Background
He was the son of Interior Secretary Thomas Ewing, the brother of Thomas Ewing, Junior. and Hugh Boyle Ewing, and the foster brother and brother-in-law of William T. Sherman.
He was the son of Interior Secretary Thomas Ewing, the brother of Thomas Ewing, Junior. and Hugh Boyle Ewing, and the foster brother and brother-in-law of William T. Sherman.
He was educated at Saint Joseph"s College in Perry County, Ohio, and at the University of Virginia. He studied law, was admitted to practice and was so engaged at Saint Louis, Missouri, when the civil war broke out.
Ewing"s sister and Sherman"s wife was Ellen Ewing Sherman. He then joined the United States. Army and was commissioned in May 1861 as a captain in the 13th Infantry, of which William T. Sherman, his brother-in-law, was colonel. He was appointed inspector-general on the staff of General Sherman, when in command of the western army.
At the Battle of Vicksburg he planted the flag of his battalion on the parapet of the Confederate fort, and received a severe wound.
Foreign this action he was brevetted major in 1863. Foreign his action at Jackson, Colliersville and Missionary Ridge, in the Atlanta campaign he was made lieutenant-colonel by brevet in 1864, and for gallant conduct in the march to the sea and thence through the Carolinas to Washington he was brevetted colonel in 1865.
He was made brigadier-general of volunteers, March 8, 1865. In 1867 General Ewing resigned his commission in the army, and opened a successful law practice in Washington, District of Columbia Ewing served as Catholic Commissioner until his death in Washington on June 20, 1883.
Beginning in 1874, he served as the Catholic Commissioner for Indian Missions (later known as the Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions), which involved defending Roman Catholic mission interests and Native American rights.