Eva-Ewi: Evans through Ewing

See below for annotated biographies of American abolitionists and anti-slavery activists. Sources include: Scribner’s Dictionary of American Biography and Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography.


EVANS, Andrew, abolitionist, New Jersey, American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1852-53.


EVANS, Hugh Davey, 1792-1868, Baltimore, Maryland, author, lawyer.  Prominent member of the Maryland Colonization Society.

(Campbell, Penelope. Maryland in Africa: The Maryland State Colonization Society, 1831-1857. Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1971, p. 192; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, p. 382; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 3, Pt. 2, p. 203)

Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, p. 382:

EVANS, Hugh Davey, author, born in Baltimore, Maryland, 26 April, 1792; died there, 16 July, 1868. He left school at thirteen years of age on account of his health, and in 1810 began to study law. He was admitted to practice in Baltimore on 19 April, 1815, took rank, while yet a young man, with Pinckney, Wirt, Reverdy Johnson, and the other leaders of the Maryland bar, and afterward attained eminence as a constitutional lawyer. He was prominent for many years in the councils of the Protestant Episcopal church, and in 1843-'56 edited “The True Catholic,” a high-church periodical. He was also connected with the Philadelphia “Register” in 1853, contributing to it “Thoughts on Current Events,” with the New York “Churchman” in 1854-'6, and the New York “Church Monthly” in 1857-'8, and in the two years last mentioned edited the “Monitor,” a weekly paper published in Baltimore. He was a prominent member of the Maryland colonization society, and prepared a code of laws for the Maryland colony in Liberia (Baltimore, 1847). He received the degree of LL. D. from St. James's college, Maryland, in 1852, and from that time till 1864 was lecturer there on civil and ecclesiastical law. During the civil war Mr. Evans was an earnest supporter of the National government, and in 1861 wrote to the London “Guardian” a letter in defence of the arrests made in Baltimore in that year, which attracted much attention. His published works include “Essay on Pleading” (Baltimore, 1827); “Maryland Common-Law Practice” (1837; revised ed., 1867); “Essays to prove the Validity of Anglican Ordinations,” in reply to Archbishop Kenrick's book on the subject (Baltimore, 1844; second series, 2 vols., 1851); “Theophilus Americanus,” an American adaptation, with additions, of Canon Wordsworth's “Theophilus Anglicanus” (Philadelphia, 1851); “Essay on the Episcopate of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States” (1855); and several pamphlets. After his death appeared his “Treatise on the Christian Doctrine of Marriage,” which he considered his best work (New York, 1870), and a memoir by Reverend Hall Harrison, founded on recollections written by himself (Hartford, Connecticut, 1870). Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888.


EVANS, John, abolitionist, Committee of Twenty-Four/Committee of Inspection, Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery (PAS), Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.


EVANS, Joshua, 1731-1798, anti-slavery activist, Quaker, clergyman, journalist, New Jersey.

(Zilversmit, Arthur. The First Emancipation: The Abolition of Slavery in the North. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967, pp. 75-76)


EVARTS, William Maxwell (February 6, 1818- February 28, 1901), lawyer, and statesman.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 3, Pt. 2, pp. 215-218:

EVARTS, WILLIAM MAXWELL (February 6, 1818- February 28, 1901), lawyer, and statesman, was the son of Jeremiah [q.v.] and Mehitabel (Sherman) Barnes Evarts, who we e married in 1804. His father was a graduate of Yale College, a lawyer, and editor of the Panoplist, an orthodox Congregational magazine. His mother was the daughter of Roger Sherman [q.v.], states man of the American Revolution. Born at 22 Pinckney St., Boston, Evarts was prepared for college at the Boston Latin School, and entered Yale College in 1833. He was one of the founders of the Yale Literary Magazine, and was graduated with honors in the "famous class" of 1837, along with Edwards Pierrepont, Samuel J. Tilden, and Morrison R. Waite. The following winter he read law in the office of Horace Everett, at Windsor, Vermont, and then attended the Dane Law School of Harvard College. In the autumn of 1839 he entered the office of Daniel Lord, of New York City, as a law student and remained there until his admission to the bar of New York on July 16, 1841. On August 30, 1843, he married Helen Minerva Wardner in Windsor, Vermont. By her he had twelve children, nine of whom were living at his death.

For about one year from October 1841, he maintained his own law office at 60 Wall St., and then formed a partnership with Charles E. Butler, the beginning of a great law firm with which he was associated for sixty years, with Charles F. Southmayd, Joseph H. Choate, and Charles C. Beaman [qq.v.] as colleagues. In 1842, at the age of twenty-four, he was junior counsel under John J. Crittenden and Thomas F. Marshall in the defense in the New York courts of Monroe Edwards, a notorious Kentucky forger. He spoke an hour and a half in his opening for the defense and, although Edwards was convicted, Evarts's effort drew from Senator Crittenden the prediction that the highest honors of the profession were within his grasp. Political articles in The New World by Evarts, during this same period, caused Prof. Felton to describe his political pen as one of the most powerful in the country. His talents were publicly recognized by his appointment in 1849 to be assistant United States attorney for the southern district of New York, an office which he held until 1853. Two incidents led up to the turning point in his career. In 1850 he made a speech in Castle Garden which later was brought forward as evidence of a supposed deplorable leaning in favor of slavery. His speech was in support of the constitutionality of the Fugitive-Slave Law, and dealt with the dilemma presented by abhorrence of slavery and the constitutional recognition of it as an institution. Though called a "Hunker Whig," he nevertheless in 1855 gave $1,000, one-fourth of his whole fortune, to aid the Abolition cause through the Emigrant Aid Company. The opportunity had arrived, he said, "to contend successfully against slavery without violating the laws or sacrificing the Constitution and the Union." His position became clear to the public when, in January 1860, he was engaged to represent the State of New York in the Lemmon Slave Case (20 New York, 562), in opposition to Charles O'Conor for the State of Virginia. He successfully maintained the principle that under the United States Constitution, a slave brought from a slave state (Virginia) into a non-slave state (New York) by sea, and there landed with the intention of embarking upon a new voyage to another slave state (Texas) was thereby made free.

