WALLACE, LEWIS: 1827-1905.
Lewis (Lew) Wallace (Apr. 10, 1827-Feb. 15, 1905) went through life as an amateur–a singularly
gifted one at times–of half a
dozen professions. He is best known as a writer, the author of the long-time best
seller Ben Hur; a Tale of the Christ (1880). But as he makes clear in his posthumous Autobiography (1906), he wrote as an avocation and for pleasure rather than
as a serious business. He liked to dream; he was an incurable romantic and his
novels are the setting down of his fantasies. When he dealt with a concrete theme,
as in the case of his Autobiography, he adopted a fairly
easy-flowing, almost conversational style in contrast to the consciously
"literary" style of the more pretentious works.
In addition to the two titles mentioned, Wallace wrote The Fair God (1873), a fictionization
of the Spanish conquest of Mexico under Cortez; The Life of
Benjamin Harrison (1888), a hastily compiled campaign biography; The Boyhood of
Christ (1888); The Prince of
India, or Why Constantinople Fell (1893); and
the volume (1898) containing the poem The
Wooing of Malkatoon and the tragedy Cornmodus,
written at an earlier date.
Wallace's second career was as a soldier. From earliest youth a lover of
adventure, he tried to run away from home at the age of thirteen and join the Texans
in their war for independence. He later participated in the Mexican War (1846-47).
Wallace saw the Civil War coming and knew that it would not only be a long and
bitter conflict but, as he says in his autobiography, "that it would also
be crowded with opportunities for distinction not in the least inconsistent with
patriotism." Acting on this foresight, he organized in 1856 a military company in Crawfordsville, Ind., officially called the Montgomery Guards but better known
as the Zouaves because of the uniforms they wore.
With the coming of war in 1861 the Zouaves enlisted in the
Union army almost to a man and Wallace was called by Gov. O. P.
Morton to be adjutant-general of Indiana. He was given full charge of raising his state's quota of
regiments, exceeded the quota, and was given command of the Eleventh Indiana
Regiment.
Wallace saw action at Fort Donelson, Shiloh, and Monocacy. He served with distinction and rose to the rank of major
general.
His impetuosity and lack of tact cost him the good will of Gen.
Halleck and he was twice relieved of his command, perhaps in consequence,
only to be restored to it again by direction of higher authority.
Near the end of the Civil War, Wallace was active in helping the
Mexicans in their uprising against the French Emperor Maximilian.
For many years a cloud hung over Wallace's military
career as a result of a misunderstanding with Grant at Shiloh. Grant bitterly criticized Wallace for his route of march which caused
him to arrive too late for the first day's battle. Grant subsequently
somewhat grudgingly modified his observations. Wallace was
deeply hurt by this criticism and many years later we find him writing to his wife
of "the old wound at Shiloh," a wound to the spirit.
He served on the courts martial that tried Lincoln's
assassins and investigated conditions at Andersonville Prison.
Lew Wallace was also a lawyer, although he does not appear to have let the law
interfere with his other interests. He read law in his father's office in Indianapolis, failed the bar examination in 1846 in his
haste to be off to the Mexican War, was admitted to practice before the circuit
court the following year, and ultimately, in 1849,
redeemed himself before the Indiana Supreme Court and was fully admitted to the bar.
While he had carried on a modest practice in Indianapolis during the years he was studying for the bar, he opened his first real
law office in Covington, Ind., shortly after receiving
his license from the Indiana Supreme Court. He served two terms as prosecuting
attorney in Covington (1850-53) and in 1853 resigned to move to Crawfordsville, where his wife's parents lived. In 1852 he had married Susan Elston, third daughter of
Maj. Isaac C. Elston. In Crawfordsville he continued the practice of law off and on for the greater part of his
life.
Closely connected with his legal career was Wallace's
interest in politics, although he never achieved elective public office higher than
state senator (1856).
Wallace started out in politics as a Whig. His father had been a Whig before him
and had been elected governor of Indiana with that party's support. But when the Whigs nominated
Zachary Taylor president in 1848Wallace could not go along with the party. He despised
Taylor because of the latter's treatment of
Wallace's unit in the Mexican War, so he bolted to
the Democratic ranks. Soon he found himself in a political dilemma. The controversy
over the admission to the union of states as "free" states or
"slave" states found him torn between his dislike of the
abolitionists and his repugnance to human slavery. He wound up by becoming a Douglas
Democrat with the principle that each new state should determine its own status on
the slavery issue. But events led Wallace away from this
position and he was ultimately convinced, after hearing Lincoln
debate Douglas, that the Democrats were the party not only of slavery but of
secession. In 1860 he moved into the Republican camp. It was a Republican president,
Hayes, who appointed him governor of New Mexico Territory in 1878 and another Republican,
Garfield, who appointed him minister to Turkey in 1881.
