Benjamin Stoddert Ewell (June 10, 1810 – June 19, 1894) was a United States and Confederate army officer, civil engineer, and educator from James City County, Virginia. He graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York in 1832 and served as an officer and educator. Although he personally did not favor secession of Virginia from the Union, at the outset of the American Civil War (1861–1865), he helped form local militia in the Peninsula region of Hampton Roads. His work designing and constructing the Williamsburg Line of defensive works of the city and Fort Magruder at its center was a factor in delaying Federal troops attempting to chase retreating Confederates during the Peninsula Campaign, a failed attempt to capture the capital city of Richmond in 1862. His younger brother was Confederate General Richard S. Ewell, a senior commander under Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee. Benjamin Ewell is best remembered for his long tenure as the sixteenth president of the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg before, during and after the American Civil War. Benjamin Ewell's tireless efforts to restore the historic school and its programs during and after Reconstruction became legendary in Williamsburg and at the college and were ultimately successful, with funding from both the U.S. Congress and the Commonwealth of Virginia. Youth, education, early career Benjamin Stoddert Ewell was born in the Georgetown section of Washington, D.C.. He was the son of Dr. Thomas Ewell and his wife Elizabeth Stoddert Ewell, and was a grandson of Benjamin Stoddert, first U.S. Secretary of the Navy. He graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, in 1832, and assigned to the Fourth Artillery of the U.S. Army. However, Ewell stayed on as an assistant professor of mathematics at West Point from 1832 to 1835, and assistant professor of natural and experimental philosophy there in 1835 and 1836. In 1836, he left West Point and became an assistant engineer of the Baltimore and Susquehanna Railroad, connecting Baltimore, Maryland with Sunbury, Pennsylvania, from 1836 until 1839. Moving to Virginia in 1839, at Hampden–Sydney College, he became professor of mathematics, serving from 1839 to 1842 and of mathematics and natural philosophy from 1842 to 1846. He then moved to Lexington, Virginia, where he was professor of mathematics and military science at Washington College (which later became Washington and Lee University) from 1846 to 1848.