The two careers of Evarts, professional and public, thus intertwined at their beginning, remained so until his retirement. His legal skill led him into cases of great public import, and many of his public employments were legal in their requirements. His public and political career, begun as assistant United States attorney, was continued when in May 1860 he went, in the interest of Seward, as chairman of the New York delegation to the Republican National Convention which nominated Lincoln. On the appointment of Seward as secretary of state in March 1861, Evarts was put before the New York legislature as a candidate for the United States Senate, but Ira Harris was elected. On the outbreak of the war he took part in the formation in New York of the Union Defense Committee, of which he was secretary. In April 1863, he was sent on a government mission to England to put an end, if possible, to the building and equipment of vessels for the Confederate navy. He returned to the United States in July, and went again on a similar errand in December, remaining in Europe this time until June 1864. In 1867 he was a delegate to the New York State constitutional convention, in which he served as a member of the judiciary committee. From July 15, 1868, to March 1869, he was attorney-general in President Johnson's cabinet. As president of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York at its organization in 1870, and for ten successive years thereafter, he led movements for law reform and against the political corruption of the "Tweed Ring," which made this private office a quasi-public one. Had it not been for the aggressive opposition of Senator Roscoe Conkling, he would probably have been appointed chief justice of the United States by President Grant on the death of Chief Justice Chase in 1873. His college classmate and colleague at the Geneva Arbitration, Morrison R. Waite, was appointed. This was the second time that the chief justiceship had been almost within his grasp, for, on the death of Taney, his appointment to that office had been strongly urged upon President Lincoln. Evarts was secretary of state for the whole period of President Hayes's term of office, 1877- 81; and immediately thereafter he went as delegate of the United States to the Paris Monetary Conference. The New York legislature elected him United States senator on January 20, 1885, for the term beginning in March.

Evarts's legal career ran parallel to and was interspersed between the events of his career as a statesman. In 1857 he won the case of People vs. Draper (15 New York, 532), which sustained the right of the legislature to create a new metropolitan police district including three counties. In 1861 he was of government counsel in the case of the Savannah privateers, charged with piracy; in February 1863, he made the chief argument for the government in a prize case (2 Black, 635) which originated in New York; and in 1867 he was employed by the government in the prosecution of Jefferson Davis for treason. In 1866, 1868, and 1870, he argued in the United States Supreme Court the Bank Tax Case (3 Wallace, 573), the Legal Tender Case (8 Wallace, 603) and the Cotton Tax Case (not reported). An argument of Evarts's that has received the highest praise was that before the Mixed Commission on British and American Claims, in August 1873, for the British claimants in the Springbok Case (J. B. Moore, A Digest of International Law, VII, 1906, pp. 728-29) involving the difficult questions of continuous voyage and ultimate destination of ships and cargoes in time of war. Wharton described it as one of the ablest expositions of international law which has ever appeared, and John Bassett Moore said that "no one but a great lawyer with a profound apprehension of the principles of international law could have made such an argument." It is a far cry from such an effort to the case of Theodore Tilton vs. Henry Ward Beecher, in which, in May 1875, Evarts made the chief summation for the defense. His address required eight court days. A case of great importance was that of Story vs. the New York Elevated Railroad Company (90 New York, 122) in which Evarts in 1882 successfully maintained the position that the owners of property abutting on streets through which elevated roads were built, could compel remuneration for the injury to their property caused by those structures. In 1885, in the Matter of Jacobs (98 New York, 98), Evarts successfully attacked the constitutional validity of the Tenement House Cigar Law. His last appearance in court was in June 1889, in the case of Post vs. Weil (us New York, 361). In spite of failing eyesight, he wrote with his own hand a brief of eighty-two pages on the abstruse questions of real property involved, and won the case.

To the above record must now be added the fact that, to use the phrase of the late Frederic R. Coudert, Evarts was "the hero of the three great cases of our generation-the Johnson impeachment, the Tilden election case of 1876, the Geneva arbitration case." On February 24, 1868, President Johnson was impeached by the House of Representatives for high crimes and misdemeanors. Eleven articles of impeachment were presented at the bar of the Senate on March 4, and the trial by Chief Justice Chase and the Senate, which began on March 30, lasted until May 26. The leader of counsel for the managers was Benjamin F. Butler. Evarts was most active for the defense, owing to the illness of Attorney-General Stanbery during the trial. He also made the chief closing argument, beginning on April 28 and ending on May 1, an address of one hundred eighty pages. "His eloquent and solemn appeal," says Sherman Evarts, "lifted the whole proceeding from the murky atmosphere in which it had had its origin, to a region of lofty and patriotic wisdom ... it arrayed with great force and learning the arguments upon the only serious question of law in the case-that arising from the tenure of office act" (Lewis, post, VII, 229). Largely through the efforts of Evarts, the two-thirds vote required by the Constitution for conviction was not obtained.

Evarts's participation in the case of the Savannah privateers and in the prize cases, and his two missions to England during the Civil War, together with his other wide experience in public and professional life, perfectly equipped him for service as counsel in the Geneva Arbitration of 1871-72. Under the Treaty of Washington, May 8, 1871, all claims against Great Britain by citizens of the United States who during the Civil War had suffered loss through activities of Confederate cruisers built, equipped, or manned in England, were referred to arbitration. The United States was represented by Charles Francis Adams (arbitrator), J. C. Bancroft Davis (agent), and Caleb Cushing, Morrison R. Waite, and William M. Evarts (counsel). The last made a notable oral argument, August 5, 6, 1872, on the question of "due diligence," in reply to the printed argument of Sir Roundell Palmer (Lord Selborne). The latter had already formed a favorable opinion of Evarts as a result of an acquaintanceship begun in 1863; and in his memoirs he speaks of him in the highest terms, emphasizing his courtesy and conciliatory attitude. Evarts's name, he says, "was appended to the Case and other documents, of which we so much disliked the tone; but it did not stand alone; it was preceded by that of Mr. Cushing, and followed by that of Mr. Waite" (Personal Memorials, Volume I, 1898, p. 248). The meaning of this statement is brought out by a couplet in Selborne's alphabetical verses descriptive of the chief actors at Geneva, which reads: "

E, keen but high-minded, would courteous have been,
If his name were not written two others between" (Ibid., I, 277).

In the third of the great triad of cases, the Hayes-Tilden presidential election dispute, Evarts was chief counsel for the Republican party. In the presidential canvass of 1876, both parties made claim to the electoral vote in whole or in part in four states. There being no constitutional or legislative provision for such an emergency, Congress created a commission of fifteen to decide the questions in dispute. Arguments of counsel were made before this commission in February 1877, and Evarts made oral arguments on the Florida, Louisiana, and Oregon cases. Having been criticized for accepting employment in what was considered to be wholly a partisan cause, he took the high ground that it was his duty as a citizen to do so, and that, whatever the consequences, the decision must be in accordance with the Constitution, which gave to the states the exclusive power to regulate the casting and counting of votes and to declare the result of the canvass, leaving to the electoral college the power only of counting the electoral votes certified by the states. His view prevailed, and Hayes was declared elected.

