jackson, John Gordon, A. P. Hill, Jubal Early, Dick Anderson, and Dick Ewell. The first five have received wide attention; Anderson and Ewell, by contrast, have been all but ignored. In the 130 years since the Civil War, Ewell has been the subject of just two biographies: Percy G. Hamlin’s standard, "Old Bald Head," published in 1940, and Samuel J. Martin’s more recent The Road to Glory. Hamlin’s work provides an overview of the general’s life, but it lacks depth. Martin’s book probes more deeply into Ewell’s Civil War career, but it fails to utilize many important primary sources.

My first goal in writing this book is to provide a complete and detailed account of Ewell’s life. Biographies of Civil War generals all too often focus exclusively on the war years, glossing over the subject’s life before and after the conflict. While the Civil War was certainly the defining event of Ewell’s life, it encompassed just four of his fifty-five years. The other periods of his life also deserve attention. As an officer in the First U.S. Dragoons, Ewell participated in two famous cross-country expeditions, fought in the Mexican War, and played an instrumental role in the settlement of the American Southwest. He crossed paths with Kit Carson, was an adversary of Cochise, and served in Mexico with the likes of Philip Kearny and Robert E. Lee. After the war, Ewell moved to Tennessee and created one of the finest stock farms in that state. His career peaked between 1861 and 1865, but it did not begin and end there.

My second goal is to provide a balanced view of Ewell’s personality. Douglas Southall Freeman has done more than any other individual to shape the public’s perception of Ewell’s character. In his classic work, Lee’s Lieutenants, Freeman portrays Ewell as a quirky and hot-tempered (if lovable) eccentric, known as much for his cussing as for his fighting. His description is not so much wrong as it is incomplete. By stressing the general’s idiosyncrasies, Freeman obscures the fact that Ewell was an intelligent, hard-working professional who knew his business and did it well. He was an officer who led by example. At Cross Keys, Port Republic, and a half-dozen other battles besides, he was in the thick of the combat. Two injuries, four dead horses, and an untold number of close calls attest to his bravery under fire.

Ewell was a high-strung individual and often lost his temper in times of extreme stress. Otherwise, he was an eminently likable man. His offbeat sense of humor, unaffected manners, and kindness toward others won him many friends. Dr. Hunter McGuire referred to him as brave, chivalrous, splendid, eccentric Dick Ewell, whom everybody loved, and others echoed that sentiment.¹ Ewell’s most admirable trait, perhaps, was his modesty. Although he led the successful charge at Port Republic, encouraged his men by his bravery under fire at Gaines’s Mill, and rallied his troops at Fort Harrison, you will see no evidence of it in his official reports or in his personal correspondence. Ewell lavished praise on his subordinates, but he never sought it for himself. In an army brimming with ambitious officers, he stands out for his genuine modesty.

Finally, I have sought to reexamine Ewell’s military career in light of modern scholarship. Again it was Freeman who set the tone for subsequent interpretations of Ewell’s generalship. Freeman considered Ewell to be an able subordinate but felt that he lacked the capacity for independent command. He based his judgment on the postwar writings of men such as Jubal Early, Isaac Trimble, and John Gordon, who criticized Ewell and others in order to bolster their own reputations. Freeman accepted their self-serving comments at face value, as have most historians since then.

An analysis of Ewell’s career, however, shows him to have been a remarkably talented officer who knew how to handle troops in combat. In addition to being a stubborn fighter, he was an able administrator and arguably the best marcher in the army. Recent tactical studies confirm his ability. In the Shenandoah Valley and the Wilderness, at the Seven Days and Second Winchester, he performed well and sometimes brilliantly. Even his performance at Gettysburg does not appear to have been as flawed as previously thought; certainly it was no worse than those of Lee, Longstreet, Stuart, or A. P. Hill. As to his supposed incapacity for independent command, one needs only to examine the record. Of the four major engagements in which Ewell exercised field command, he won decided victories at three: Cross Keys, Second Winchester, and Fort Harrison. The remaining battle, Sailor’s Creek, found him overwhelmed by a Union force more than twice his size. Even then he surrendered only after his corps was surrounded. That is not to say that Ewell made no mistakes. He stumbled at Gettysburg, his tactics at Groveton lacked imagination, and his performance at Spotsylvania was riddled with flaws. But when weighed against his many accomplishments, these shortcomings appear small. When the balance sheet is tallied up, Ewell’s successes as a general far outweigh his failures.

Acknowledgments

In writing this book, I have received help from countless individuals and institutions. First and foremost I wish to thank my father, Harry W. Pfanz, who read and reread the manuscript, weeding out errors and offering valuable suggestions for its improvement. As a preeminent authority on Gettysburg, his insights and suggestions regarding that pivotal battle were particularly helpful. No less important was his encouragement throughout the writing of this book. Because of his support, the world waits for Ewell no longer.

Robert K. Krick of Fredericksburg, Virginia, was also instrumental in the completion of this book. He passed along to me dozens of Ewell-related items over the years, then meticulously read through the manuscript, pointing out errors and polishing the prose. This book would be poorer if not for his considerable efforts.

Gordon Rhea proofread the chapters on the battles of the Wilderness and Spotsylvania Court House. Just as important, he offered valuable advice on eliminating awkward expressions, unnecessary words, and superfluous phrases. The text is cleaner and more concise because of his suggestions.

Historians Chris Calkins, John Hennessy, Robert E. L. Krick, and George Stammerjohan graciously took time to read over individual chapters of the manuscript. They passed on to me arcane information about the general that they uncovered while pursuing research of their own. George, in particular, went out of his way in sending me information about Ewell’s service in the Old Army.

While a historian at Manassas National Battlefield Park, Robert E. L. Krick did some fine research on General Ewell’s wounding. He sent me some interesting correspondence between Ewell and Lawrence O’Bryan Branch not found in the Official Records, as well as other bits of information gleaned in his research. He also provided information regarding the members of Ewell’s staff.

