Shiloh was one of the first major battles of the Civil War. In fact, they got there at the close of the first day’s fighting. Yet there was a long delay between Lew’s receiving Grant’s orders and his troops’ arrival at the Union line. Grant to call them up to the field of action. On the morning of the battle they were held in reserve, waiting for General Ulysses S. He was then 34, the youngest major general in the Union Army, a striking figure on a big bay horse, in charge of the 3rd Division-nearly 6,000 hardened soldiers. Later, as a soldier, he longed for glory, and it seemed within his grasp until the Battle of Shiloh, in April of 1862. He ran away from home in Indianapolis at 16 to join the Texan war for independence, but got no farther than the banks of the nearby White River. Lew Wallace, it turns out, was a seeker-one of those people whose eyes are on the horizon looking for something more. But while adapting it I not only became a great fan of the text but also came to understand the surprisingly moving backstory. What I didn’t have was familiarity with the book that started it all, because Ben-Hur in its original version is a tough slog for today’s readers. I even have dim memories of my parents bringing home an illustrated program from the 1959 premiere of the film starring Charlton Heston. Editions of Ben-Hur took up serious shelf space in our house.
He was a diplomat and, of course, a best-selling author.
He had put Billy the Kid in jail (we had a letter from the Kid hanging in our back hall). He had been a Union general in the Civil War. As a little girl, I was very proud of Lew.
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