Richard Ewell: Boiled Wheat, a Wooden Leg and the Cemetery Hill Order

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Richard Stoddert Ewell was a bald, bird-like, profane general who lived on hulled wheat boiled in milk and slept curled around a camp stool. Born in 1817 in Georgetown and raised on a Virginia estate called Stony Lonesome, he was the grandson of Benjamin Stoddert, the first Secretary of the Navy. He graduated 13th of 43 at West Point in 1840, served with the 1st U.S. Dragoons on the Santa Fe and Oregon Trails, scouted at Contreras alongside engineer Robert E. Lee, and was wounded fighting forces under Cochise in 1859 before malaria forced him home from Fort Buchanan in 1860. Though pro-Union, he followed Virginia out in 1861.

After First Bull Run, Ewell proposed to Jefferson Davis that the Confederacy free and enlist enslaved men, an idea Davis rejected as impossible. He learned to read Stonewall Jackson's secretive moves in the Shenandoah Valley, then lost his left leg after a wound at Brawner's Farm in August 1862 and married his cousin and nurse, Lizinka Campbell Brown, in May 1863. Given Jackson's Second Corps, he routed two Union corps at Gettysburg on July 1 but judged Lee's order to take Cemetery Hill if practicable not workable, a decision Jubal Early agreed with at the time and later attacked as Lost Cause writers made Ewell a scapegoat.

• At Spotsylvania's Mule Shoe in May 1864, Ewell broke down and struck fleeing soldiers with his sword, and Lee relieved him of field command.
• He blamed civilian mobs for the April 1865 Richmond fire, though demolition orders through his own command started the main blazes.
• Captured at Sailor's Creek, he was held at Fort Warren in Boston Harbor.
• After Lincoln's assassination he organized 16 imprisoned generals to sign a letter to Grant condemning the murder.
• He became a successful farmer near Spring Hill, Tennessee, and he and Lizinka died of pneumonia days apart in January 1872.