As a statesman, Evarts was adequate to every test that was offered, but no large achievement can be placed to his credit. He came into the Senate when he was sixty-six years of age. If his health had held good, he could, with his long training and experience in affairs of public interest, have made for himself a distinguished place in that body. Soon after he took office, his sight began to be impaired. In 1889 he went to Karlsbad to consult a specialist, but no help was found, and his infirmity increased until he was totally blind. Thereafter he lived in retirement. On August 30, 1893, he and his wife celebrated their golden wedding. In 1897 he suffered an attack of grippe, which left him so weakened that thereafter he was confined to his house; and on February 28, 1901, at the age of eighty-three, he died at his home in New York City.

In personal appearance, Evarts somewhat resembled Rufus Choate. He was extremely spare, and "thin as a lath," but erect and dignified in bearing. He appeared to be exceedingly frail, but had great powers of endurance, as shown by his performance in the Tilton-Beecher trial from which he was not absent once during its course of nearly six months. In one of his pictures he looks like Lincoln. His prominent forehead and nose gave to his face the appearance of massive strength. His eyes were penetrating and severe at times, but his expressive mouth made his countenance refined. He should be likened to an eagle rather than to a hawk. Like Charles O'Conor he habitually wore a frock coat and a high hat tilted a little backward on his head. He was noted as an orator, and could adapt his style to all occasions. His son compiled an impressive collection of his professional arguments, political and patriotic speeches, commemorative addresses, and after-dinner speeches. In the latter, Evarts showed a merry and spontaneous humor, debonair yet dry, and genial yet subtle. His speaking in this vein "rose to th e level of the fine arts." He had the "dangerous gift of facility in speech," but his exalted character, both personal and professional, and his earnestness in dealing with serious matters, made him master of a solemn and forceful eloquence suggestive of the best efforts of Daniel Webster. His set speeches and professional arguments possessed one characteristic which is still a tradition. He clothed his thought " with sentences as long as the English language can supply," and with great involution and circumlocution of oratorical style drove on "a whole flock of several clauses, before he came to the close of a sentence." Withal, he was noted for remarkable clearness of statement. Choate said of him that he was the quickest witted man that he had ever met on either side of the water, and Southmayd, another law partner, emphasized his powers of apprehension, "which would mentally anticipate and complete the situation before the narration of facts was finished."

[Arguments and Speeches of Wm. Maxwell Evarts (3 volumes, 1919), ed., with an introduction, by his son, Sherman Evarts; article by Sherman Evarts in Wm. D. Lewis, Great American Lawyers, VII (1909), 203-44; memorials in the Report of the Twenty-Fourth Annu.al Meeting of the American Bar Assn. (1901), pp. 624-28, and by Jas. C. Carter in Annual Reports... of the Assn. of the Bar of the City of New York, 1902, pp. 101- 02; Theron G. Strong, Landmarks of a Lawyer's Lifetime (1914), ch. 8; Obituary Record Graduates Yale University ...1900-JO (1910), p. 19; New York Times and New York Daily Tribune, March 1, 1901.]

F.C. H.


EVANS, Joshua, 1731-1798, anti-slavery activist, Quaker, clergyman, journalist, New Jersey.

(Zilversmit, Arthur. The First Emancipation: The Abolition of Slavery in the North. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967, pp. 75-76)


EVERARD, Andrew, abolitionist, New Jersey, American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1850-52.


EVEREST, Asa, abolitionist, Brooklyn, New York, American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, Executive Committee, 1851-52.


EVERETT, Alexander Hill, 1792-1847, Boston, Massachusetts, newspaper editor of the North American Review, anti-slavery advocate.  Defended the American Colonization Society, and colonization, as anti-slavery.  Raised funds for the Society. 

(Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, pp. 386-387; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 3, Pt. 2, p. 220; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, pp. 135, 210, 214)

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, pp. 386-387:

EVERETT, Alexander Hill, born in Boston; Massachusetts, 19 March, 1792; died in Macao, China, 28 June, 1847. He was a son of the Reverend Oliver Everett (who was pastor of the New south church in Boston from 1782 to 1792), and was graduated at Harvard in 1806 with the highest honors of his class, although the youngest of its members. After leaving college he was for a year assistant teacher in Phillips Exeter academy, then studied law in the office of John Quincy Adams, whom in 1809 he accompanied to Russia, residing for two years in his family, attached to the legation. At the close of the war between the United States and Great Britain, Governor Eustis, of Massachusetts, was appointed minister to the Netherlands, and Mr. Everett went with him as secretary of legation, but after a year of service returned home. On the retirement of Governor Eustis he was appointed his successor, with the rank of charge d’affaires, and held this post from 1818 till 1824. In 1825-'9 he was minister to Spain, after which he returned home and became proprietor and editor of the “North American Review,” to which he had, during the editorship of his brother Edward, been one of the chief contributors. From 1830 till 1835 he sat in the legislature of Massachusetts; in 1840 he resided, as a confidential agent of the United States, in the island of Cuba, and while there was appointed president of Jefferson college, Louisiana, but was soon obliged by failing health to return to New England. On the return of Caleb Cushing from his mission to China, Mr. Everett was appointed commissioner to that empire, and sailed for Canton, 4 July, 1845. He was detained by illness at Rio Janeiro, and returned home, but in the summer of 1846 made a second and more successful attempt to reach his destination, and died in Macao. Mr. Everett’s first published compositions appeared in the “Monthly Anthology,” the vehicle of the Anthology club of Boston, which consisted of George Ticknor, William Tudor, Dr. Bigelow and Reverend J. S. J. Gardiner, Alexander H. Everett, and Reverend Messrs. Buckminster, Thacher, and Emerson. The “Monthly Anthology,” established by Phineas Adams, was published from 1803 till 1811 Mr. Everett published “Europe, or a General Survey of the Political Situation of the Principal Powers, with Conjectures on their Future Prospects” (London and Boston, 1822; translated into German, French, and Spanish, the German version edited by Prof. Jacobi, of the University of Halle); “New Ideas on Population, with Remarks on the Theories of Godwin and Malthus” (London and Boston, 1822); “America, or a General Survey of the Political Situation of the Several Powers of the Western Continent, with Conjectures on their Future Prospects, by a Citizen of the United States” (Philadelphia, 1827; London, 1828); “Critical and Miscellaneous Essays” (first series, Boston, 1845; second series, 1847); and “Poems” (1845). To Sparks’s “American Biography” Mr. Everett contributed the lives of Joseph Warren and Patrick Henry. His principal contributions to the “North American Review” are on the following subjects: French Dramatic Literature; Louis Bonaparte; Private Life of Voltaire; Literature of the 18th Century; Dialogue on Representative Government, between Dr. Franklin and President Montesquieu; Bernardin de St. Pierre; Madame de Staël; J. J. Rousseau; Mirabeau; Schiller; Chinese Grammar; Cicero on Government; Degerando’s History of Philosophy; Lord Byron; British Opinions on the Protecting System; The American System; Life of Henry Clay; Early Literature of Modern Europe; Early Literature of France; Origin and Character of the Old Parties; and Thomas Carlyle. His principal contributions to the “Democratic Review” are the following: The Spectre Bride-groom, from Bürger; The Water-King, a Legend of the Norse; The Texas Question; and The Malthusian Theory. His contributions to the “Boston Quarterly Review” were chiefly, if not altogether, devoted to an exposition of questions connected with the currency. Among Mr. Everett’s published orations are the following: On the Progress and Limits of the Improvement of Society; The French Revolution; The Constitution of the United States; Discovery of America by the Northmen; Battle of New Orleans; and Battle of Bunker Hill.  Appletons’ Cylcopædia of American Biography, 1888.