In both of the last assignments Wallace came on the scene in
periods of excitement. The reign of terror of "Billy the Kid"
occurred while he was governor of New Mexico, and the notorious Abdul Hamid II was sultan
during Wallace's tour of duty in Constantinople.
Around the edges of the varied careers Wallace found time to
play the violin and to paint pictures. He even dabbled in modeling clay.
Lew Wallace's formal education was of the skimpiest. He was sent from school to school
and along the way spent a scant two months in the preparatory department of
Wabash College, but formal education apparently did not take.
His greatest source of real education was his father's library.
It has been ventured before now that a contributing psychological factor to the
readiness of the South for an unnecessary and tragic war was the popularity of
romantic fiction, particularly the Waverley Novels of Walter
Scott. If the young manhood of the slave-holding class regarded
themselves as feudal seigneurs or highland chieftains, a highly debatable
contention, they certainly had a northern counterpart in Lew Wallace.
It was noted above that Wallace was a romantic in his writing; but his romanticism
went deeper than that and tinged almost every phase of his life. From his first
attempt to run away and be a hero he was committed to the dramatic, the fanciful,
and the heroic. He dressed his military company in the baggy trousers and gay
tasselled sash of the Algerian Zouaves of France. He saw in the coming Civil War a chance to rise to fame. He ordered
the men of the Eleventh Indiana Regiment to fall upon their knees, raise their right
hands and publicly swear a mighty oath to remember the humiliation of the Indiana forces at Buena Vista in the Mexican War and to wipe out that shame in battle.
Gen. Grant may have been weak on his facts as to what occurred
before Shiloh but he knew his man when he observed in the CENTURY
MAGAZINE, "I presume his idea was that by taking the route he
did, he would be able to come around on the flank or rear of the enemy, and thus
perform an act of heroism that would redound to the credit of his command, as well
as to the benefit of his country."
The romantic tendency can be noted in Wallace's painting of the conspirators
planning the assassination of Lincoln. They are shown in a
range of poses from furtive to poetic before a classical ruin, a favorite stage
property of the artists who revolted against the logic and reason of the classical
age.
Again we find the love of the colorful in his description of the Turkish sultan:
"The commander of the faithful wears the uniform of an army officer,
without ornament other than a slight dress sword. His bearing is kingly, his face
thin and colorless, eyes black and keen as a falcon's. He rides a
milk-white Arabian, which he manages with skilful and delicate hand."
In the last years of his life, Lew Wallace caused to be built in
the garden of his Crawfordsville,
Ind., home a study which
he described as "a pleasure-house for my soul." It is unfortunate
that this tangible evidence of Wallace's choice of an
ideal setting for himself as a writer and a man of the world remains for us to see.
It is better to think of him as the restless adventure-seeker, the striker of
picturesque attitudes that his writings and the events of his life reveal him. There
is little of the commonplace in that portrait. It comes as something of a shock,
then, to see preserved in this little building, now maintained as a memorial, the
standard trappings and artistic cliches of an era when aesthetic judgment in the
English-speaking world was at its nadir.
By John D. Forbes, Wabash College.
- The Fair God; or, the Last of the
'Tzins: a Tale of the Conquest of Mexico. Boston, 1873.
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'Tzins: a Tale of the Conquest of Mexico" by WALLACE, LEWIS: 1827-1905. in:
Close X - Commodus. An Historical Play.
Crawfordsville, Ind., [1876].
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Close X - Ben-Hur: a Tale of the Christ. New York, 1880.
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Close X - The Life of General Benjamin Harrison.
Philadelphia, 1888.
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Close X - The Boyhood of Christ. New York,
1888.
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Close X - Ben-Hur in Dramatic Tableaux and Pantomime Arranged by the
Author. New York, 1891.
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Author" by WALLACE, LEWIS: 1827-1905. in:
Close X - Life and Public Services of Benjamin Harrison…
with a Choice Biographical Sketch of-Whitelaw Reid …
Cincinnati, n.d.
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with a Choice Biographical Sketch of-Whitelaw Reid" by WALLACE, LEWIS: 1827-1905. in:
Close X - The Prince of India: or, Why Constantinople Fell.
New York, 1893.
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Close X - The Story of American Heroism (with others).
Akron, O., 1896.
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Close X - The Wooing of Malkatoon; Commodus: Two Poems.
New York, I898.
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Close X - The First Christmas; from Ben-Hur. New York, 1899.
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Close X - Lew Wallace, an Autobiography
. New York, 1906.
2 vols. (Brought down to the end of the Civil War by
Wallace, this was completed by Susan Elston Wallace and Mary Hannah
Krout.)
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" by WALLACE, LEWIS: 1827-1905. in:
Close X - Chariot-Race From Ben-Hur. New
York, 1908.
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Close X - The Boy's Ben-Hur: a Tale of the Christ.
New York, [1880-1928].
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