Throughout this project I received the support of many of Lizinka Campbell Brown Ewell’s descendants, particularly Dace Farrer of Prospect, Kentucky; James A. Lyon of Chattanooga, Tennessee; the late Susan B. Lyon of Murfreesboro, Tennessee; Lucia Brownell of Birmingham, Alabama; Lizinka Benton of Houston, Texas; Cathy Charnley of Atlanta, Georgia; and the late Lizinka Mosley of Nashville, Tennessee. I also wish to express my gratitude to members of the Ewell family, particularly Mrs. Nathaniel McGregor Ewell Jr. of Charlottesville, Virginia, and Judge John Ewell of Front Royal.

My colleagues in the National Park Service have been a constant source of help and support. In addition to those mentioned above, I wish to thank Noel Harrison, Keith Bohannon, Paul Shevchuk, David Sherman, and Jimmy Blankenship, all of whom have sent me Ewell items over the years.

General Ewell suffered from a number of illnesses throughout his life. Doctors Joseph C. Greenfield Jr., Marvin Rozear, and G. Ralph Corey of the Duke University Medical Center analyzed the general’s various symptoms and proposed theories concerning his medical condition. If Ewell had had such a talented medical team on his side after the Civil War, he might have lived a quarter-century longer.

Individuals at various libraries graciously gave of their time. My thanks go to John White at the Southern Historical Collection of the University of North Carolina; Dr. Richard Sommers of the U.S. Army Military History Institute at Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania; Michael Musick and his coworkers at the National Archives; John Coski and Robert Hancock at the Museum of the Confederacy; Robert DePriest and Ruth Jarvis of the Tennessee State Library and Archives; Mr. Worley and Ms. Dodd of the Hopewell, Virginia, Library; Marie T. Capps and Suzanne Christoff at the United States Military Institute; Corey Seeman of the Chicago Historical Society; and Margaret Cook of the College of William and Mary. John Hogan of the Prince William Mapping Agency; Betty Loudon of the Nebraska State Historical Society; Charles W. Turner of Lexington, Virginia; James Hoobler of the Tennessee Historical Society; and Carol Friedman of Fairfax County were also helpful in my research, as were Dr. Linda A. McCurdy of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and June Cunningham of the Virginia Military Institute Museum. Archivist James J. Holmberg deserves special mention for alerting me to the presence of the Brown-Ewell Family Papers owned by the Filson Club.

In the course of my research I was fortunate to visit many sites associated with General Ewell’s life. I would like to thank the following individuals for kindly permitting me to visit their property: Dr. William E. S. Flory of Bel Air, Audrey Weichman of Stony Lonesome, William O. Hutchison and Rumsey Light of Auburn, Ed Davies of Dunblane, and Dr. and Mrs. Walter Brown of Spring Hill.

Terry Jones of Northeast Louisiana University provided me with much useful information on the Brown family, while Christine McDonald, Jill K. Garrett, and Dr. William Haywood of Columbia, Tennessee, kindly sent me information about General Ewell’s postwar life in Tennessee.

Constance Wynn Altshuler offered several helpful suggestions for sources about Ewell’s life in the Southwest. By like token, Harry Myers of Put-in-Bay, Ohio, was gracious in answering questions about Ewell’s life at Fort Scott. Mildred Tyner of Culpeper, Virginia, kindly permitted me to consult a letter written by General Ewell that is in her possession.

Ed Raus and the late John E. Divine accompanied me on a very informative tour of the sites associated with Ewell’s wounding and amputation. Other historians from whom I have received assistance and guidance in my research include authors Clark B. Hall, Burke Davis, Robert Garth Scott, Noah Andre Trudeau, Joseph Glatthaar, Patricia Hurst, and William D. Matter.

I also wish to express my appreciation to Wallace A. Hebert of Columbia, Tennessee; Robert and Karen Amster of Petersburg, Virginia; William H. Willcox of Washington, D.C.; Stephen L. Ritchie of Muncie, Indiana; Gray Golden of Austin, Texas; and Theodore P. Yeatman of the Tennessee Western History and Folklore Society in Nashville, Tennessee.

Ed P. Coleman of Petersburg, New Jersey, skillfully produced the maps in this book. I appreciate his patience and hard work. I also wish to thank editors David Perry, Ron Maner, and Stephanie Wenzel, series editor Gary W. Gallagher, and other individuals at the University of North Carolina Press for making this book a reality.

Finally, I wish to thank my wife, Betty, whose love, tolerance, and good nature is a constant source of wonder and inspiration to me.

RICHARD S. EWELL

CHAPTER 1: Stony Lonesome

Across the rolling plains of northern Virginia a new morning dawned. It was a soft spring day in May: bright, cool, refreshing. In the pastures cows nibbled quietly at the grass, while across the land farmers hitched up their plough horses for another day’s labor. The year was 1861.

At a farmhouse ten miles west of Manassas, a forty-four-year-old man bid his brother and sister farewell and rode off to war. He carried little in the way of personal baggage, for by profession he was a soldier and accustomed to traveling light. Richard Stoddert Ewell had been an officer in the U.S. Dragoons for more than twenty years. In that time he had served primarily at frontier posts in the West, where, as he claimed, he had learned all there was to know about commanding fifty dragoons and had forgotten everything else.¹ Those who knew him might have added that he was one of the army’s most competent and experienced Indian fighters.

This time, however, Dick Ewell would not be fighting Apaches but U.S. soldiers. Virginia and other Southern states had recently seceded from the Union, throwing the country into civil war. It was a prospect Ewell abhorred. Like most Regular Army officers, he felt a strong loyalty to the flag that he had long and faithfully served. His ties with the United States seemed as strong as life itself. To break them, he later wrote, was like death to me.² Yet strong as was his allegiance to the national government, his allegiance to Virginia was stronger still. After painful deliberation he cast his lot with the South. Once he made the decision, he did not look back. The tocsin had sounded, and Dick Ewell, like his fore-fathers in earlier wars, could not ignore its call.

