Thomas Ewing

Thomas Ewing
File:ThomasEwingSr.jpg
1st United States Secretary of the Interior
In office March 8, 1849 – July 22, 1850
President	Zachary Taylor Millard Fillmore
Preceded by	Position established
Succeeded by	Thomas McKennan
14th United States Secretary of the Treasury
In office March 4, 1841 – September 11, 1841
President	William Henry Harrison John Tyler
Preceded by	Levi Woodbury
Succeeded by	Walter Forward
United States Senator from Ohio
In office July 20, 1850 – March 3, 1851
Appointed by	Seabury Ford
Preceded by	Thomas Corwin
Succeeded by	Benjamin Wade
In office March 4, 1831 – March 3, 1837
Preceded by	Jacob Burnet
Succeeded by	William Allen
Personal details
Born	December 28, 1789 West Liberty, Virginia, U.S. (now West Virginia)
Died	October 26, 1871 (aged 81) Lancaster, Ohio, U.S.
Party	National Republican (Before 1833) Whig (1833–1871)
Spouse	Maria Wills Boyle
Education	Ohio University (BA)

Thomas Ewing Sr. (December 28, 1789 – October 26, 1871) was a National Republican and Whig politician from Ohio. He served in the U.S. Senate and also served as the fourteenth secretary of the treasury and the first secretary of the interior. He is also known as the foster father (and subsequently father-in-law) of famous American Civil War general William Tecumseh Sherman.

Biography

Born in West Liberty, Ohio County, Virginia (now West Virginia), he was the son of American Revolutionary War veteran George Ewing. After studying at Ohio University and reading law under Philemon Beecher, Ewing began practicing law in Lancaster, Ohio, in 1816. In 1824, he was joined in that practice by Henry Stanbery.

As a colorful country lawyer, he was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1830 as a Whig and served a single term. He was unsuccessful in seeking a second term in 1836. Ewing served as Secretary of the Treasury in 1841, serving under Presidents William Henry Harrison and John Tyler. He resigned on September 11, 1841, along with the entire cabinet (except Secretary of State Daniel Webster), in protest of Tyler's veto of the Banking Act.

Ewing was later appointed to serve as the first Secretary of the Interior by President Zachary Taylor. Ewing served in the position from March 8, 1849, to July 22, 1850, under Taylor and Millard Fillmore. As James G. Blaine later wrote:

Thomas Ewing of Ohio, selected to organize the Department of the Interior, just then authorized by law, was a man of intellectual power, a lawyer of the first rank, possessing a stainless character, great moral courage, unbending will, an incisive style, both with tongue and pen, and a breadth of reading and wealth of information never surpassed by any public man in America.

As first secretary, Ewing consolidated bureaus from various Departments, such as the Land Office from the Treasury Department and the Indian Bureau from the War Department. The bureaus were being kicked out of their offices as unwanted tenants in their former departments. However, the Interior Department had no office space, so Ewing rented space. Later, the Patent Office building, with a new east wing, provided permanent space in 1852. Ewing initiated the Interior Department's culture of corruption by wholesale replacement of officials with political patronage. Newspapers called him "Butcher Ewing" for his efforts.

In 1850, Ewing was appointed to the Senate to fill the vacancy created by the resignation of Thomas Corwin, and served from July 20, 1850 – March 3, 1851. Ewing was unsuccessful in seeking re-election in 1850. In 1861, Ewing served as one of Ohio's delegates to the peace conference held in Washington in hopes of staving off civil war. Ewing was a defender of slavery at this conference, and frequently deflected attacks on the institution by Britain, stating that 'we have no slavery or misery to be compared with that existing in the India provinces.' After the war, Ewing was appointed by President Andrew Johnson to a third cabinet post as Secretary of War in 1868 following the firing of Edwin M. Stanton but the Senate, still outraged at Johnson's firing of Stanton – which had provoked Johnson's impeachment – refused to act on the nomination.

Ewing married Maria Wills Boyle, a Roman Catholic, and raised their children in her faith. His foster son was the famous general William Tecumseh Sherman. Sherman eventually married Thomas Ewing Sr.'s daughter, Ellen Ewing Sherman. Ewing's namesake son, Thomas Ewing Jr., was an American Civil War Union army general and two-term U.S. Congressman from Ohio. Two of Ewing's other sons – Hugh Boyle Ewing and Charles Ewing – also became generals in the Union army during the Civil War. Through Ellen and Sherman, Ewing also had a namesake grandson, Thomas Ewing Sherman.

Ewing was born a Presbyterian, but for many years attended Catholic services with his family. He was formally baptized into the Catholic faith during his last illness.

Ewing remained a Whig following his joining of the party in 1833, even when the national Whig Party collapsed and was replaced by the Republican Party. This makes Ewing one of the only federal politicians to remain a member the Whig Party when many others bolted to the Republican or American parties.

