From 1843 to 1845, he served with Philip St. George Cooke and Stephen Watts Kearny on escort duty along the Santa Fe and Oregon Trails.

Ewell served in the New Mexico Territory for some time, exploring the newly acquired Gadsden Purchase with Colonel Benjamin Bonneville.

He was appointed a colonel of cavalry on May 9 and was the first officer of field grade wounded in the war at a May 31 skirmish at Fairfax Court House where he was hit in the shoulder.

Historian Larry Tagg using General Richard Taylor's description, described him:[9] Rather short at 5 feet 8 inches, he had just a fringe of brown hair on an otherwise bald, bomb-shaped head.

Bright, bulging eyes protruded above a prominent nose, creating an effect which many likened to a bird—an eagle, some said, or a woodcock—especially when he let his head droop toward one shoulder, as he often did, and uttered strange speeches in his shrill, twittering lisp.

He had a habit of muttering odd remarks in the middle of normal conversation, such as "Now why do you suppose President Davis made me a major general anyway?"

He had convinced himself that he had some mysterious internal "disease," and so subsisted almost entirely on frumenty, a dish of hulled wheat boiled in milk and sweetened with sugar.

He was the reigning eccentric of the Army of Northern Virginia, and his men, who knew at first hand his bravery and generosity of spirit, loved him all the more for it.Ewell was promoted to major general and division command on January 24, 1862.

When Joe Johnston's army pulled out of the Manassas area in March and went down to Richmond, Ewell's division was stationed around Culpeper.

While recovering from his injury, Ewell was nursed by his first cousin, Lizinka Campbell Brown, a wealthy widow from the Nashville area.

Ewell had been attracted to Lizinka since his teenage years, and they had flirted with romance in 1861 and during the Valley Campaign, but now the close contact resulted in their wedding in Richmond on May 26, 1863.

Ewell was given a date of rank one day earlier than Hill's, so he became the third-highest-ranking general in the Army of Northern Virginia, after Lee and James Longstreet.

In the opening days of the Gettysburg Campaign, at the Second Battle of Winchester, Ewell performed superbly, capturing the U.S. garrison of 4,000 men and 23 cannons.

[2] His corps took the lead in the invasion of Pennsylvania and almost reached the state capital of Harrisburg before being recalled by Lee to concentrate at Gettysburg.

He was "to carry the hill occupied by the enemy, if he found it practicable, but to avoid a general engagement until the arrival of the other divisions of the army.

Still, Ewell also received intelligence that heavy U.S. reinforcements were approaching from the east on the York Pike, potentially threatening his flank.

Discretionary orders were customary for General Lee because Jackson and James Longstreet, his other principal subordinate, usually reacted to them very well and could use their initiative to respond to conditions and achieve the desired results.

[17] Other historians have noted that Lee, as the overall commanding general who issued discretionary orders to Ewell and then continued the battle for another two days, bears the final responsibility for the Confederate defeat at Gettysburg.

[18] When Ewell's corps attacked these positions on July 2 and 3, the U.S. army had had time to fully occupy the heights and build impregnable defenses, resulting in heavy Confederate losses.

In the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House, Lee felt compelled to lead the defense of the "Mule Shoe" on May 12 personally because of Ewell's indecision and inaction.

"[20] In the final combat at Spotsylvania, on May 19, 1864, Ewell ordered an attack on the U.S. left flank at the Harris Farm, which had little effect beyond delaying Grant for a day, at the cost of 900 casualties, about one-sixth of his remaining force.

[22] Ewell blamed the plundering mobs of civilians for burning a tobacco warehouse, which was a significant source of the fire, but Nelson Lankford, the author of Richmond Burning, wrote that "Ewell convinced few people that the great fire had nothing to do with his men or their deliberate demolition of the warehouses and bridges through military orders passed down the chain of command.

While imprisoned, Ewell organized a group of sixteen former generals also at Fort Warren, including Edward "Allegheny" Johnson and Joseph B. Kershaw, and sent a letter to Ulysses S. Grant about the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, for which they said no Southern man could feel anything other than "unqualified abhorrence and indignation" and insisting that the crime should not be connected to the southern states.

[25] After his parole, Ewell retired to work as a "gentleman farmer" on his wife's farm near Spring Hill, Tennessee, which he helped to become profitable, and also leased a successful cotton plantation in Mississippi.

In that movie, Maj. Gen. Isaac R. Trimble meets with Robert E. Lee and tells him that Ewell had refused to take Cemetery Hill, giving the U.S. army a massive advantage, and that many men would die in the coming days because of that failure.