The Ewells were Virginia planters of English stock. Outside London, in Surrey County, stood an ancient Saxon village named Ewell, and there, according to tradition, the family took root.³ James Ewell left England about the time of the English Civil War and emigrated to Virginia’s eastern shore. A brickmaker by trade, James settled at Pungoteague and became a man of substance. He married a woman named Ann and left seven children.⁴

Among James Ewell’s many offspring was a boy named Charles, who became a brickmaker like his father. Charles moved across the Chesapeake Bay to Lancaster County.⁵ At a small inlet later known as Ewell’s Bay, he established Monashow, a plantation where he probably grew tobacco and other crops suited to the soil. Charles married Mary Ann Bertrand. The union produced seven children, including three boys: Charles, Bertrand, and Solomon. The youngest son, Solomon, inherited his father’s estate and went on to found the Lancaster branch of the Ewell family. His brothers, Charles and Bertrand, moved up the Potomac River to Prince William County and established the family’s Prince William line.⁶

Charles built Bel Air plantation in 1740.⁷ During his life he was a vestryman in the local parish and served as an officer in the Prince William militia. Charles’s wife, Sarah Ball, was a first cousin of George Washington’s mother, Mary Ball. Of the couple’s four children, three survived to maturity. Their only daughter, Mariamne, married Dr. James Craik, who became chief physician and surgeon of the Continental Army. Craik is best remembered for his close association with Washington, who referred to him in his will as my compatriot in arms, an old and intimate friend. When Washington died at Mount Vernon in 1799, Craik was one of three doctors at his bedside.⁸

Besides Mariamne, Charles Ewell had two sons who survived to maturity. Both took wives within the family. His oldest son, Jesse, married his first cousin Charlotte Ewell in 1767. Jesse’s younger brother went one better. Col. James Ewell of Greenville married his first cousin, Mary Ewell, and when she died, he took another first cousin, Sarah Ewell, as his second wife.

Jesse inherited Bel Air. Following the pattern of public service set by his father, Jesse served as an officer in the county militia and was a vestryman in Dettinger Parish. As a young man he attended the College of William and Mary, and while there, he became a close friend of his Albemarle County classmate Thomas Jefferson. The two men remained friends until Jesse’s death in 1805. They corresponded frequently, and Jesse occasionally hosted Jefferson at his home. During the Revolution, Jesse was a colonel in the militia, though his regiment apparently never saw combat. His silver-hiked rapier was later given to his grandson Richard Ewell, who wore it during the final years of the Civil War.⁹

The marriage of Jesse and Charlotte Ewell resulted in no fewer than seventeen children. One daughter, Fanny, married the Reverend Mason Locke Weems, the author of a popular early biography of Washington. Parson Weems’s stories of young Washington cutting down the cherry tree and throwing a coin across the Rappahannock, though probably fictional, have long been part of American lore.¹⁰

Col. Jesse Ewell of Bel Air (Alice M. Ewell, Virginia Scene)

The hilt of Col. Jesse Ewell’s sword from the American Revolution. General Ewell wore the sword during the last half of the Civil War. (Judge John Ewell)

Bel Air, the home of Col Jesse Ewell (Donald C. Pfanz)

Fanny’s younger brother Thomas, born in 1785, was Charlotte Ewell’s fourteenth child.¹¹ Thomas had a brilliant but erratic mind and a fiery, restless disposition. As a young man he studied medicine under Dr. Benjamin Rush at the University of Pennsylvania. Following his graduation in 1805, Thomas received an appointment as a surgeon in the U.S. Navy through the influence of his father’s friend Thomas Jefferson. He served first at New York City’s naval yard and later at Washington, D.C.¹²

For Thomas medicine was more than a profession; it was a challenge. A daughter recalled that he disliked the practise of medicine, unless the case was an exciting one, such as to call out all his powers of analysis in the symptoms and cause of disease, and the discovery of new and better modes of treatment. His quest for knowledge sometimes got him into trouble. On one occasion he was nearly mobbed by an angry crowd for dissecting the brain of a deceased patient without the consent of the man’s widow.¹³

Thomas published the results of his investigations in five books spanning almost two decades. Some of his theories were far ahead of their time. In his book Discourses on Modern Chemistry, for instance, he promoted the use of chemical fertilizers, soil testing, and insect control to increase crop yield and advocated conservation techniques to prevent the destruction of American forests. Some of his ideas spawned controversy within the medical community. His book Letters to Ladies, remembered one descendant, shocked the ‘delicate and refined females’ of that day by attributing their fainting fits, tears, and tantrums to illness of body and not to sensibility of soul. Pre-Victorian America was not yet ready to accept such progressive thinking.¹⁴

Only once did Thomas Ewell make a literary venture outside the field of science. That occurred in 1817 when he edited the first American edition of philosopher David Hume’s Essays. Like everything to which Thomas Ewell set his hand, the book inspired controversy. The Catholic and Episcopal Churches had proscribed Hume’s books, and Ewell was publicly censured for publishing them. The doctor was unrepentant. Although a devout Episcopalian, he found Hume instructive and believed the general public, like himself, could read books and extract what was valuable without being affected by the dross contained in them.¹⁵

On 3 March 1807 Thomas married Elizabeth Stoddert in Georgetown. James and Dolley Madison attended the ceremony. In 1808 Elizabeth delivered a daughter, whom she named Rebecca Lowndes in honor of her mother. Other births followed: Benjamin Stoddert in 1810, Paul Hamilton in 1812, and Elizabeth Stoddert in 1813. A fifth child died in childbirth, but by the summer of 1816 Elizabeth was again pregnant. On 8 February 1817 she gave birth to her third son, a boy whom she named Richard Stoddert after a deceased brother.¹⁶

