They razed the forests for their cabins and crops, forever changing the Native American’s sacred terrain. Tecumseh’s defeat at Tippecanoe had opened the land to white settlers. In 1827, the year Lew Wallace was born, landlocked Indiana was America’s wild west. How did an agnostic soldier come to write a story of redemption? Even more intriguing, how did writing that story redeem the young artist in Lew Wallace? II. Its climax depicts a visceral race between two former friends-a Jewish prince and the Roman tribune who betrayed him.īen-Hur: A Tale of the Christ made Wallace a celebrity. Perhaps he eventually forgave his commander, but he never forgot.Īt age 53, Wallace became the late-blooming author of a successful novel. Grant’s duplicity around Shiloh would haunt Wallace for the rest of his life. He wouldn’t part with the horse who’d been true to him when Grant had not. “Not for love or money,” Wallace told him. After a few miles, Grant stopped the race and offered to buy Old John right there. “Why the hell not?” Wallace probably thought, not that he believed in Satan or God or their respective domains. The stallion’s forelegs rent the sky in frustration. “GO!” The Union soldier dropped his kerchief. He also couldn’t beat his commanding officer. They rode out together and Grant challenged Wallace to a good-natured race. He invited Wallace to his headquarters to talk strategy, carefully skirting Shiloh. So Grant thought it prudent to show his gratitude. Now Wallace had famously saved Washington DC from the Confederates. But historians still debate his reasons and who was at fault. Wallace and his regiment arrived late to the battle, costing thousands of lives.

President Lincoln demanded an explanation for the slaughter.

Shiloh was the Civil War’s first bloodbath, leaving 24,000 men on both sides dead or wounded. I saw an open field…so covered with dead that it would have been possible to walk across the clearing, in any direction, stepping on dead bodies, without a foot touching the ground. In his memoirs, Grant would describe the horror of Shiloh thus: Grant like the legends they’d once been-before the Battle of Shiloh. They cantered into the headquarters of Ulysses S. “After this war ends, I must pick up a paintbrush again.” He patted Old John’s neck and urged him on.

General Lew Wallace, tall upon the back of his stallion Old John, paused to admire the red-gold Virginia countryside. To catch a boy and hold him fast one has only to set the delicate machinery of the wonder-box in him at work.

Lew wallace novel