In November 1861, when his brother-in-law William T. Sherman was relieved of his command in disgrace, Ewing aided his younger sister Ellen Ewing Sherman in making the rounds of Washington D.C., denying sensationalist media claims that Sherman was insane, and personally lobbying the President for Sherman's reinstatement. 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. Eventually the political influence of the Ewing family persevered, and with the assistance of Henry Halleck, Sherman was returned to command. 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.