EVERETT, Edward, statesman.  Supporter of colonization and the American Colonization Society. 

(Burin, Eric. Slavery and the Peculiar Solution: A History of the American Colonization Society. Gainesville, Florida: University Press of Florida, 2005, p. 28; Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 3, Pt. 2; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, pp. 207, 245w)

Biography from National Portrait Gallery of Distinguished Americans:

THE incidents in the life of EDWARD EVERETT, and his public labors, have been so various and numerous, that the most concise record of them will crowd upon the limits within which it is necessary to confine our biographical notices.

He was born in Dorchester, Norfolk County, Massachusetts. His father, Oliver Everett, was the son of a farmer in the town of Dedham, of the same county, and descended from one of the original planters of that place, where the family still remains, like their predecessors for five generations, respectable cultivators of the soil. Deprived, by the narrow circumstances of his family, of early opportunities of education, he succeeded in preparing himself for College after he became of age; and was graduated at Cambridge in 1779, when twenty-eight years old.

In 1782 he was ordained over the New South Church in Boston, from which he obtained a dismission in 1792. President Allen, in his biographical dictionary, speaks of his “high reputation,” and of “the very extraordinary powers of his mind.” On leaving the ministry, he retired to a small farm in Dorchester; and among other marks of the estimation in which he was held, was made a Judge of the Court of Common Pleas for Norfolk County. He died at the age of 51, on the 19th of December, 1802.

The subject of this memoir, who was the fourth in a family of eight children, was born on the 11th of April, 1794. His education, till he was thirteen years of age, was obtained almost exclusively at the public schools in Dorchester and Boston, to which latter place the family removed after his father’s decease. In 1807 he was sent to the Academy at Exeter, New Hampshire. Here, under the tuition of Dr. Abbott, he completed his preparation for College. He entered Harvard University at Cambridge, in August, 1807, and graduated in 1811 with the highest honors of his class, and with a reputation which has seldom been attained at so early an age.

Under the influence of the late Reverend J. S. Buckminster, who was the minister of his family in Boston, he was induced to select the profession of Theology. His studies were pursued with the benefit of the direction and advice of President Kirkland, of whose family he was a member. In 1812 he was appointed Latin tutor in the University. In the autumn of 1813, being then less than nineteen and a half years of age, he was settled as the successor of Buckminster over the Brattle Street Church in Boston. In addition to the ordinary duties of his ministry, which he performed with a fidelity and success of which all who heard him are the witnesses, he wrote and published a Defence of Christianity, against a peculiar form of infidelity then broached by some persons of considerable pretensions to learning. This is an elaborate and most able work, and displays resources of erudition which would be thought worthy of admiration in a scholar of advanced age.

Having been appointed by the Corporation and Overseers of Harvard University Professor of Greek Literature, he obtained a dismission from his congregation, and was inducted into office at Cambridge when under twenty-one years of age. For the improvement of his health, and in order to perfect his preparation for the duties to which he was called as connected with the college, he was permitted and enabled, by the corporation, to travel in Europe, and to reside for a season at some of the principal foreign universities.

He embarked from Boston in the spring of 1815, in one of the first ships that sailed after the conclusion of the treaty of peace with Great Britain. On arriving at Liverpool he heard of the escape of Napoleon from Elba, and was in London when the battle of Waterloo was fought. From London he proceeded towards Germany, accompanied by his distinguished friend and countryman, Mr. George Ticknor. They passed a few days at Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Leyden, and the other Dutch cities; and proceeded through Westphalia to Gottingen in the kingdom of Hanover. Here, at this most celebrated German University he spent more than two years of assiduous application to study. The vacations were employed in excursions to the principal cities and universities of North Germany. During one of these vacations he visited the Hague, where his brother was residing in a diplomatic capacity. On another occasion he made a journey on foot through the Hartz Mountains.

The winter of 1817 he spent in Paris, acquiring, among other branches of knowledge, an acquaintance with the Italian and modern Greek languages. Here he enjoyed the society of such men as Visconti, Humboldt, the Abbé de Pradt, Benjamin Constant, Sismondi, Koray, and General Lafayette. In the spring of 1818 he went over to England, spent some time at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, visited Wales and the Lakes, made an excursion to Edinburgh and the Highlands of Scotland, passed a few days with Sir Walter Scott at Abbotsford, and became acquainted with Dugald Stewart, and many of the other leading characters of Scotland and England.

In the fall of 1818 he returned to France, and proceeded to Switzerland and Italy, accompanied by General Lyman, late mayor of Boston. They took the road to Lyons, passed a few days at Geneva, visited Chamouni and the glaciers of Mont Blanc, made a circuit through Lausanne, Bern, Lucerne, Schweitz, Altdorf, and the Valais; crossed the Simplon to Milan; went through Lombardy to Venice, and then back over the Appenines to Florence. The winter was spent at Rome, in laborious study. While there, he saw Canova, and had frequent opportunities of meeting, among other distinguished persons, the members of the Bonaparte family,—the mother of Napoleon, the princess Borghese his sister, Louis the ex-King of Holland, and Lucien.

