by Ramona K. Cecil
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| General Lew Wallace |
One of my favorite movies
growing up was Ben Hur. I first saw it as a child at a drive-in movie theater
from the back seat of a 1956 Chevy while on summer vacation with my family.
What I didn’t learn until years later was that the author of that story was a
fellow Hoosier, and, arguably, one of the most interesting men of the
nineteenth century.
Best known for his famous
novel about the life of Christ, Wallace is said to have rather been known for
his military career during the Mexican-American War and the Civil War.
Born in 1827 in
Brookville, Indiana—about 80 miles west of where I live—Lewis Wallace was the
second of four sons born to David Wallace, a military man, lawyer, and
politician. A graduate of West Point Military Academy, Lew’s father went on to
serve in Indiana’s General Assembly, as the state’s lieutenant governor,
governor, and then as a member of the U.S. Congress.
From an early age, Lew’s
life seemed set on a similar path as his father’s. At sixteen he left his formal
education to make his own way in the world and joined a local militia. When he
was nineteen, the Mexican War broke out and Lew established a recruiting office
for the Marion Volunteers in Indianapolis.
Though he never saw combat, Lew served under General Zachary Taylor and earned
the rank of first lieutenant.
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| Mexican-American War |
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| Susan Wallace |
After the war he returned
to Indiana
and married Susan Arnold Elston, who later became an author in her own right.
Lew began a career in the law and was elected prosecuting attorney of Indiana’s 1st
congressional district, but the military remained a large part of his life. In
1860, with another war looming, he organized the Crawfordsville Guards
Independent Militia and adopted for them the colorful Zouave uniform patterned
after the uniform of the French Army in Algeria.
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| Zouaves |
When the Civil War broke
out, Wallace’s militia became the 11th Volunteer Infantry Regiment and was
mustered into the Union Army with now Colonel Lew Wallace in command.
During the war Wallace
rose to the rank of Major General, winning acclaim in several battles including
that of Fort Henry,
Fort Donelson, and Monocacy. But sadly,
Wallace became most noted for a costly blunder during the battle of Shiloh. Though he blamed the error on miscommunication,
the stain it left on his military service was never fully expunged.
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| Battle of Fort Donelson |
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| Battle of Shiloh |
Near the end of the war,
Wallace served in Texas
near the Rio Grand and was involved in discussing proposals dealing with the
surrender of the Confederate Army in the Southwest. He was also appointed to
the military commissions that investigated the Lincoln
assassination conspirators and Henry Wirz, commandant of Andersonville,
the notorious Confederate prisoner-of-war camp. After the war, General Wallace
even found time to run down to Mexico
and help the Mexican army expel Maximilian’s French occupation forces.
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| Civil War Military Commission |
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| French Mexican War |
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| Henry Wirz |
With that accomplished,
Wallace returned to his law practice in Indiana, but the law held no appeal for
him, so he turned to writing and, like his father before him, to politics.
After two unsuccessful bids for a seat in Congress, he was appointed governor
of the New Mexico
Territory. There he
worked to end Apache raids on settlers and resolve the Lincoln County War, a
violent range war, during which, he became acquainted with such historic figures
as Billy the Kid and sheriff Pat Garrett, the man who eventually killed the
young outlaw. It was during Wallace’s time in the Palace of the Governors in Santa Fe that he completed
his novel, Ben Hur.
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| Lew Wallace, Governor of New Mexico |
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| Billy the Kid |
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| Sheriff Pat Garrett |
You might think that at
this point Lew Wallace had accomplished enough to fill a couple of life times,
but the general was not done yet.
In 1881, at the age of 54,
Wallace was appointed U.S. Minister to the Ottoman Empire in Constantinople, Turkey,
a position he held until 1885.
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| Lew Wallace and Sultan Abdul Hamid II |
Wallace had dabbled in
writing fiction from his teen years, having begun his first novel The Fair God at the age of seventeen.
The work was not published until thirty years later.
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| Robert G. Ingersoll |
Indifferent to religion,
Wallace generally believed in the “Christian conception of God.” It was an
incident on a train ride to Indianapolis
in 1876 that caused him to more closely examine his beliefs and subsequently
led him to write Ben Hur: A Tale of the
Christ. On the train he met Robert G. Ingersoll, a well-known agnostic
lecturer. After a lengthy debate with the man about religious ideology, Wallace
felt the need to fully research Christianity so as to clarify in his own mind,
his beliefs. Four years later Ben Hur, one of ten books written by Wallace, was
published by Harper & Brothers and is considered “the most influential
Christian book of the nineteenth century.” The story has been dramatized in
stage plays and several Hollywood movies
including the best known; the 1959 adaptation starring Charlton Heston.
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| Poster for 1901 Stage Play |
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| Ben Hur Movie Poster 1925 |
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| Ben Hur Movie Poster 1959 |
To cap off his incredible
life and accomplishments, Wallace patented several inventions, built a
seven-story apartment building in Indianapolis,
and drew up plans for a private study for his Crawfordsville, Indiana home. At the outbreak of the Spanish
American War, when Wallace was seventy-one, he tried to enlist and offered his
services to raise and lead a military force, but was rejected because of his
age.
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| Lew Wallace Study and Museum, Crawfordsville, Indiana |
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| Blancherne Apartments |
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| Lew Wallace Home, Crawfordsville, Indiana |
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| Lew Wallace Grave, Oak Hill Cemetery, Crawfordsville, Indiana |
General Lew Wallace died
February 15, 1905 at his home in Crawfordsville,
Indiana, and is buried in Crawfordsville’s Oak Hill
Cemetery. The state of Indiana commissioned a marble statue of Wallace in
military uniform for the National Statuary Hall Collection in Washington D.C.
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Marble Statue of Lew Wallace
Statuary Hall, Washington D. C. |
Many would consider a life
that held a third of what Lew Wallace accomplished a life well lived. To my
mind, the Dos Equis man has nothing on Indiana’s
General Lew Wallace; definitely a most interesting man.
Ramona K.
Cecil is a poet and award-winning author of historical fiction for the
Christian market. A proud Hoosier, she often sets her stories in
her home state of Indiana.
Check out her
website at www.ramonakcecil.com
