Originally aired on February 23, 996 - In part 78 of our Civil War series, Virginia Tech history professor James Robertson profiles the career of Confederate General Richard S. Ewell, whom Robertson says was “one of nature’s sublime characters.”
#78 – “Baldy Dick” Ewell
Mention odd personalities in the Civil War and the name of Richard S. Ewell will quickly come to mind. Well it should, for “Baldy Dick” Ewell was one of nature’s sublime characters and also clothed in the uniform of a Confederate general.
He was born in February, 1817; his family had once been prominent in northern Virginia but had fallen on hard times. Ewell made it through West Point, graduating 13th among 42 cadets in the Class of 1840. He then spent twenty years as a cavalryman on border service.
Ewell belittled his talents by claiming that in all of those years he learned how to lead fifty dragoons and forgot everything else. Yet he became as tough as a mule inside and out. Possessed of a violent temper, Ewell exploded often – especially whenever he received an “I don’t know” from a subordinate.
His Civil War career was initially dazzling. Ewell entered Confederate service as a captain of cavalry. Within a year, he was a major general. In the summer of 1863, Ewell succeeded the dead Stonewall Jackson as leader of the Second Corps in Lee’s army. This was a classic and tragic case of “Peter Principle” at work, for corps command was beyond Ewell’s ability. His first battle at that level was Gettysburg, and Ewell will forever be remembered for his hesitations on the critical first day of the battle.
To his credit, Dick Ewell was a sound soldier and highly dependable division commander. Lonely and generous, totally void of jealousy and ambition, his sole purpose in the war was to serve the Southern states in their fight for independence.
What is most remembered about Ewell, however, were the many eccentricities that he seemed to highlight rather than to conceal. He was bald as an eagle and looked like one. Bulging eyes transfixed a person with a baleful and direct gaze. Heavy mustache and large goatee added to the extraordinary appearance.
Ewell’s manners were those of a startled bird. When he talked, he turned his head to one side and laced his conversation with awesome profanity delivered in a shrill, piping voice. His eating habits were as strange as those of Jackson; and because Ewell had difficulty sleeping, he often passed the night curled around a camp stool. A Georgia captain who observed Ewell in that position said: “It was enough to dislocate an ordinary person’s joints.”
Be that as it may, Ewell was a bold horseman and, despite his oddities, extremely popular with officers and men. His military one-liners were notorious. Most quoted among them was: “The road to glory cannot be followed with much baggage.”
The loss of a leg in the Second Manassas campaign crippled Ewell mentally as well as physically. Much of the fire that to date had characterized his career disappeared and was unfortunately replaced with vacillation and uncertainty. Still, the general retained his odd ways. Late in the war, he married a longtime love, the widow Lizinka Brown. Ewell could not break old habits. Thereafter, in making introductions, Ewell would refer to “my wife, Mrs. Brown”.
In April, 1865, during Lee’s retreat from Petersburg, Ewell was one of several high-ranking Confederate officers captured in the fighting at Sailor’s Creek. Three months of imprisonment followed at Fort Warren in Boston harbor. Ewell then settled on his wife’s plantation in Tennessee. There he sought to become a gentleman-farmer. In was short-lived. In January, 1872, Richard and Lizinka Ewell died of pneumonia within forty-eight hours of one another.
Dr. Hunter McGuire, chief surgeon of the Second Corps, later said it best when he spoke of “brave, chivalrous, splendid, eccentric Dick Ewell, whom everybody loved”.