Prior to his death on October 26, 1871, Ewing had been the last surviving member of the Harrison and Tyler Cabinets. Future President and Governor of Ohio Rutherford B. Hayes was a pallbearer at his funeral. He is buried in Saint Mary Cemetery, Lancaster, Fairfield County, Ohio.

See also

• Unsuccessful nominations to the Cabinet of the United States

From the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia

Thomas Ewing, jurist and statesman, b. in West Liberty, Virginia (now West Virginia), U.S.A., December 28, 1789; d. at Lancaster, Ohio, October 26, 1871. His father, George Ewing of New Jersey, who had served as an officer in the Continental Army after the Revolution, settled in the Northwest Territory, in the Muskingum Valley, and then, in 1798, in what is now Ames Township, Athens County, Ohio. Here, amid the privations of pioneer life, Ewing was taught to read by his elder sister, Sarah, and by extraordinary efforts acquired a fair elementary education. At the age of nineteen he left home and worked in the Kanawha salt establishments, pursuing his studies at night by the light of the furnace fires. He remained there until he had earned sufficient to enable him to enter the Ohio University at Athens, where, in 1815, he received the degree of A.B., the first degree conferred by any college in the western country. Ewing then studied law at Lancaster, Ohio, and was admitted to the bar in 1816. He entered into a partnership with his preceptor, in the firm of Beecher & Ewing, and then, after Mr. Beecher's death, with his own son Philemon, in the firm of Ewing & Son. He achieved high prominence as a lawyer and won notable success at the state and national bar.

In March, 1831, Ewing entered public life as a member from Ohio of the United States Senate, and became prominent therein, with Webster and Clay, in resistance of the acts of President Jackson and in support of Whig measures. He upheld the protective tariff system of Clay, and presented one of the first of the memorials for the abolition of slavery.

In March, 1837, on the expiration of his term, he resumed the practice of the law. Upon the election of President Harrison, he was appointed Secretary of the Treasury in March, 1841. He prepared the second bill for the recharter of the Bank of the United States, and, on its veto by Tyler, he resigned from the cabinet, in September, 1841. In March, 1849, he was appointed by President Taylor secretary of the then recently created Department of the Interior. He organized the department, and in his report to congress urged the construction of a railroad to the Pacific. On the death of Taylor in 1850, Ewing resigned from the cabinet and was appointed senator from Ohio to fill an unexpired term. On the expiration of his term in March, 1851, he returned to the practice of the law. In 1860 Ewing was appointed by the Governor of Ohio a member of the famous Peace Conference, and he was prominent in the efforts to avert the secession of the Southern States. During the war he unreservedly supported the government, and his judgment on matters of state was frequently sought by Mr. Lincoln. When the capture of Mason and Slidell brought England and the United States to the verge of hostilities, Ewing sent Mr. Lincoln the famous telegram that was decisive of the whole trouble: "There can be no contraband of war between neutral points." It was his advice that finally prevailed and secured the freeing of the envoys and the averting of hostilities. Conservative in his opinions, Ewing opposed the radical measures of Reconstruction at the close of the war and supported the administration of President Johnson. In February, 1868, after the removal of Stanton, the President sent to the Senate the nomination of Ewing as Secretary of War, but it was not confirmed.

Descended of Scottish Presbyterian stock, Ewing, after a lifelong attraction to the Catholic Church, entered it in his latter years. Reared outside the fold of any religious body, he married, January 7, 1820, Maria Wills Boyle, daughter of Hugh Boyle, an Irish Catholic. He was deeply influenced by the living faith and pious example of his wife during their long married life, and all his children were reared in the Faith. In October, 1869, Ewing was stricken while arguing a cause before the Supreme Court of the United States and he was baptized in the court room. In September, 1871, his lifelong friend, Archbishop Purcell of Cincinnati, received him into the Church.

PHILEMON BEECHER, eldest son of Thomas, b. at Lancaster, November 3, 1820; d. there April 15, 1896. He graduated in 1838 from Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, and then entered upon the study of the law. Admitted to the Bar in 1841, he formed with his father the firm of T. Ewing & Son. In both State and Federal courts, through his grasp of the philosophy of the law and his judicial temperament, he won a place beside his illustrious father. He was also the main support of his father in his political life and labors, and was an active figure first in the Whig and then in the Republican party. In 1862 he was appointed Judge of the Court of Common Pleas. Being opposed to the Reconstruction measures of his party he took part in the Liberal Republican movement. He was nominated to the supreme bench of Ohio in 1873. During the sixties and seventies he engaged in the banking business, and was prominent in the development of the Hocking Valley coal-fields. The later years of his life were spent in retirement.

He married at Lancaster August 31, 1848, Mary Rebecca Gillespie, a sister of Eliza Maria Gillespie (Mother Mary of St. Angela of the Sisters of the Holy Cross of Notre Dame, Indiana). He was a man of wide culture and a writer of vigorous and limpid English. He was ever foremost where the interests of the Church were concerned, and was a delegate from the Diocese of Columbus to the Catholic Congresses of 1889 and 1893.