In February, 1819, still accompanied by Mr. Lyman, he went to Naples; and after visiting the places of interest in the neighborhood of that city, crossed over to Bari on the Adriatic; and thence travelled on horseback, through a country where there were no carriage roads nor public conveyances, and much infested with brigands, by the way of Lecce to Otranto. From Otranto they took passage to Corfu, and from thence in a row-boat they proceeded to the coast of Albania. At Yanina, its capital, they were received with great kindness by Ali Pacha, and his sons Muctar and Yeli Pacha. They bore letters to this famous chieftain from Lord Byron. Crossing Mount Pindus, and going north as far as the Vale of Tempe, they returned through Thessaly to Thermopylæ, passing by Pharsalia, and taking the road over Mount Parnassus to Delphi, Thebes, and Athens. They then made an excursion over the Isthmus of Corinth to Sparta, and returning to the north, embarked in the Gulf of Yolo for the Dardanelles. After visiting the site of Troy, they reached Constantinople. This tour over Greece took place about ten months before the breaking out of the war with Ali Pacha, which brought on the Greek revolution.

Towards the end of June, 1819, they passed the Balkan Mountains, not far from the route taken afterwards by the Russian army. Crossing the Danube at Nicopol, they went through Wallachia to Bucharest, and entered Austria at the pass of Rotenthurm, in the Carpathian Mountains. After a week’s quarantine in the secluded vale of the Aluda they proceeded to Hermanstadt, the capital of Transylvania, and thence through the Bannat of Temeswar across Hungary to Vienna. After leaving this beautiful metropolis, they traversed Austria, the Tyrol, and Bavaria; and returning by the way of Paris and London, took passage for America, September, 1819. The whole time spent by Mr. EVERETT in his travels and studies in Europe and Asia, was nearly four years and seven months.

Shortly after his arrival in Boston, he was solicited to assume the editorial charge of the North American Review. Its number of subscribers, at that time, was inconsiderable. The effect produced by him upon its circulation was instantaneous, and great beyond parallel in our literary history. Many of its numbers passed into a second and even a third edition. He gave it an American character and spirit; and such was the tone he imparted to it, that it commanded, not only the admiration and applause of his own countrymen, but the respect and acknowledgments of foreign critics and scholars. He defended our institutions and character with so much spirit and power, that the voice of transatlantic detraction was silenced; and in one memorable instance, an apology to the people of the United States was drawn from the editor of a British periodical. His editorial connexion with the North American Review lasted four years, from 1819 to the close of 1823; but he has continued to contribute to its pages to this day. It has been enriched by the contributions of many of our ablest scholars, but no single writer has done so much to secure and maintain its high stand and wide-spread influence as EDWARD EVERETT; and if he had written nothing else, his articles in that journal would constitute a monument of genius, eloquence, erudition, and patriotism, which would secure to him an enviable reputation. His lectures on Greek literature, delivered to the students of Harvard University, are remembered with respectful gratitude by all whose privilege it was to be connected with the college during his continuance in office there. At the same time he delivered two courses of lectures in Boston on Ancient Art, which, as well as his collegiate lectures, remain still unpublished. When, after having received such corrections and additions as his mature experience and leisure may enable him to bestow upon them, they shall be given to the world, those who heard them are confident that they will be regarded as one of the noblest contributions ever made to our literature.

While residing at Cambridge, he kept up a correspondence with his learned friends abroad, particularly with the scholars and patriots of Greece; and by his zealous exertions did much to awaken the interest which, throughout the country and in the halls of Congress, was expressed in behalf of that renowned people in their long and glorious struggle for liberty and independence.

In the discharge of his duties as Professor at Cambridge he was faithful, constant, and eminently successful. He did not confine himself to what was absolutely required of him; but by voluntary and gratuitous labors and offices of kindness, conferred benefits upon the students, which are not forgotten by them, however widely they may have been dispersed in the course of their subsequent lives. He prepared, while professor, a Greek grammar and a Greek class-book for the use of the students.

In 1824 he delivered the oration before the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Cambridge. General Lafayette was among his auditors. This performance established his fame as an orator. About this time a vacancy occurred in the Congressional District to which Cambridge belongs; the gentleman who for many years had occupied the seat, having declined a re-election. The most popular political character in the district was put in nomination by one of the largest conventions ever assembled within it. A few young men made a volunteer nomination of EDWARD EVERETT. His talents and qualifications were not unknown to the intelligent people of Middlesex, and, to the astonishment of all, he was elected by a decisive majority.

Contrary to his expectation at the time of accepting a nomination, his connexion with the University, as an instructor, ceased on his election to Congress; but he was immediately chosen by the overseers to fill a vacancy at their board.

In December, 1825, he took his seat in Congress, to which he was re-elected for five successive Congresses by overwhelming majorities. His legislative labors were very great. For the whole period often years he was always on the Committee of Foreign Affairs, a part of the time its chairman. He drew up many of its reports, particularly that on the Panama Mission. After having reported to the House on our claims upon foreign powers for spoliation, he continued to discuss the subject in the North American Review, and finally collected all the facts and arguments, in reference to the question, as it stood with each foreign power concerned in it, into a volume.

Much of the credit for having finally procured the adjustment of these claims is due to him.

He was chairman of the Select Committee, during Mr. Adams’s Presidency, on the Georgia controversy; and always took a leading part, while in Congress, in the efforts that were made to protect the Indians from injustice. In the spring of 1827 he addressed a series of letters to Mr. Canning on the subject of the colonial trade, which were extensively re-published. He always served on the Library Committee, and generally on that for the Public Buildings; together with John Sergeant, he constituted the minority on the famous Retrenchment Committee. He drew the report for the Committee in favor of the heirs of Fulton. Together with the present Governor of Connecticut, Mr. Ellsworth, he constituted the minority of the Bank investigating Committee, which was despatched to Philadelphia, and wrote the minority report. He wrote the minority report of the Committee of Foreign Relations in reference to the controversy with France, in the spring of 1835; distinguished himself by the high ground he took on the subject in debate, and supplied, in the last clause of his report, the words of the resolution unanimously passed, in reference to it, by the House of Representatives. He also, at the same session, prepared a statement on French spoliations prior to 1800, which was printed by order of the House.

Such were some of his Congressional labors. He was emphatically, there as everywhere, a working man. He made himself perfectly acquainted with every subject that came before the House. His Speeches and Reports exhaust all the facts and arguments that belong to their topics. His manner of speaking was simple, elegant, and persuasive; and always secured attention. He was firm and steadfast in his political course; but urbane, respectful, and just toward his opponents. He disarmed his enemies, and was faithful to his friends; and his whole deportment was consistent with the history of his life, and will be readily acknowledged by his associates, of every party, to have been every way becoming the gentleman, the scholar, and the patriot.

