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>> 137 4 “Render to Caesar” Shiloh, Antietam, and Prairie Grove, 1862 I intend to remain in the Army until the rebellion is utterly subdued . The future happiness of our children, and children’s children, depend upon their overthrow and the triumph of our Government. We will have many wars otherwise, as they have for a thousand years in Europe. After God, every man’s duty is due his Government : and it has a right to demand his life, if it needs it—in obedience to the divine command I will “render to Caesar what belongs to Caesar.” —Hugh Ewing, 1862 The Ewings had waged a no-holds-barred campaign to salvage Cump’s military career. Whatever small prospect they might have had for warmer relations with President Lincoln was considerably diminished as a result. Thomas Ewing and Lincoln had found it difficult to interact with each other on a comfortable footing even before the “Kentucky Affair.” Now the estrangement between Cump’s kin and Lincoln had worsened. Senator John Sherman so openly disdained Lincoln that the president commented on it to visitors.1 For her part, Ellen had been upset with Lincoln when he initially ignored her pleas. “As malice cannot prevail, where justice rules,” Ellen wrote to Lincoln , “I look for speedy relief from the sorrow that has afflicted me, in this trial to my husband.” Ellen’s father, who was at her side, forcefully intervened. Lincoln, Ewing insisted, would meet his daughter in the White House and explain his administration’s treatment of Cump. As Ellen reassured Cump, “It is not in the power of your enemies to lower you in the estimation of those who know you and time will prove the falsity of their charges to the world.”2 138 > 139 fought in the battle with the Second Division, Army of the Ohio. Cousin Eliza “Mother Angela” Gillespie and the Sisters of the Holy Cross were awash in blood as they cared for the wounded. Since her mobilization, Mother Angela had lost two members of her order to camp-spawned disease and had seen one of the hospitals she built destroyed by flood. After Pittsburg Landing, she had to separate the Union and Confederate wounded, since the soldiers continued in their efforts to kill each other. A grateful Grant gave Cousin Eliza two cannon, which she took back to Indiana. St. Mary’s College, the “home” of the Sisters of the Holy Cross, would be the only female Catholic school in the United States to have its own war trophies.5 Thomas Ewing edited a public letter Cump had composed that refuted the newspaper allegations against Grant. He warned his son-in-law “to write with greater care” and to use less colorful language. Ewing himself published a twenty-four-page rebuttal to Lieutenant Governor Stanton. He reviewed the accounts of every combatant who had spoken to the Democrat, noting inconsistencies and separating opinion from fact. Ewing informed Stanton that there were times when a commander had to make the best of less than perfect circumstances: “You object—and this is fair criticism—to General Sherman placing raw troops in front, in the very key of his position. The answer to this is that he had none other—there was not in his whole Division a single regiment that had ever seen the face of an enemy.”6 Less legalistic and more impassioned, John Sherman took to the floor of the Senate to defend Ohio’s honor. Senator Sherman, somewhat gratuitously, observed that in 1861 Lincoln had made an inadequate request for troops. In response to Lincoln’s call, so many Ohio volunteers stepped forward that the president had unwisely turned them away. Fortunately, Sherman continued , Governor Dennison had been smart enough to keep raising new regiments , which he used to liberate western Virginia. When the Confederates attacked Grant at Pittsburg Landing, Ohio troops had performed heroically. Sherman sharply criticized the “innuendo” and “indiscriminate imputation” coming from Democratic politicians and newspapermen whom he regarded as traitors.7 From his vantage point in the backwater theater of western Virginia, Hugh Ewing wished he could be reunited with Cump. Ellen had enthused in letters to Hugh that Cump had had two horses shot out from under him at Pittsburg Landing. She also rejoiced “at Cump’s deliverance from vile slanderers and envious men.” After months of occupation duty in the Virginian mountains, Hugh would have been grateful for his own deliverance.8 Rutherford Hayes was a conscientious commander...

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