EWART, WILLIAM (1798-1869), English politician, was born in Liverpool on the 1st of May 1798. He was educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford, gaining the Newdigate prize for English verse. He was called to the bar at the Middle Temple in 1827, and the next year entered parliament for the borough of Bletchingley in Surrey. He subsequently sat for Liverpool from 1830 to 1837, for Wigan in 1839, and for Dumfries Burghs from 1841 until his retirement from public life in 1868. He died at Broadleas, near Devizes, on the 23rd of January 1869, Ewart, who was an advanced liberal in politics, was responsible during his long political career for many useful measures. In 1834 he carried a bill for the abolition of hanging in chains, and in 1837 he was successful in getting an act passed for abolishing capital punishment for cattle-stealing and other offences. In 1850 he carried a bill for establishing free libraries supported out of the rates, and in 1864 he was instrumental in getting an act passed for legalizing the use of the metric system of weights and measures. He was always a strong advocate for the abolition of capital punishment, and on his motion in 1864 a select committee was appointed to consider the subject. Other reforms which he advocated and which have since been carried out were an annual statement on education, and the examination of candidates for the civil service and army.
EẂE, a group of Negro peoples of the Slave Coast, West Africa. By the natives their country is called Eẃe-me, “Land of the Eẃe.” The Eẃe family forms five linguistic groups: the Anlo or Anglawa on the Gold Coast frontier, the Krepi of Anfueh speech, the Jeji, the Dahomeyans and the Mahi.
See further Dahomey, and A.B. Ellis, The Eẃe-Speaking Peoples of the Slave Coast ... (London, 1890).
EWELL, RICHARD STODDERT (1817-1872), American soldier, lieutenant-general in the Confederate army, was born in Georgetown, now a part of Washington, D.C., on the 2nd of February 1817, and graduated at West Point in 1840. As a cavalry officer he saw much active service in the Mexican War and later in Indian warfare in New Mexico. He resigned his commission at the outbreak of the Civil War, and entered the Confederate service. He commanded a brigade in the first Bull Run campaign, and a division in the famous Valley Campaign of “Stonewall” Jackson, to whom he was next in rank. At Cross Keys he was in command of the forces which defeated General Frémont. Ewell’s division served with Jackson in the Seven Days and in the campaign of Second Bull Run. At the action of Groveton Ewell lost a leg, but did not on that account retire from active service, though other generals led his men in the sanguinary battles of Antietam (where they lost 47% of their numbers) and Fredericksburg. After the death of “Stonewall” Jackson, Ewell was promoted lieutenant-general and appointed to command the 2nd Corps, with which he had served from the beginning of the Valley Campaign. His promotion set aside General J.E.B. Stuart, the temporary commander of Jackson’s corps; that Ewell, crippled as he was, was preferred to the brilliant cavalry leader was a marked testimony to his sterling qualities as a soldier. The invasion of Pennsylvania soon followed, Ewell’s corps leading the advance of Lee’s army. A federal force was skilfully cut off and destroyed near Winchester, Va., and Ewell’s corps then raided Maryland and southern Pennsylvania unchecked. At the battle of Gettysburg, the 2nd Corps decided the fighting of the first day in favour of the Confederates, driving the enemy before them; on the second day it fought a desperate action on Lee’s left wing. Ewell took part in the closing operations of 1863 and in all the battles of the Wilderness and Petersburg campaigns. In the final campaign of 1865 he and the remnant of his corps were cut off and forced to surrender at Sailor’s Creek, a few days before his chief capitulated to Grant at Appomattox. After the war General Ewell lived in retirement. He died near Spring Hill, Maury County, Tennessee, on the 25th of January 1872.
EWING, ALEXANDER (1814-1873), Scottish divine, was born of an old Highland family in Aberdeen on the 25th of March 1814. In October 1838 he was admitted to deacon’s orders, and after his return from Italy he took charge of the episcopal congregation at Forres, and was ordained a presbyter in the autumn of 1841. In 1846 he was elected first bishop of the newly restored diocese of Argyll and the Isles, the duties of which position he discharged till his death on the 22nd of May 1873. In 1851 he received the degree of D.C.L. from the university of Oxford. Though hampered by a delicate bodily constitution, he worked in a spirit of buoyant cheerfulness. By the charm of his personal manner and his catholic sympathies he gradually attained a prominent position. In theological discussion he contended for the exercise of a wide tolerance, and attached little importance to ecclesiastical authority and organization. His own theological position had close affinity with that of Thomas Erskine of Linlathen and Frederick Denison Maurice; but his opinions were the fruit of his own meditation, and were coloured by his own individuality. The trend of his teaching is only to be gathered from fragmentary publications—letters to the newspapers, pamphlets, special sermons, essays contributed to the series of Present Day Papers, of which he was the editor, and a volume of sermons entitled Revelation considered as Light.
Besides his strictly theological writings, Ewing was the author of the Cathedral or Abbey Church of Iona (1865), the first part of which contains drawings and descriptive letterpress of the ruins, and the second a history of the early Celtic church and the mission of St Columba. See Memoir of Alexander Ewing, D.C.L., by A.J. Ross (1877).