The Interesting Life of Lew Wallace—Part 2

 

Last month, I shared some about the very interesting historical figure, Lew Wallace, from his early days as a wayward student to a full-fledged, practicing attorney, to a military man. If you didn’t get a chance to read that post, you can find it here. So let’s pick up where we left off. As you will recall, After the Battle of Shiloh, Wallace was taken off active duty for several years due to a supposed mistake he’d made in carrying out Grant’s orders.

 

Military Man, Part 3—Redeeming His Career

Finally,

in 1864, Wallace was brought back to active duty, and it was a good thing he was. During the Battle of Monocacy, Wallace led his 5,800 men into battle against Confederate General Jubal A. Early and his roughly 15,000 men who intended to invade Washington D.C. and take the capital. Given the huge difference in the size of their forces, Wallace and the Union were defeated that day, but General Grant later wrote high praise for Wallace’s actions, noting that if it weren’t for Wallace’s presence slowing Early’s advancement down, surely Washington D.C. would’ve been taken. The delay and defeat was just the diversion needed to get reinforcements into the city. With this unexpected turn of events, Wallace was once again in the good graces of General Grant.

 

In 1865, after the assassination of Lincoln, Lew Wallace was appointed to the commission to investigate all of the various conspirators in the president’s murder. Once they were found guilty, Wallace was put on another commission to investigate the Confederate leader of Andersonville Prison, Henry Wirz. This commission found Wirz guilty and sentenced him to hang. 

 

Second Foray Into Politics

Sometime after the war’s end, Lew Wallace returned to Indiana and picked up as a lawyer again. Unhappy with that life, he spent his free time writing a novel and eventually decided to make a bid for U.S. Congress. He was defeated in 1868, so ran again in 1870. This also was an unsuccessful run. In the 1876 presidential election, he threw his support behind Republican Rutherford B. Hayes, and after Hayes won the office, he rewarded Wallace with an appointment to become the governor of the New Mexico Territory.

 

Governing During Turbulent Times

Billy the Kid
circa 1880

New Mexico Territory in 1878 was not the quiet place Wallace might have hoped it would be. He was close to finishing his second novel, and I’m sure was hoping to have plenty of time to pen the last words so he could seek publication. However, he arrived in the territory to find that the Apaches were raiding regularly, and the white settlers were being terrorized by the ongoing land war known as the Lincoln County War. If you know your western history, you’ll immediately recognize that name, because it’s associated with one of the Old West’s most prominent bad guys—Billy the Kid. 

 

Unable to bring an end to the fighting any other way, Wallace ordered the arrests of all participants in the feud, including Billy, on March 1, 1879. Roughly two weeks after he did so, Wallace and Billy met secretly. Wallace’s plan was to make a deal with the infamous outlaw—in exchange for Billy’s testimony against the murderers of a prominent Lincoln County attorney, Billy would be given amnesty for any and all crimes committed up to that point. Billy upheld his end of the deal, giving grand jury testimony in April. However, the local district attorney revoked the deal and refused to let Billy out of jail. What is an outlaw to do? Well, escape, of course! Billy the Kid slipped out of the jail and back into his old life, finally being killed by Sheriff Pat Garrett a few months after Wallace resigned from his position as governor in 1881.

 

Author of An Enduring Classic

During the years as governor of New Mexico, Wallace did finish his novel—and get it published. It was none other than the epic Ben Hur: A Tale of the Christ. Surely, he could not have known at the time that he was penning what would become the best-selling American novel of all time (as measured from its publication in 1880 to present), nor that it would be turned into a stage play and have six motion picture versions made from his words. Of course, the best-known rendition stars Charlton Heston as Judah Ben-Hur.

 

Continuing His Political Career

Wallace’s epic novel garnered the attention of many, including President James Garfield, who was so impressed by the work that he sought out the author with a proposition. To give Wallace every opportunity to research and write a sequel to Ben-Hur, Garfield appointed Wallace as the U.S. Minister to the Ottoman Empire in Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul, Turkey). His duties there included the protection of American citizens and U.S. trade rights for the area, but he also developed relationships with Sultan Abdul Hamid II and others and helped to negotiate a dispute between the Ottoman Empire and Britain. He served a total of four years in the position until the presidency changed hands, at which time he resigned.

 

Statue of Wallace in 
Statuary Hall,
US Capitol Building

The Final Years

After his time in the Ottoman Empire, Lew Wallace returned to Crawfordsville,
Indiana, and lived his final years writing in the study he built next to their home. He said that the writing space was a “pleasure-house for his soul,” a place where he could write, relax, and even fish in the stocked moat he built on two sides of the building. The study is now kept as a museum to this incredible man’s life. It was there he penned the last five of his seven published works.

 

In addition to his writing, he continued to remain active in veteran’s affairs and even attempted to volunteer his military services at the outbreak of the Spanish-American War (he was 71 at the time!). His generous offer was refused. Wallace lived to be 77, dying at home in Crawfordsville on February 15, 1905.

 

It’s Your Turn: Lew Wallace is best remembered as the author of Ben-Hur, but as I’ve shown, he had many exciting and varied experiences. Which one stands out to you the most? Which do you think has had the greatest impact on history?

 

Jennifer Uhlarik discovered the western genre as a pre-teen when she swiped the only “horse” book she found on her older brother’s bookshelf. A new love was born. Across the next ten years, she devoured Louis L’Amour westerns and fell in love with the genre. In college at the University of Tampa, she began penning her own story of the Old West. Armed with a B.A. in writing, she has finaled and won in numerous writing competitions, and been on the ECPA best-seller list several times. In addition to writing, she has held jobs as a private business owner, a schoolteacher, a marketing director, and her favorite—a full-time homemaker. Jennifer is active in American Christian Fiction Writers, Women Writing the West, and is a lifetime member of the Florida Writers Association. She lives near Tampa, Florida, with her husband, college-aged son, and four fur children.

 

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A Malleable Heart (California—1870) by Jennifer Uhlarik
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General Lew Wallace ~ A Most Interesting Man

by Ramona K. Cecil

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.

 

Mexican-American War

 

 

 

 

 

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.

 

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.

 

Battle of Fort Donelson

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                                                          

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.

 



Civil War Military Commission

French Mexican War



     

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.

Lew Wallace, Governor of New Mexico

Billy the Kid

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.

 

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.

 

 

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.

 

Poster for 1901 Stage Play

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ben Hur Movie Poster 1925

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.

                                            

Lew Wallace Study and Museum, Crawfordsville, Indiana

Blancherne Apartments

 

                

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lew Wallace Home, Crawfordsville, Indiana

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.

 

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