In the interim of Congress, during the summer of 1829, he made an extensive tour through the south-western and western states, and was everywhere received with marked attentions, having been honored by public dinners in Tennessee, Kentucky, and Ohio, without distinction of party. When, in 1833, General Jackson visited New England, Mr. Everett was selected by his constituents in Charlestown to address him on Bunker Hill. The reply of the President was expressive of marked respect for his character and talents.

During the whole of his political career, up to this time, he has been mindful of the duty he owes to our literature. His pen has been active in innumerable ways; and each year he has been, without cessation, pouring forth a series of orations, lectures, and addresses of an historical, patriotic, philanthropic, and classical character; a large number of which have been collected in a volume, which is extensively circulated throughout the country. As a writer and speaker, he is surpassed by no one in grace, purity, and richness of style. His voice and manner of delivery are in harmony with the character of his sentiments. He never wearies, cannot be exhausted, and invariably causes delight to the hearts of his hearers. Whether with or without preparation, in the chair of State, from the academical stage, or in the unforeseen and ever-varying conjunctures of the literary or political festival, he is never taken by surprise, but adorns all that he touches.

In the spring of 1835, he took his leave of the House of Representatives, having declined a re-election.

On the election of Governor Davis to the Senate of the United States, in Feburary, 1835 he was nominated as his successor; and in the ensuing November was elected by a large majority. In 1836 he was re-elected to the same office, and in 1837 he received the largest majority ever given in Massachusetts in a contested election.

Excellent and distinguished as the Governors of Massachusetts have ever been, it is quite certain that no chief magistrate ever enjoyed a higher degree of the confidence of the people of that State than EDWARD EVERETT. His administration is a model of republican simplicity, fidelity, industry, and usefulness. He neglects no duty, and aims at no display. While in the discharge of his public office, he is dignified, firm, and regardful of the trust committed to him. When not engaged in official duty, he is undistinguishable from the body of his fellow-citizens; attracting attention only by the conscientious carefulness with which he fulfils every obligation as a citizen, a head of a family, and a man.

His administration has already begun to show the fruits of his industry and wisdom in the various ways in which it has advanced the public welfare. He is steadily and efficiently promoting a reform in the law, encouraging internal improvement, and the development of the physical and mechanical energies of the State; elevating the standard and diffusing the blessings of education; increasing the usefulness, and preventing abuses of the banking system; revising the militia, arresting the progress of disorder, and providing the means of its suppression; securing the public archives from destruction and loss, and unfolding all the capacities of the State, particularly its great resources, agriculture and the arts. Resolves, laws, and commissions, for these and other important objects, have been suggested or favored by his influence. When it is considered that he is yet in the prime of life, and that, blessed with a good constitution, sound and pure health, and the most temperate, and perfectly disciplined habits of mind and body, it is not too much to indulge the hope that for many years to come his benignant and invaluable influence will be felt upon the refinement, the literature, and the government of Massachusetts and of the Union.

In this sketch but a small proportion of Governor EVERETT’S writings have been enumerated. Many of the incidents in his life, and of his public services, which would claim a place in a full and complete biography, are necessarily omitted. The circumstances of his early education, and the course of his travels and studies when abroad, have been detailed with some minuteness, from a belief that every intelligent and reflecting reader will be curious to trace the progress, and ascertain the means by which such a character has been formed.

Besides the professional and political honors to which he has attained, Governor EVERETT is a member of various scientific and literary institutions at home and abroad. He is familiarly acquainted, not only with the ancient monuments of learning, but with the languages and literature of the principal modern nations; and is understood, amidst the cares of office, to keep fresh and bright all his acquirements of erudition and taste. As a politician, he may, perhaps, encounter the prejudices of some; but as a man of genius and learning, a finished scholar and accomplished gentleman, an ardent republican, a promoter of his country’s welfare, and a defender of its honor, he is undoubtedly regarded with liberal and just pride, and a sincere good-will, by all his countrymen, of every party, and in every part of the land.
C.W.U.

Source: National Portrait Gallery of Distinguished Americans, 1839, Volume 4.


EVERETT, Joshua T., abolitionist, Princeton, Massachusetts, Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, Vice-President, 1838-40, 1840-58, 59-60-.


EWING, Thomas, 1789-1871, West Liberty, Ohio, statesman, attorney, Whig U.S. Senator, 1831-1837, from Oho, opposed slavery as a Senator.  Secretary of the Treasury, 1841-1847.  Secretary of the Interior.  Opposed Fugitive Slave Law, Henry Clay’s Compromise Bill, and called for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia.  Adopted Civil War General William T. Sherman as a boy. 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, pp. 393-394; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 3, Pt. 2, p. 237)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 3, Pt. 2, p. 237:

Ewing was the second son of George and Rachel (Harris) Ewing. In his "Autobiography" he states that he attached "little importance to remote ancestry"; yet he could trace his lineage back to a Captain Ewing of lower Loch Lomond, Scotland, who, serving under William of Orange at the battle of the Boyne (1690), was presented with a sword by his sovereign in recognition of conspicuous bravery. Thomas Ewing, a son of this ancestor, came to America from Londonderry, Ireland, and settled in Greenwich, New Jersey, about 1718. At the beginning of the Revolution, George Ewing enlisted in the 2nd New Jersey Regiment, in which he held the rank of first lieutenant. During the course of the war, he suffered financial reverses and at the termination of hostilities decided to migrate westward. His son Thomas was born near West Liberty, Ohio County, Virginia. About 1793 the Ewings moved to Waterford on the Muskingum and in the spring of 1798 removed to what is now Ames Township, Athens County, Ohio. Here, on the outskirts of civilization, young Thomas spent his boyhood. He was taught to read by an elder sister and by his own extraordinary efforts acquired a fair elementary education. Books were his delight, and, encouraged by his parents, the boy eagerly read everything he could lay his hands upon. Before he was eight years old he had read the entire Bible and in his autobiography he says that he once walked twenty miles to borrow a translation of Virgil's Aeneid. The establishment of a circulating library in Ames Township stimulated his insatiable craving for knowledge, while his tenacious and ready memory enabled him to retain the information he acquired. In order to secure funds for a college education, he sought employment in the Kanawha salt works. In the course of two or three years he saved enough from his scanty earnings to free his father's farm of debt, and with the meager surplus enrolled in Ohio University at Athens. His funds were soon exhausted and he was compelled to return to the salt works. Once more he saved his earnings, returned to resume his studies at Ohio University, and in1815 he and his classmate John Hunter, received the first B.A. degrees ever granted by that institution.

