Lew Wallace

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Lew Wallace as a soldier during the Civil War

Lewis "Lew" Wallace (born April 10, 1827 in Brookville , Franklin County , Indiana , †  February 15, 1905 in Crawfordsville , Indiana) was an American lawyer, general , politician and writer , best known for his novel Ben Hur .

Early years and advancement

Lew Wallace came from a well-known Indiana family. His father had been a graduate of the US Military Academy at West Point and a lieutenant governor of Indiana. His mother was a well-known suffragette. Lewis attended Wabash Preparatory School for some time. He later studied law.

When the Mexican-American War broke out , he was a lieutenant in an infantry regiment. But he was not involved in combat himself. In 1849 he was admitted to the bar. 1850 Wallace joined the League of Freemasons at his lodge Fountain Lodge No. 60 , is based in Covington, Indiana. In 1856 he was elected to the Indiana Senate. During the Civil War he served as an officer in the Union Army and was promoted to major general. During the Battle of Monocacy in 1864, he commanded the forces defending Washington against the attack by General Jubal Early . After the war he was a member of the military tribunal that tried President Abraham Lincoln's assassins . In November 1865 he retired from the army.

Territorial Governor of New Mexico

After the war he was governor of the then New Mexico Territory from 1878 to 1881 . During this time he had to restore order to the country that had experienced a period of violence and corruption under his predecessor Samuel Beach Axtell . He was also involved in an investigation into the famous gunslinger Billy the Kid .

Lew Wallace in later years

Another résumé

After his time in New Mexico, Wallace was the US envoy to the Ottoman Empire between 1881 and 1885 . He died of cancer in 1905 in his hometown of Crawfordsville. Wallace achieved his greatest degree of fame neither as a politician nor as a soldier, but as a writer. He was the author of the bestseller "Ben Hur".

Creation of the novel "Ben Hur"

One day Wallace had a conversation with a staff officer who made fun of and mocked God , faith, and Christians . Wallace, who was not yet a believer at the time, paused for thought and decided to do an extensive study of everything related to the Bible , Jesus Christ, and faith.

Wallace later wrote that his encounter with the mocking Colonel had two consequences: on the one hand, the book " Ben Hur ", which was published in 1880, on the other hand his turn to God and Jesus Christ.

The book became a bestseller and the prototype of the historical novel . Only the Bible was printed more often in the 19th century than "Ben Hur", which is still known today, especially for its film adaptations, while Wallace's other works are practically forgotten.

Works

  • The Fair God; or, The Last of the 'Tzins: A Tale of the Conquest of Mexico (Boston: James R. Osgood and Company), 1873; German, Berlin 1891.
  • Commodus: An Historical Play (Crawfordsville, IN: published privately by the author), 1877. (Revised and reissued in the same year)
  • Ben Hur (New York: Harper & Brothers), 1880; German, Stuttgart 1887.
  • The Boyhood of Christ (New York: Harper & Brothers), 1888; German, Berlin 1891.
  • Life of Gen. Ben Harrison (bound with Life of Hon. Levi P. Morton , by George Alfred Townsend ), (Cleveland: NG Hamilton & Co., Publishers), 1888.
  • Life of Gen. Ben Harrison (Philadelphia: Hubbard Brothers, Publishers), 1888.
  • Life and Public Services of Hon. Benjamin Harrison, President of the US With a Concise Biographical Sketch of Hon. Whitelaw Reid, Ex-Minister to France [by Murat Halstad] (Philadelphia: Edgewood Publishing Co.), 1892.
  • The Prince of India; or, Why Constantinople Fell (New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers), 2 vols., 1893; German under the title The Prince of India , 2 Bde., Freiburg 1894.
  • The Wooing of Malkatoon [and] Commodus (New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers), 1898.
  • Lew Wallace: An Autobiography (New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers), 2 vols., 1906.

literature

  • Krešimir Matijević : Not just a chariot race! On the reception of Roman history in the "Ben-Hur" film adaptations and the novel by Lew Wallace . In: R. Wiegels (ed.), Entwined paths. Modern ways to antiquity, Osnabrück research on antiquity and the reception of antiquity 16. Marie Leidorf, Rahden 2011, pp. 217–238, ISBN 978-3-89646-737-9

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hamill, John et al. : A Celebration of the Craft. JG Press 1998. ISBN 1572152672 .
  2. ^ Eugen Lennhoff, Oskar Posner, Dieter A. Binder: Internationales Freemaurerlexikon , revised and expanded new edition of the edition from 1932, Munich 2003, 951 pages, ISBN 3-7766-2161-3
personal data
SURNAME Wallace, Lew
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Wallace, Lewis
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American military, politician, and writer
DATE OF BIRTH April 10, 1827
PLACE OF BIRTH Brookville , Indiana
DATE OF DEATH February 15, 1905
Place of death Crawfordsville , Indiana