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Decision to delay attack haunted Confederate commander all his life

Sunday, July 06, 2003

By Cindi Lash, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

Serving as a division commander under the daring Confederate Gen. Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson, Richard Stoddert Ewell had learned from the master about surprising, outwitting and overpowering enemies.

Gen. Richard Stoddert Ewell never shirked responsibility for his decisions at Gettysburg. Ill health from the loss of a leg may have led the Confederate commander to be too cautious.

In his first outings as Jackson's successor, Ewell demonstrated that same audacious brilliance. While still recovering from the loss of a leg a year earlier, he surrounded Union garrisons at Winchester and Berryville, Va., and captured thousands of prisoners and badly needed supplies.

So as the newly appointed corps commander rode north to Pennsylvania in June 1863, he carried with him the soaring expectations of soldiers and citizens who counted on him to help orchestrate the final great victory of the war.

It was not to be.

Ewell's cautious performance at Gettysburg would haunt him for the rest of his life and would provoke one of myriad "what if" controversies that raged for decades after the battle.

In his family, however, there is only pride and sympathy for the burden of ill health that Ewell carried into the battle and the blame he quietly shouldered afterward.

"The man who fought at Gettysburg was not the same man who'd fought before," said Jessie "Jerry" Ewell Mendez, 72, of Penn in Westmoreland County, whose great-great-grandfather was Richard Ewell's cousin.

"We held him in high esteem," said Mendez, a Charlottesville, Va., native who moved to Western Pennsylvania 40 years ago with her husband, retired Westinghouse engineer William Mendez.

"He would not have reached [the position] of second-in-command if [Gen. Robert E.] Lee had not had faith in him. There was never in our family any shame whatsoever."

A descendant of Scottish hero Rob Roy McGregor and Revolutionary War Col. Jesse Ewell, Richard Ewell was born in 1817 and raised on "Stony Lonesome," his family's farm near Manassas, Va. He graduated from West Point in 1840, fought in the Mexican War and served on the Western frontier before resigning from the U.S. Army in May 1861.

Ewell took part in the First Battle of Bull Run and fought capably as a division commander in the bold Shenandoah Valley campaign that cemented Jackson's reputation. He became known as "the Right Arm of Stonewall Jackson."

Short, high-strung and eccentric, Ewell was widely known as "Old Baldy" and often compared to a bird because of his appearance. He muttered to himself and could be astonishingly profane.

Like Jackson, he tended to be a hypochondriac and ate little but cooked wheat cereal. But he was also kind and humble, and he won the regard of his troops with his bravery, horsemanship and concern for the wounded.

In August 1862, Ewell himself was badly wounded and lost a leg at Groveton, Va. A week later, soldiers carried him six miles on a stretcher to recuperate under the care of his cousin, Dr. Jesse Ewell, in nearby Haymarket.

Mendez, who is Jesse Ewell's great-granddaughter, remembers visiting his house as a child and listening to her great-aunts reminisce about the wounded general, their difficulties in maneuvering his stretcher through their narrow doorways and his convalescence in their parlor.

The approach of Union troops prompted Ewell to leave his cousin's home in September 1862, taking the gift of a sword carried by his grandfather in the Revolutionary War. He had a difficult recovery over the next nine months, reinjuring his wound and requiring more surgeries. He also married a cousin, Lizinka Campbell Brown, a wealthy widow who so intimidated him at first that he introduced her as "Mrs. Brown."

By the time Ewell returned to duty in May 1863, Jackson was dead, killed earlier that month at Chancellorsville. Lee promoted Ewell to lead half of Jackson's old corps, hoping Ewell had absorbed some of Jackson's genius.

At Gettysburg, Ewell performed well on the first day, hustling his men south from Carlisle and York to drive Union troops back through Gettysburg. Union soldiers retreated as far as Cemetery and Culp's hills, a half-mile south of town, then halted and began setting up defensive positions.

That afternoon, Lee saw the strategic advantage of those heights. He asked Ewell -- but did not order him -- to push the enemy troops back off the hills "if practicable."

With darkness falling and his troops tiring, Ewell didn't think it was. His decision -- which left the Union Army in a strong position that it would hold for the next two days -- would be endlessly debated after the war.

His overcautiousness would bring more criticism in subsequent battles, and his bouts of illness in 1864 prompted Lee to transfer him to oversee the defense of Richmond. A few days before Lee's surrender at Appomattox, Ewell rejoined Lee's army, only to be captured at Saylor's Creek, Va., by enemy troops.

After the war, Ewell moved to a farm owned by his wife near Spring Hill, Tenn., where he doted on his wife's children and grandchildren and became a devout Episcopalian. He never shirked responsibility for his decisions at Gettysburg, saying of the many mistakes made there, "I committed a good many of them."

In January 1872, Ewell and his wife fell ill and died three days apart. Ewell left instructions that he wanted nothing disrespectful to the United States inscribed on his headstone.

"At one time, I was in Virginia and talking to my cousin, who is about 15 years older," said Mendez. "She said, 'You know, one of the reasons I think he did so poorly was that he had lost his leg and I don't think he was strong yet.' He was a marvelous fighter. But after illness, you are not the same."

This story contains information from "A Virginia Scene" by Alice Maude Ewell and "Richard S. Ewell: A Soldier's Life" by Donald C. Pfanz.

Cindi Lash can be reached at clash@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1973.