Richard first saw light at his mother’s childhood home, Halcyon House, at the southwest corner of Thirty-fourth Street and Prospect Avenue in Georgetown. Built by Elizabeth’s father in 1785, the large brick building, with its rolling terraces and panoramic view of the Potomac River, was one of the oldest and grandest houses in town. Wrote one historian, No site could have been fairer and the house, as Major Stoddert built it, was worthy of the site.¹⁷

Richard retained no memories of his birthplace. When he was just one year old, his family moved to Philadelphia, where his father attended a series of medical lectures at the University of Pennsylvania. The Ewells returned to the District of Columbia in 1819 and moved into a new two-story brick house on the west side of President’s Square across from the White House. At that time Washington was still sparsely populated, and only two other buildings stood on the block: St. John’s Church and Commodore Stephen Decatur’s house. Decatur was mortally wounded in a duel with Commodore Barron a short time after the Ewells’ arrival. The Ewell children watched as his near-lifeless body was carried back to his house.¹⁸

Halcyon House, the Georgetown home of Benjamin Stoddert and the birthplace of General Ewell (Library of Congress)

The Ewells had been in Washington just one year when Thomas’s health began to fail. Apparently the doctor’s brilliance and eccentricity had led to excess. He became an alcoholic and suffered bouts of depression. The fortune he had amassed dwindled, and his successful medical practice languished.¹⁹ In 1820 the Ewells left Washington and moved to Belleville, a 1,300-acre farm in Prince William County, Virginia. Because of its rocky soil and isolated location, family members took to calling the property Stony Lonesome, a name that stuck.²⁰ In addition to Stony Lonesome, the Ewells owned four one-half-acre lots and a large house in Centreville, Virginia, called Four Chimney House.²¹ They continued to retain possession of their Washington home, which they rented to top government officials for as much as $600 a year.²²

Four Chimney House in Centreville, Virginia, once owned by the Ewell family (Library of Congress)

The Ewells were slaveholders. Census records for 1830 show two black females living at the house.²³ One of these was Fanny Brown, better known to the family as Mammy. Fanny was not actually a slave. She had been acquired as chattel by Benjamin Stoddert, but Thomas Ewell later freed her from bondage after she successfully nursed him through a dangerous fever. Fanny accompanied the Ewells to Stony Lonesome, where she managed the poultry, did the cooking, and performed other routine chores around the house. To the children she was both a comforter and adviser, and they loved her like a mother. No one dared take liberties with Fanny, however, not even Mrs. Ewell. More than once, when Elizabeth rebuked her or offered some unintentional slight, Fanny packed her bags and walked out the door. But she never made it past the front gate. Moved by the tears of the Ewell children, who followed her weeping to the road, she always changed her mind and came back—just to spite Mistis, she claimed.²⁴

Two servants, three houses, and an abundance of land gave the family an aura of wealth that it did not possess. Like many Virginians the Ewells were land poor; that is, they owned large amounts of land but had little money. A vigorous man might have scratched out a living for himself and his family under such conditions, but Thomas Ewell was no longer a vigorous man. Dissipation had sapped his strength. For six years he led what one family member described as a chequered life, struggling unsuccessfully against both alcoholism and poverty.²⁵

As Thomas’s finances declined, the size of his family increased. After Richard’s birth in 1817, Elizabeth delivered four more children. A girl named Charlotte died as an infant, but the other three—Virginia, Thomas, and William—survived, adding more mouths to an already hungry family. To support his growing clan, Thomas turned once more to medicine. In 1824 he published The American Family Physician, a popular guide to medicine. That same year he applied for a vacant chair on the faculty of the University of Virginia’s medical school. He wrote to both Thomas Jefferson and James Madison asking for letters of recommendation. Ewell’s dependence on alcohol was well known, however, and apparently neither man replied. It was his last attempt to pull himself out of poverty. In 1826, at age forty, Thomas succumbed to his disease, leaving behind a grieving wife and eight children.²⁶

Richard was nine years old when his father died. The two had never been close. Richard’s youth, his father’s alcoholism, and the large size of the family had created a chasm that was never bridged. Benjamin Ewell later confessed that as a boy he never felt his father’s proper care, and his brother might well have said the same. In all of his subsequent correspondence, Richard never once made reference to his father.²⁷

He was much closer to his mother, Elizabeth Stoddert Ewell. Elizabeth had an ancestry even more illustrious than that of her late husband. Her great-great-grandfather, Benjamin Tasker, had ruled for twenty years as president of Maryland’s Proprietary Council; a great-uncle, Samuel Ogle, had been a three-time governor; and two other great-uncles, Daniel Dulany and Benjamin Tasker Jr., had held the important post of provincial secretary.²⁸

Elizabeth’s father, Benjamin Stoddert, had been a major of cavalry in the Continental Army. A crippling wound at the battle of Brandywine in 1777 incapacitated him for field duty, but he continued to serve his country as secretary to the Board of War. After the Revolution, Stoddert moved to Georgetown, built Halcyon House, and opened a tobacco export company. Over the next decade, as Georgetown blossomed into a major port, Stoddert’s business prospered. His company hired on additional ships and opened branch offices in London and Bordeaux. Within a decade he became one of the young republic’s foremost merchants.

