Thomas Ewing Jr.: Frontier Lawyer and Civil War General

9. Thermopylae of the West

he morning of Sunday, June , , dawned quietly. In northern Georgia , two armies were catching their breath near Kennesaw Mountain, sensing that something big awaited them in the morning’s sweltering heat. Sergeant Nixon Stewart of the Fifty-Second Ohio had spent the previous night at a campfire with his Bible, where he read over and over the Ninety-First Psalm, the Soldier ’s Psalm: “A thousand shall fall at thy side and ten thousand at thy right hand, but it shall not come nigh thee.” He took the promise to heart and commended his life to God but still had slept fitfully.1 Before the end of the next day, June , Daniel McCook Jr., the youngest lawyer in the firm of Sherman, Ewing & McCook, led his brigade in the van of a two-division frontal assault at the center of the Confederate lines. McCook led his men forcefully into the Dead Angle, a killing zone where withering Confederate musket volleys cut down hundreds in his brigade. As he was going over a parapet McCook fell, a bullet in his chest. Miraculously he was carried off the field by flag bearers, his wound was stabilized, and he was sent home to Steubenville. But his health worsened, and on July , surrounded by family, McCook died. Later Sherman would admit this attack was a mistake, and he never again ordered a frontal attack in the Atlanta campaign.2  9 THERMOPYLAE OF THE WEST T . Soldier’s Psalm from Stewart, McCook’s Regiment, –. . The frontal assault at Kennesaw Mountain, Sherman, Memoirs, :–. “Nixon Stewart, a participant in the assault, claims the pre-war law firm association between Sherman and McCook  prompted McCook to ask Sherman to lead the charge.” Stewart, Dan McCook’s Regiment, . This may have been an assumption on Stewart’s part, he being a sergeant at the time of the assault and not a high-ranking officer. A McCook biographer, Charles Whalen, Jr., indicates in correspondence with the author dated November , , that Sherman ordered the attack three days before it was executed, and that Generals Thomas and McPherson chose the assault divisions. General Jefferson C. Davis, McCook’s commanding general, chose his assault brigade for what he later called “conspicuous duty.” . Burris’s report, O.R. ::–. THOMAS EWING JR. Given the difficulty of communication during the war, it is unclear when Tom Ewing learned of the mortal wounding of his former partner. His writings do not refer to McCook’s death. And Ewing was busy. As Sherman was moving his army on Atlanta, Brigadier General Tom Ewing was making war on Confederate guerrilla bands in southeast Missouri. The boundaries of Ewing’s new St. Louis district were formed by the Missouri, Mississippi, and Meramec rivers and Rolla, Missouri. The new command was much like that in Kansas, small units of cavalry and a few forts in small towns defended by companies of infantry. The nearly flat Kansas prairie was replaced by tree-studded gnarled ravines and small mountains . Roads were narrow, winding, and made of mud. Traveling the region by wagon or on foot was torturous. Lieutenant Colonel John Burris of the Tenth Kansas cavalry was one of the Kansas units that Ewing brought with him from Kansas. Burris’s report on his unit’s actions in August  describes the terrain of southeast Missouri: We were engaged in scouting the counties of New Madrid, Mississippi, and Stoddard . . . burned a distillery and a grocery at which [three men] were accustomed to meet . . . crossed the Saint Francis River just below Chalk Bluff, . . . marched north to the Chicasawba Settlement, crossed Pemiscot Bayou, and encamped in Cowskin Settlement. . . . We pursued the enemy six miles across Dogskin Swamp, when we found him in line of battle in a dense forest, two miles south of Elk Chute, in Pemiscot County, Mo. . . . A running fight was kept up for two miles, through the swamp, among the trees, and over logs. . . . [They] fled precipitately, many of them rushing, panic-stricken, into the stream, some attempting to swim their horses across, . . . while the rebel colonel, . . . hid in the dense forest and almost impenetrable swamps of that region.3 Ewing took over the St. Louis District on March , , replacing Brigadier General Clinton B. Fisk, a Curtis protégé from the regular army. Fisk’s constantly demanding style of leadership required subordinates to keep him informed, but  THERMOPYLAE OF THE WEST otherwise he was a martinet who issued orders to subordinates...