After graduation he studied law in the office of General Philemon Beecher at Lancaster, Ohio, and in August 1816 was admitted to the bar. He rapidly acquired a reputation as one of the best equipped and most successful lawyers in the West. For several years he served as prosecuting attorney of Fairfield County and in that capacity was instrumental in freeing the district of counterfeiters. In 1823 he was defeated for the state legislature but in 1830 was elected to the United States Senate where his keen intellect earned for him the sobriquet of "Logician of the West" (Randall & Ryan, post, VI, 8). As a Whig senator he vigorously assailed the Democratic administration, supported the protective tariff policy of Clay, advocated the re-charter of the United States Bank, denounced President Jackson's removal of deposits and his "Specie Circular," opposed the confirmation of Martin Van Buren as minister to England, but voted for the revenue collection bill known as the "Force Bill." He also advocated reduced postal rates, brought about a revision of the land laws, a reorganization of the Post-Office Department, and a bill for the settlement of the Ohio-Michigan boundary. In January 1836 he was defeated for reelection by William Allen and resumed his practise at Lancaster.

He was appointed secretary of the treasury by President Harrison in 1841, retained this office after the death of Harrison and the succession of Tyler, and as secretary of the treasury helped to draft bills for the re-charter of a national bank. After President Tyler had twice vetoed such measures, Ewing resigned along with the other members of the cabinet. He returned to the practise of law; and it was following his resignation that his reputation as a lawyer was established. Among his more elaborate written professional arguments were those in the case of Oliver vs. Pratt et al., involving the title to half the land now occupied by the municipality of Toledo, Ohio; the Methodist Episcopal Church division case; the McIntire Poor School vs. Zanesville; and the McMicken Will Case, which involved large bequests for education (12 Wallace, viii).

On the inauguration of Zachary Taylor as president, Ewing was appointed secretary of the recently created Department of the Interior, which was still unorganized. In his first report, he recommended the erection of a mint near the California gold mines and the building of a railroad to the Pacific. On the death of President Taylor, July 9, 1850, and the accession of Millard Fillmore, a division in the Whig party caused a change in the cabinet. Thomas Corwin was appointed secretary of the treasury and Ewing was appointed to complete the unexpired term of Corwin in the Senate. During this term in the Senate Ewing differed with Clay in his proposals to solve the problems arising as a result of the Mexican War. He opposed the Fugitive-Slave Law and was in favor of the unconditional admission of California as a state. In 1851 he retired from public life, although he never completely lost interest in public affairs.

In 1861 he was appointed a delegate to the Peace Convention and throughout the Civil War he rendered loyal assistance to Lincoln's administration. At the time of the Trent affair he wrote President Lincoln: "There is no such thing as contraband of war between neutral ports" and urged the release of Mason and Slidell. His conservatism caused him to oppose the reconstruction policy of Congress, and during his last years he acted with the Democratic party. He gave President Johnson much good advice and cautioned him against removing Stanton as secretary of war. When Stanton was removed in 1868, President Johnson submitted Ewing's name for the vacancy; but the Senate never acted upon the recommendation (J. F. Rhodes, History of the United States, Volume VI, 1928, pp. 210-22).

Ewing was a man of great physical strength, over six feet in height, with broad shoulders, a massive frame, and a head of unusual size. His keen, logical mind, his incisive style both in speaking and in writing, his wide range of reading, and his wealth of information made him a lawyer of the first rank and a forceful leader in his day. In public and private life he was a man of strong convictions and an inflexible will, powerful as a friend or as an antagonist, dignified yet sociable in his relations with men, and a stanch believer in the "good old days." In September 1871 Archbishop Purcell of Cincinnati received him into the Catholic Church. On January 7, 1820, Ewing married Maria Wills Boyle by whom he had six children, among them Hugh Boyle Ewing and Thomas Ewing, Jr. [qq.v.]. He also adopted, in 1829, William T. Sherman [q.v.], the son of his friend, Judge Charles Sherman, and appointed him to West Point in 1836.

[See "The Autobiography of Thomas Ewing," ed. by C. L. Martzolff, in Ohio Archaeology and Historical Pubs., XXII (1913), 126 ff.; "Diary of Thomas Ewing, August and September, 1841," in American History Review, October 1912; Ellen Ewing Sherman, Memorial of Thos. Ewing of Ohio (1873); P. K. and M. E. (Williams) Ewing, The Ewing Genealogy with Cognate Branches (1919); E. W. R. Ewing, Clan Ewing of Scotland (1922); Biography Dir. American Congress (1928); G. I. Reed, Bench and Bar of Ohio, I (1897), 75 ff.; E. O. Randall and D. J. Ryan, History of Ohio (1912), volumes III-V; Cincinnati Enquirer, October 26, 27, 1871; Cincinnati Commercial, Cincinnati Daily Times and Chronicle, October 27, 1871. At Ewing's death the U. S. Supreme Court paid him the unusual honor of publishing in their reports an account of his life (12 Wallace, vii-ix).]