In 1798 John Adams appointed Stoddert to be the country’s first secretary of the navy. The United States was then on the brink of war with France, and it was Stoddert’s responsibility to create a national navy to protect the country’s coast. He succeeded brilliantly. In just three years he purchased land for six navy yards, acquired fifty ships, and recruited 6,000 sailors, including a corps of talented young officers that included David Porter, Isaac Hull, Oliver Perry, and Stephen Decatur. The naval victories later achieved by the United States in the War of 1812 resulted in large measure from the groundwork laid during Stoddert’s administration. Stoddert remained in office until 1801 and served a brief stint as secretary of war before returning to private life. Financial distress dogged his remaining years. Unwise land transactions at home and disrupted trade abroad caused his business empire to crumble. He died in 1814, a poor and embittered man.²⁹

Benjamin Stoddert, first U.S. secretary of the navy and grandfather of General Ewell (Library of Congress)

Charles Willson Peale painted this portrait of Benjamin Stoddert’s children at Halcyon House in 1789. Ewell’s mother, Elizabeth, is on the left; Lizinka’s mother, Harriot, is in the wagon; and Benjamin Stoddert Jr. (d. 1834) is at the right. (Dumbarton House Collection, Headquarters of the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America, Washington, D. C.)

Elizabeth was Benjamin Stoddert’s eldest daughter. Described as a woman of stern character modified by charity, she demanded a great deal of her children. Though a critical nephew once characterized her as a great slattern—morally, intellectually, and physically, her children remembered her better qualities: her courage, high principles, and devotion to family. Born at Halcyon House in 1784, Elizabeth moved with her parents to Philadelphia in 1798 when her father became secretary of the navy. While there, she attended an elite girls’ school and mingled with the foremost families in America. Aaron Burr, Harry Lee, Oliver Wolcott, and other prominent figures frequented the Stodderts’ Philadelphia home; so, too, did President John Adams and his wife, Abigail, who once brought plum cake for Betsy and the younger Stoddert children.³⁰

Elizabeth never let her children forget their distinguished heritage. She regarded the family’s narrow circumstances as merely a temporary condition and had no intention of allowing her children to settle into a state of vulgarity with their rough uncultivated neighbors. Disdaining outside assistance, she put her children to work. While she and her daughters taught school in Centreville, the boys ran the farm.³¹

Despite the family’s best efforts, poverty hovered at its doorstep. Supper often consisted of nothing more than a piece of cornbread, and some days not even that. More than once the children went to bed hungry. In an effort to alleviate her family’s financial distress, Elizabeth sought vocations for her children outside the home. In 1828 Benjamin left to attend the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York. About the same time Paul Ewell started attending medical lectures at Columbia College in Washington. Rebecca lived with relatives in Bladensburg, Maryland, and taught music at a nearby school. Mrs. Ewell arranged to have her second daughter, Elizabeth, teach school in Maryland, but the girl declined the offer, alledging that she had rather be at the wash tub at home, then live away. ³²

Paul pursued a career in medicine, but he died in 1831 from a liver infection or possibly typhoid. His family buried him in Centreville beside his father. A few days after Paul’s death, a human skeleton was found hanging inside a deserted house near the Ewells’ property. The family thought that someone had placed the bones there as a malicious prank, but they later discovered that the skeleton had belonged to Paul himself, who had been using it in his medical studies. Richard and a neighbor took down the offensive object and buried it. The shock of this untimely discovery threw Mrs. Ewell into a fitful illness that lasted for weeks.³³

With Paul dead and Ben at West Point, Richard became the head man of the family. He took the responsibility seriously—too seriously, in the opinion of his older sister Elizabeth. Richard is master and thinks himself mistress too, she wrote Ben. You would be amused to see the air with which he struts along. With more charity she added, He is very useful though and a good boy.

Richard was just fourteen when his brother died. Even at that young age he had developed certain character traits that would mark his personality in years to come. In him one could see the practical, precise mind of his grandfather Benjamin Stoddert and, negatively, the cynicism and sharp tongue of his mother, Elizabeth. The similarities to his deceased father were more pronounced still. Richard possessed Thomas Ewell’s violent temper, high intellect, nervous energy, and love of alcohol. Fortunately he escaped most of his father’s excesses, but he did not escape his father’s eccentricity—at least not entirely. Generations of inbreeding among the Ewells had given the whole family a certain imbalance of mind; just how much may be judged by the fact that Dick was regarded as the only normal member of the clan.³⁴

The family’s poverty and the responsibility of managing the farm left their stamp on Richard’s personality. He was more mature, disciplined, and serious than other boys his age. Although he never developed polished manners, young Ewell learned things of greater importance: integrity, industry, and honesty. Thanks to his mother he also learned humility. It was a disgrace to push, she would lecture, except at work.³⁵ Like his mother, Ewell had a sharp tongue and spoke his mind freely. A story from his early life tells of him receiving a Bible from his Sunday School teacher, Nelson Lloyd. When he accepted the gift without a word, his mother felt constrained to prompt, Aren’t you going to thank Mr. Lloyd for it? The blood probably rushed to her face when her son answered, I never asked him for it.³⁶

Although rough around the edges, Richard had a good heart. When just thirteen years old, he rode to a neighboring town with his brother Tom to sell the farm’s produce at market. Night overtook the boys as they were coming home, forcing them to seek shelter under a tree. It was early spring, and as the temperature dropped, Tom became chilled. To protect him from the damp night air, Richard took off his coat and placed it over his brother’s shoulders. Tom was sickly, he later explained, and Mother would be uneasy. The two boys reached home the next day safe and sound.³⁷

Richard’s most conspicuous attribute as a boy was his bravery. One day, at the age of eighteen, he was working in the fields when he saw a rabid dog headed toward the farmhouse. Thinking quickly, he unhitched the plow, leaped onto the horse, and followed the frothing dog, shouting warning to everyone it approached. Members of his family took alarm and fled inside the house, all except his eleven-year-old brother, William, who was in the orchard and unable to reach the building. When the dog headed toward his brother, Dick galloped ahead and placed the frightened lad safely on a fence. The dog chased a few chickens around the yard, then headed to the next farm.

