Thomas Ewing Jr. is perhaps most remembered for issuing and enforcing General Order No. 11 during the Civil War. But Ewing’s legacy far exceeds this one event. Ewing was a vital player in engineering the entry of Kansas into the Union as a free state, served as the first Justice of the Kansas Supreme Court, defended Dr. Samuel Mudd against conspiracy charges in the Lincoln assassination, and was a member of Congress from Ohio as well as a self-trained military leader during the Civil War.