HUGH BOYLE, third son of Thomas, b. at Lancaster, October 31, 1826; d. there June 30, 1905. He was educated at the United States Military Academy at West Point, and in 1849 went to California, returning to Lancaster, in 1852, to enter on the study of the law. On his admission to the Bar, he practiced in St. Louis, Missouri, from 1854 to 1856, and then, in partnership with his brother Thomas, at Leavenworth, Kansas, from 1856 to 1858. In April, 1861, he was appointed brigade-inspector of Ohio Volunteers with the rank of major, and in August, 1861, was commissioned colonel, commanding the Thirtieth Ohio Volunteer Infantry, and rendered conspicuous service. In November, 1862, he was commissioned brigadier-general. He took part in the operations against Vicksburg, and his command led in the assault of May 22, 1863. In July following he was appointed to the command of the Fourth Division, Fifteenth Army Corps. In the operations about Chattanooga he led his division in the assault upon Missionary Ridge and its capture. In the latter part of the war he was placed in command of the district of Kentucky and at its close was brevetted major-general. In 1866 President Johnson appointed him Minister to The Hague, which post he filled until 1870. On his return to the United States, he bought a small estate near Lancaster, in 1876, on which he lived until his death. He was married at Washington, D.C., August 3, 1858, to Henrietta Elizabeth Young. He was a man of wide culture, and an interesting writer. He published several stories, among them "The Grand Ladron, a tale of Early California", "Koche, a King of Pit", "A Castle in the Air", and "The Black List".

CHARLES, fifth child of Thomas, b. at Lancaster, March 6, 1835; d. at Washington, June 20, 1883. Commencing his studies at the college of the Dominican Fathers in Perry County, Ohio, he later attended Gonzaga College, Washington, and the University of Virginia. In 1860 he began the practice of law in St. Louis, Missouri. The Civil War breaking out soon afterwards, he was commissioned a captain in the Thirteenth Infantry of the United States Regulars in May, 1861, and in the Spring of 1862, joined his brother-in-law, General William T. Sherman, in the Arkansas and Mississippi campaigns. In the siege of Vicksburg he was thrice wounded. On the 22nd of June, 1862, he was commissioned lieutenant-colonel and assistant inspector-general of volunteers, and on the 15th of June, 1863, inspector-general of the Fifteenth Army Corps. He served with much distinction in the Atlanta campaign and the famous march through Georgia. On the 8th of March, 1865, he was commissioned brigadier-general, and on the mustering out of the volunteers was transferred to the regular force, from which he resigned as brevet-colonel on the 31st of July, 1867. He was brevetted three times in the regular service for gallant and meritorious services at the Vicksburg and Atlanta campaigns. After his retirement from the Army, he took up his residence in Washington and began the practice of law, in which profession he obtained considerable prominence. In 1873 he accepted the appointment of Indian Commissioner, and labored energetically to restore to the Catholic Indian Missions the schools among the Indians which they had maintained for twenty years. Pope Pius IX, May 3, 1877, created him a Knight of the Order of St. Gregory the Great. General Ewing married Virginia, daughter of John K. Miller of Mt. Vernon, Ohio.

ELEANOR BOYLE (MRS. WILLIAM TECUMSEH SHERMAN), daughter of Thomas, b. at Lancaster, October 4, 1824; d. in New York City, November 28, 1888. She was educated at the Visitation Convent at Georgetown, D.C. In 1829, just after his father's death, William Tecumseh Sherman, the subsequent famous General of the United States army, then a boy of nine years, was adopted by Mr. Ewing, reared in his household, and appointed by him to the U.S. Military Academy. Sherman married the daughter of his benefactor, May 1, 1850. She was devoted throughout her life, after the duties of her household, to the relief of suffering and of want, and to the advancement of the Church. Mentally, she inherited the brilliant intellectual powers of her father and was a true helpmate of her husband in his distinguished career. She was the author of "Thomas Ewing, a Memorial", published in 1872. Father P. J. De Smet, S.J., the missionary among the Indians, was an old and intimate friend of the Shermans, and through this intimacy Mrs. Sherman was led to take a special interest in the cause of the Catholic Indians. Her influence and great personal exertions were of much assistance at Washington, to her brother, General Charles Ewing, in the work of saving and promoting the missions for the Catholic Indians.

Further reading

• Memorial of Thomas Ewing, of Ohio (New York: Catholic Publication Society, 1873), compiled by his daughter, Ellen Ewing Sherman.
• Lewis, Lloyd, Sherman: Fighting Prophet (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1932)
• Miller, Paul I., "Thomas Ewing, Last of the Whigs," Ph.D. diss., Ohio State University, 1933.
• Heineman, Kenneth J. Civil War Dynasty: The Ewing Family of Ohio, (New York: New York University Press, 2012).

External links

• United States Congress. "Thomas Ewing (id: E000281)". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
• Thomas Ewing at Find a Grave
• Ewing Family History Pages
• Catholic Encyclopedia information