Though his own family had escaped danger, Dick continued to pursue the animal. His neighbors fled inside and barred the door as the dog approached. Dick dismounted in front of their house and calmly demanded a rifle. One man started to shove a gun out the door but pulled it back and slammed the door shut when the dog suddenly rounded the corner. Dick was left to contend with the animal alone, unarmed and dismounted. Fortunately the dog did not attack. As it moved off, Ewell persuaded his craven neighbors to crack the door and give him the gun. He then tracked the dog on foot to a nearby mill and killed it. His courage throughout the episode was surpassed only by his presence of mind. Rather than trying to anticipate the movements of the dog, he had wisely followed it, giving warning to all it approached. His mother, who witnessed the scene, confided to Becca that he was as cool as a cucumber all the time.³⁸

Working on the farm left Dick little time to pursue an education. Instead Rebecca taught him to read, write, and cipher at home, utilizing books from their father’s large and diverse library. Not until he reached age seventeen did Dick attend school, and even then for just a year. In 1834 his mother scraped together enough money to send him to school at the Fitzhugh home in Fauquier County. There he studied the classics under the Reverend Mr. Knox, a teacher of some local distinction. He later attended classes with his brother Tom at Greenville, the Prince William County home of his relative James Ball Ewell. Dick proved to be a capable, if uninspired, student. While conceding that neither Dick nor her other brothers excelled in their early studies, Elizabeth Ewell later recalled that all the teachers liked our boys and were proud of them.³⁹

Elizabeth Ewell Sr. wanted Dick to have more than a basic education; she wanted him to attend college and enter a profession. In 1834 she began to make inquiries about enrolling him at the U.S. Military Academy. If Dick’s courage suggested a military career, the family’s pecuniary situation demanded it. Traditionally, appointments to West Point went to the descendants of Revolutionary War veterans who could not otherwise afford a higher education. There was no tuition, and cadets received a nominal salary to help cover necessary expenses. For the Ewells and other families struggling to make ends meet, the academy offered an excellent education at no cost. Ben had gone to West Point in 1828 and had graduated third in his class. Might not Dick do as well?

Mrs. Ewell’s initial efforts to get her son an appointment bore no fruit, however, and as summer passed into fall, family members began to despair of his chances. Tasker Gantt, for one, believed nothing short of a miracle could secure his cousin’s appointment. Even the members of Dick’s immediate family began to discuss other possibilities for his employment. His sister Elizabeth piously voiced the hope that he would study divinity, while his mother made arrangements to send him west to study law if his application failed.⁴⁰

Despite such precautions, neither Dick nor his mother ceased battling for his appointment. In an effort to better her son’s chances of being accepted to West Point, Elizabeth enlisted the support of two prominent Tennessee relatives, her brother William Stoddert and her brother-in-law George W. Campbell. Campbell’s influence was particularly important. As a former member of Congress, ambassador to Russia, and secretary of the treasury, he wielded great influence in Washington. Early in 1835 Campbell took his nephew to see President Andrew Jackson, a fellow Tennessean. After a brief interview, Jackson wrote Dick a recommendation to present to Secretary of War Lewis Cass.

Cass promised to give Ewell an appointment if he could secure the nomination of his local congressman, Joseph W. Chinn. Ewell returned a few weeks later with Chinn’s nomination in hand and reminded Cass of his promise. By then, however, all the vacancies for that year had been filled. Perhaps there would be room next year, he suggested. The boy bridled. Cass had promised him an appointment for the current year, he insisted, not the next. Cass laughed and referred him to the army’s chief engineer, Gen. Charles Gratiot, who had immediate authority over the military academy. Gratiot received Ewell kindly, but he could not offer him any encouragement. The 1835 appointments had already been made; the boy would have to wait another year.⁴¹

Dick’s mother and sister used the time to make Dick the shirts and quilts he would need if he went to New York. As spring approached, the family anxiously scanned the mail looking for confirmation of Dick’s appointment. It arrived in March 1836. Ewell wasted no time drafting a letter of acceptance. At the bottom of the page Elizabeth Ewell signed her consent, binding her son to five years’ service in the U.S. Army.

The die was cast; Dick was to be a soldier. In early June he left Stony Lonesome for West Point. Behind him he left the farm, his family, and his friends—everything he had known up to that time. The curtain had fallen on the first chapter of his life; a new chapter was about to begin.⁴²

CHAPTER 2: West Point

West Point, New York, is a place of great beauty and history. The town stands on a grassy, level plain 150 feet above the Hudson River surrounded by the rugged hills of the New York highlands, a strategic feature in the latter years of the American Revolution. There Polish engineer Thaddeus Kosciuszko had constructed fortifications designed to block the incursion of British ships up the Hudson. His defensive system had centered on Fort Clinton, a structure that protected the great iron boom that extended across to Constitution Island. No less important was Fort Putnam, which guarded Fort Clinton and its auxiliary redoubts against attack from the rear. By 1836, however, these were relics of a distant past. The stone citadels once so critical to American liberty had fallen into disuse and become ruins.

From their granite rubble rose the buildings of the U.S. Military Academy. The academy was then in its fourth decade, having been established by Congress in March 1802. Four massive stone structures dominated the scene: a mess hall, an academic building, and two cadet barracks. North of these stood a broad forty-acre field used by the cadets for drill and parade. To the south and west were the houses of instructors and other small buildings. A Greek Revival chapel, under construction on the southeast corner of the grounds, and a hotel overlooking the river rounded out the small military community that for the next four years would be Dick Ewell’s home.

