THOMAS

See also:

• EWING
• EWING, ALEXANDER (1814-1873)
• THOMAS EWING (1789-1871)

EWING (1789-1871)  , American lawyer and states-man, was born near the present West Liberty, West Virginia, on the 28th of December 1789 . His father, George Ewing, settled at . Lancaster, . Fairfield county, Ohio, in 1702 . Thomas graduated at Ohio University, Athens, Ohio, in 1815, and in August 1816 was admitted to the bar at Lancaster, where he won high rank as an advocate . He was a Whig member of the United States senate in 1831-1837, and as such took a prominent part in the legislative struggle over the United States Bank, whose re-chartering he favoured and which he resolutely defended against . President Jackson's attack, opposing in able speeches the withdrawal of deposits and Secretary Woodbury's `` Specie Circular " of 1836 . In March 1841 he became secretary of the treasury in President W . H . Harrison's cabinet . When, however, after President Tyler's accession, the relations between the President and the Whig Party became strained, he retired (September 1841) and was succeeded by Walter Forward (1786-1852) . Subsequently from March 1849 to July 1850 he was a member of President Taylor's cabinet as the first secretary of the newly established department of the interior .

He thoroughly organized the department, and in his able

annual report advocated the construction by government aid of a railroad to the Pacific Coast . In 1850-1851 he filled the unexpired term of Thomas Corwin in the U.S . Senate, strenuously opposing Clay's compromise measures and advocating the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia . He was subsequently a delegate to the Peace Congress in 1861, and was a loyal supporter of President Lincoln's war policy . He died at Lancaster, Ohio, on the 26th of October 1871 . His daughter was the wife of General William T . Sherman . His son, Hugh Boyle Ewing (1526-1905), served throughout the Civil War in the Federal armies, rising from the rank of colonel (r861) to that of brigadier-general (1862) and brevet major-general (1865), and commanding brigades at Antietam and Vicksburg and a division at Chickamauga; and was minister of the United States to the Netherlands in 866-187o . Another son, Thomas Ewing (1829-1896), studied at Brown University in 1852-1854 (in 1894, by a special vote, he was placed on the list of graduates in the class of 1856); he was a lawyer and. a free-state politician in Kansas in 1857-1861, and was the first chief-justice of the Kansas supreme court (1861-1862) . In the Civil War he attained the rank of brigadier-general (March 1863) and received the brevet of major-general (1865) . He was subsequently a representative in Congress from Ohio in 1897-1881; and from 1882 to 1896 practised law in New York City, where he was long one of the recognized leaders of the bar .