R. C. M.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, pp. 393-394:

EWING, Thomas, statesman, born near West Liberty, Ohio county, Virginia, 28 December, 1789; died in Lancaster, Ohio, 26 October, 1871. His father, George Ewing, served in the Revolutionary army, and removed with his family in 1792 to the Muskingum river, and then to what is now Athens county, Ohio. In this unsettled district young Ewing's education was necessarily imperfect. His sister taught him to read, and in the evenings he studied the few books at his command. In his twentieth year he left his home and worked in the Kanawha salt establishments, pursuing his studies at night by the light of the furnace-fires. He remained here till he had earned enough money to clear from debt the farm that his father had bought in 1792, and had qualified himself to enter the Ohio university at Athens, where, in 1815, he received the first degree of A. B. that was ever granted in the Northwest. He then studied law in Lancaster, was admitted to the bar in 1816, and practised with success for fifteen years. In 1831-'7 he served as U. S. senator from Ohio, having been chosen as a Whig. He supported the protective tariff system of Clay, and advocated a reduction in the rates of postage, a recharter of the U. S. bank, and the revenue collection bill, known as the “force-bill.” He opposed the removal of the deposits from the U. S. bank, and introduced a bill for the settlement of the Ohio boundary question, which was passed in 1836. During the same session he brought forward a bill for the reorganization of the general land-office, which was passed, and also presented a memorial for the abolition of slavery. In July, 1836, the secretary of the treasury, issued what was known as the “specie circular.” This directed receivers in land-offices to accept payments only in gold, silver, or treasury certificates, except from certain classes of persons for a limited time. Mr. Ewing brought in a bill to annul this circular, and another to make it unlawful for the secretary to make such a discrimination, but these were not carried. After the expiration of his term in 1837 he resumed the practice of his profession. He became secretary of the treasury in 1841, under Harrison, and in 1849 accepted the newly created portfolio of the interior, under Taylor, and organized that department. Among the measures recommended in his first report, 3 December, 1849, were the establishment of a mint near the California gold-mines, and the construction of a railroad to the Pacific. When Thomas Corwin became secretary of the treasury in 1850, Mr. Ewing was appointed to succeed him in the senate. During this term he opposed the fugitive slave law, Clay's compromise bill, reported a bill for the establishment of a branch mint in California, and advocated a reduction of postage, and the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. He retired from public life in 1851, and again resumed his law-practice in Lancaster. He was a delegate to the peace congress of 1861. During the civil war he gave, through the press and by correspondence and personal interviews, his counsel and influence to the support of the National authorities. While he devoted much of his time to political subjects, the law was his favorite study and pursuit. He early won and maintained throughout his life unquestioned supremacy at the bar of Ohio; and ranked in the supreme court of the United States among the foremost lawyers of the nation. In 1829, just after his father's death, General William T. Sherman, then a boy nine years of age, was adopted by Mr. Ewing, who afterward appointed him to the U. S. military academy, and in 1850 he married Ellen, the daughter of his benefactor. Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1888.


EWING, THOMAS, (August 7, 1829-January 21, 1896), soldier, lawyer, congressman from Ohio.

(Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 3, Pt. 2, pp. 237-238:

EWING, THOMAS, (August 7, 1829-January 21, 1896), soldier, lawyer, congressman from Ohio, the fifth child of Thomas [q.v.] and Maria Wills (Boyle) Ewing, was born in Lancaster, Ohio. He received his early education in Ohio and at the age of nineteen became one of the private secretaries of President Taylor in whose cabinet his father was secretary of the interior. After a year spent in this position and two more as a claims clerk in Washington, he entered Brown University. In 1855 he attended the Cincinnati Law School and, after admission to the bar, began practising in that city. On January 8, 1856, he married Ellen Ewing Cox, the daughter of Reverend William Cox, of Piqua, Ohio, and during the same year he and his wife moved to Leavenworth, Kansas, where he became a member of the firm of Ewing, Sherman & McCook.

As an ardent anti-slavery man, Ewing was largely instrumental in revealing the fraudulent voting for state officers at the election held on January 4, 1858, under the Lecompton constitution. The public indignation aroused by these disclosures prevented the admission of Kansas as a slave-state. (Ewing later wrote an article, "The Struggle for Freedom in Kansas," published in the Cosmopolitan Magazine, May 1894.) In 1861 he represented Kansas in the Peace Convention and in January of the same year was chosen the first chief justice of the supreme court of the new state. He resigned his judicial office in September 1862 and recruited the 11th Kansas Volunteers, of which he was appointed colonel. After participating in several severe engagements in Arkansas he was promoted brigadier-general in March 1863. From June 1863 to February 1864 he was in command of the "District of the Border," which comprised Kansas and the western tier of counties in Missouri. In his efforts to exterminate the guerrilla bands which infested this area, Ewing issued his famous Order No. 11, depopulating the counties of Missouri. In March 1864 he was assigned to the command of the St. Louis District. When General Sterling Price invaded Missouri the following September, Ewing was ordered to check and delay the progress of the Confederate forces in their march on St. Louis. He encountered their advance columns in a narrow defile and, disputing every inch of ground, slowly retired to Fort Davidson, a small earthwork adjacent to Pilot Knob. On September 27 Price attacked him but was repulsed with great losses. Ewing soon found his position untenable, however, because the enemy placed batteries on the mountain sides and began to shell the fort. Under cover of darkness Ewing spiked all his guns but two, blew up the magazine and his valuable stores, and started to retreat toward St. Louis. During the next thirty-nine hours his forces marched sixty-six miles, hotly pursued by the foe. At Harrison he entrenched behind railroad ties and for three days held the enemy at bay until relieved by reinforcements from Rolla. "Thus closed a campaign of a week of stubborn fighting, on a comparatively small scale, but still rarely excelled during the war" (Reid, post, I, 835). In February 1865 Ewing resigned his commission and soon afterward was brevetted major-general for his services at Pilot Knob. During the next few years he resided in Washington, D. C., where he practised law. President Johnson offered him the positions of secretary of war and attorney-general but Ewing declined both.

In 1870 he returned to Lancaster, Ohio, and during the next twelve years was a conspicuous leader of the Greenback wing of the Democratic party. From 1877 to 1881 he represented the Lancaster district in Congress and as a member of that body was the leader in the movement for preservation of the Greenback currency; advocated the remonetization of the currency; and took a prominent part in the support of legislation to stop the employment of federal troops and supervisors at state elections. His candidacy for the governorship in 1879 on the Democratic ticket was the last of the Greenback movement in Ohio, and, although he was defeated, his brilliant campaign attracted the attention of the country. In 1881 he retired from Congress and politics and removed to New York City where he practised law during the remainder of his life. He was one of the founders of the Ohio Society of New York and was its fir s t president. As a soldier he displayed marked military judgment, courage, and gallantry. His easy and gracious manner made a deep impression on every one he met; while his lofty ideals, his sincerity, his integrity, and his eloquence made him an effective popular leader.

[E. O. Randall and D. J. Ryan, History of Ohio (1912), Volume IV; Official Records (Army), 1 series XXXII, XXXIV, XLI, XLVIII; Biography Dir. American Congress (1928); G. I. Reed, Bench and Bar of Ohio (1897), I, 114 ff.; Whitelaw Reid, Ohio in the War (1868), I, 834 ff.; P. K. and M. E. (Williams) Ewing, The Ewing Genealogy with Cognate Branches (1919); E.W. R. Ewing, Clan Ewing of Scotland (1922); John Sherman, Recollections of Forty Years (2 volumes, 1895); Cincinnati Times Star, January 21, Cincinnati Enquirer, January 22, 1896.]

R.M.



Sources:
Dictionary of American Biography, Volumes I-X, Edited by Dumas Malone, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1930.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Volumes I-VI, Edited by James Grant Wilson & John Fiske, New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1888-1889.