The young Virginian arrived at West Point in mid-June 1836 and took his place beside the other boys in his class. He quickly struck up acquaintances with fellow Virginian George H. Thomas and Thomas’s roommate, William Tecumseh Sherman, known familiarly as Cump. Other members of his class included George W. Getty, William Hays, Bushrod R. Johnson, Paul O. Hébert, Stewart Van Vliet, and Israel B. Richardson.¹ Ewell gained friends quickly among his new associates, who affectionately called him old Dick. He was particularly close to Sherman, whom he later described as being in every sense a gentleman[,] generous & high toned. Ewell liked to fish while at West Point, but it is said he would never go without Cump.²

At the same time Ewell was forging friendships with his classmates, he was renewing ties with his brother Benjamin. After graduating from West Point in 1832, Ben had stayed on as an assistant professor of mathematics. In that role, according to his brother, Ben soon gained a reputation for being the best Mathematician on the Point and the most intelligent man. Ben was serving on the faculty when Dick arrived. Although seven years separated the two brothers, they bore a striking resemblance to each other, a circumstance that in one instance resulted in Ben being ordered to his quarters in no very gentle terms by a cadet officer who mistook him for Dick. The mistake would not be repeated. On 30 September Ben resigned his commission in the army and moved to York, Pennsylvania, to accept a position as assistant engineer of the Baltimore and Susquehanna Railroad.³

The highly structured lifestyle of West Point left little time for Ben and Dick to get reacquainted. After passing the entrance examination, Dick donned the cadet gray and took his place in the battalion. For the next two months he and other cadets camped outdoors, where they received instruction in the art of practical soldiering. From dawn until dusk they marched, drilled, and paraded to the barked commands of company officers. At night the cadets took turns walking guard. The smallest infraction, Ewell found, was grounds for demerits. The duties here are much more arduous than I had any idea of, he confessed. We have to walk post eight hours out of the 24, 4 in the day and 4 in the night, and if we do not walk constantly or if we speak to any person while on post we are reported and get 8 or 10 demerit.⁴

The cadet battalion was divided into four companies of approximately seventy cadets each. Members of each company lived together, drilled together, and usually ate together throughout their four years at the academy. Upper-class cadets appointed as officers were responsible for the good conduct and discipline of the cadets in their company. Ewell was assigned to Company A, which in 1836 counted among its officers Joseph Hooker, John Sedgwick, P. G. T. Beauregard, and Henry Halleck. Among the upperclassmen in the company who held no rank were Jubal Early and Henry Hunt. Sherman, Thomas, and Getty initially were assigned to other companies, but each would transfer into Company A before graduation.⁵

The two-month encampment ended on 31 August, when cadets struck their tents and moved into barracks in anticipation of the new academic year. Three days earlier they closed out the summer with a traditional end-of-season ball. Ewell did not attend the dance, but he described it for his sister Rebecca nevertheless. There was a splendid ball given here on the 28th. It was given in the Mess Hall which was adorned with wreaths, flags of the different European nation [s], muskets, and swords and presented a most beautiful appearance. The Hall is very large as you may suppose for the whole Corps to dine in at once, but it was crowded to overflowing with visitors. I was on guard, he wrote, "and of course could not attend and would not if I could. Fire works were kept up untill [sic] a late hour some of which were most beautiful. It was a close night and the rockets would often go above the clouds before they burst, giving them the same tints as the sun in the morning."⁶

Summer balls provided rare enjoyment in the otherwise hard life of a cadet. The War Department intentionally made life difficult to build character, foster esprit de corps, and accustom cadets to the hardships of a military regimen. Housing was crowded and spartan. As a member of Company A, Dick resided on the east side of the North Barracks. His furniture consisted of a chair, washstand, mirror, and leather trunk. No paintings or other forms of ornamentation were permitted. Cadets slept on pallets spread out on the floor until 1839, when authorities issued iron bedstands. Officers frequently inspected the rooms, and if they were not in a state of perfect cleanliness and order, cadets went on report. Something as small as hanging a hat on a peg rather than a hook might result in demerits.⁷

In his first year as a cadet, Ewell shared his cramped quarters with at least two other cadets, both members of his own class. One was Reuben P. Campbell of Statesville, North Carolina; the identity of the other is not known. Campbell was one and a half years Ewell’s junior—a genial, noble, warm-hearted chap—the sort who never excelled on the drill ground or in the classroom but was a general favorite in the corps. He and Ewell got along famously, remaining friends for life. Between these congenial spirits there always existed the most sincere and cordial friendship, a former cadet later remarked. Ewell was an earnest student, and he was glad he had been put in a room with cadets of his own class rather than upperclassmen. To Ben he wrote, It has been the most fortunate thing for me in the world that I did not room with any old Cadets [.] there are several here who will be deficient on that account[.] they are always frolicking and spreeing instead of studying.⁸

Dick was less satisfied with West Point’s food. The fare served at the dining hall was repetitive and far from appetizing. Meals typically consisted of boiled beef, boiled potatoes, and boiled pudding. Sanitation frequently was lacking. Cadets customarily received tough meat, sour molasses, and rancid butter. One student found a nest of mice in his pudding, and another discovered a comb! A few lucky cadets secured a place at the table of Mrs. Amelia Thompson, the widow of a Revolutionary War veteran, who ran a boarding establishment on the grounds. Perhaps through the agency of his brother, Ewell received one of these coveted spots when he arrived at West Point and maintained it throughout his four years at the academy.⁹

The cadets’ schedule was tightly structured. Every minute of the day was closely regulated, allowing cadets no opportunity to get into trouble or, for that matter, to have fun. Regulations prohibited drinking, smoking, chewing tobacco, playing cards, or cooking. Even visiting the rooms of other cadets outside prescribed hours was forbidden. Those who broke the rules risked being reported and getting demerits. Teenage boys naturally bridled against such restrictions and broke them when they thought they could get away with it. Sherman became famous throughout the corps for smuggling food out of the mess hall and hosting furtive hash bakes in his room at night. Others risked immediate expulsion by slipping off post to enjoy a glass of flip at Benny Havens’s tavern.

