Hugh Boyle Ewing (October 31, 1826 – June 30, 1905) was a diplomat, author, attorney, and Union Army general during the American Civil War.

General Ewing was an ambitious, literate, and erudite officer who held a strong sense of responsibility for the men under his command.

His campaigning eventually led to the near-banishment of Lorenzo Thomas, a high-ranking regular army officer who had intrigued against Sherman.

[7] He ended the war with an independent command, a sign he held the confidence of his superiors, acting in concert with Sherman to trap Confederate Gen. Joseph E. Johnston in North Carolina.

He was educated at the United States Military Academy at West Point, but was forced to resign on the eve of graduation after failing an engineering exam, which was a major embarrassment to his family.

[11] During the gold rush in 1849, Ewing went to California, where he joined an expedition ordered by his father, then Secretary of the Interior, to rescue immigrants who were trapped in the Sierra by heavy snows.

He practiced law there from 1854 to 1856, when he moved with his young brother, Thomas Jr., and brothers-in-law William T. Sherman and Hampden B. Denman to Leavenworth, Kansas, and began speculating in lands, roads, and government housing.

[2] Ewing and his sister argued that Sherman's requests for men and material in Kentucky had been denied in Washington, and that the charges of insanity had been part of a conspiracy orchestrated by Adjutant General Lorenzo Thomas.

[7] President Abraham Lincoln praised Sherman's "talent & conduct" publicly to a large group of important officers, and later banished Thomas to a meaningless post on recruiting duty in the Trans-Mississippi Theater.

He transferred West and served throughout the campaign before Vicksburg, leading the assaults made by General Sherman; and upon its fall was placed in command of a division in the XVI Corps.

[8] Prior to the Battle of Chattanooga, Ewing's command led a diversionary raid that resulted in the destruction of the Empire State Iron Works in Dade County, Georgia, which was being refurbished to increase the South's manufacturing capability.

[4] However, Ewing also sent copies of the letters to a few people he had known in Ohio, which, after the documents were published, permanently sullied the reputation of former President Franklin Pierce of New Hampshire.

In his own words: He was at the table with his Staff and Colonels, drinking Ohio wine from long-necked bottles, and smoking, and presented quite an old-time German scene.

[19] General Ewing was ordered to North Carolina in 1865, and was planning an expedition up the Roanoke river to co-operate with the Army of the James, when Lee surrendered.