Ewell did not visit Benny Havens’s, or if he did, he was never caught. He received comparatively few demerits, most for venial offenses. Instances of scuffling in the ranks, inattention at drill, and absence from reveille were minor stains on an otherwise respectable record of conduct. In his first year Ewell amassed 56 demerits, 55th best of the 211 cadets in the corps. His demerit count increased to 70 in his second year, then settled down to 41 and 46 demerits, respectively, in his final two years. Never did his conduct approach the 200-demerit limit, nor did it adversely affect his final class standing.¹⁰

Discipline relaxed to some extent on the Sabbath. Church attendance was mandatory. In the morning cadets marched to chapel, where they sat for two hours on backless wooden benches. The minister conducted a high-church Episcopal service, a liturgy, observed Sherman, in which but a few take interest, much less join in heartfelt devotion. Far from exhibiting religious fervor, many cadets took advantage of the relaxed supervision at church to study their lessons and chew tobacco. Spitting tobacco juice during the service became so common by Ewell’s final year that the superintendent had to issue an order requesting cadets to refrain from the practice because it was leaving stains on the floor. Ewell had been raised in a devout Episcopal household and was more pious than most of his comrades. Though military life would slowly erode his faith, at West Point he still held dear those convictions he had learned in his youth.¹¹

Once the church service ended, cadets had the rest of the day to themselves. With no money to spend and nowhere to go, they quickly became bored. Some checked out books from the library. Others hiked to Fort Putnam or one of the many other nearby places that offered a panoramic view of the Hudson River Valley. The only organized club activity permitted at the academy was the Dialectic Society, a group of some four dozen cadets who met to debate current issues. Perhaps because he had an interest in debate or perhaps just because there was nothing better to do, Ewell joined the society.¹²

Ewell soon adjusted to military life and gained many friends among his new classmates. Life at the academy took on a brighter hue. By November he was able to write, I like W. Point much better than I did some time ago and shall be very well contented if I get along in my studies. If I do not get along the fault will not be in my not studying.¹³

Classes for Ewell began on 1 September 1836. Unlike other American colleges, which emphasized the humanities, the U.S. Military Academy stressed mathematics, science, and engineering in order to prepare its students for a military career. The curriculum was challenging: nearly half of those who entered West Point with Ewell in 1836 would not graduate four years later.¹⁴

Each cadet took the same courses. Each course was divided into sections, with each section containing five to ten cadets. The most gifted students in a subject occupied the first section, which was taught by the professor. Less gifted students occupied the lower sections, which were taught by assistant professors. In this way cadets could progress at a pace commensurate with their ability.¹⁵ Students learned by means of daily recitations. Twice a year, in January and June, they stood before an academic board to be examined. Their score in a subject was multiplied by a factor ranging from one-half to three corresponding to the topic’s relative importance in the curriculum. Important subjects, such as engineering or natural philosophy, were weighted heavily; less important topics, like drawing or chemistry, had a lower factor. Cadets’ scores were tabulated, then placed on a published list in order of merit. The General Order of Merit was then determined by adding together the scores for each of the individual classes. The General Order of Merit was of great importance, for it would later be used to determine which branch of service a cadet entered. The higher a cadet’s final standing, the better assignment he would receive.¹⁶

Cadets in the Fourth Class, or plebes, took only two classes in the fall, French and mathematics. The French lessons focused on grammar and translation, their purpose being to teach cadets to read French scientific and military books that would later be used as texts in other courses. The mathematics course began with algebra and was taught by Lt. William W S. Bliss, an affable young man who, Ewell claimed, sometimes set the whole Section to laughing at his grimaces. Like the course in French, Bliss’s mathematics classes would be the foundation for future courses.¹⁷

Ewell began his studies with trepidation, for he knew that he had come to West Point with less education than most of his classmates. New England cadets seemed to have had the best training. I have no hopes of getting a good standing at this place, Ewell lamented. "The Plebe class consists in all off [sic] nearly 150 and is said to be the most intelligent class that has been here for many years. There are several Yankees here who know the whole mathematical course; of course, they will stand at the head of the Class. A person who comes here without a knowledge has to contend against those who have been preparing themselves for years under the best teachers and who have used the same class books. The Yankees generally take the lead in almost every class."¹⁸

Despite his pessimistic predictions, Ewell did well. Having studied algebra in Virginia, he breezed through the first weeks of recitations and was placed in the first section of his class beside Sherman, Thomas, and Van Vliet. As the fall term progressed and new material was introduced, however, Ewell found the going tougher. Classes, he confessed to Ben, were no joke, and he feared he would do poorly. He stayed up half the night studying by the dim light of coals glowing in the heating grate.¹⁹ His perseverance paid off. At the end of January exams, Dick stood fourth in math, seventh in French, and third in general merit. He realized he would not be able to retain that position, however, and warned his mother not to boast to relatives and neighbors.²⁰ As anticipated, Dick fell off the pace in the spring, dropping to sixteenth in math and eleventh in French, despite such close application to his studies that he actually impaired his health. In general merit he plummeted to twelfth.²¹

With the end of the school year at hand, the members of Ewell’s class put aside thoughts of books and blackboards and began looking ahead to their second summer encampment. "Our class have [sic] been debating how to spend the encampment in the most enjoyable manner, wrote Sherman. They have concluded to spend it in the usual manner, that is, buy a library and have a dancing school. . . . I was put on the library committee—will have nothing to do with dancing."²²

Unlike his classmate from Ohio, Ewell chose to enroll in the dancing school. He did satisfactorily until it came time to waltz. He repeated the steps over and over, but, try as he might, he could not master them. Finally the exasperated instructor threw up his hands in disgust and declared Ewell’s case hopeless—the clumsy Virginian simply could not learn the dance! Stung by his failure, Ewell went back to the barracks and practiced the steps until he had them down pat. When he returned to the class one month later, the instructor was so astonished