THE
OF LEW AND SUSAN WALLACE A documentary edition published by the Indiana Historical Society Press, Indianapolis, in cooperation with the Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington, and made possible through the generous funding of Lilly papersEndowment Inc., 2016 THE PAPERS OF LEW AND SUSAN WALLACE Digital Edition
Douglas E. Clanin, Editor
Donald E. Thompson, Editor, 1984–92
Kathleen M. Breen and M. Teresa Baer, Digital Project Editors
Laura M. Bachelder, M. Teresa Baer, Lucinda J. Barnhart, Heather Jo Beatty, Suzanne S. Bellamy, Alan A. Bouwkamp, Kathleen M. Breen, Marcia R. Caudell, Paula J. Corpuz, Ruth Dorrel, Anita M. Downton, Jennifer Duplaga, Mark G. Emerson, John W. Knorr, Shaun Chandler Lighty, Shirley McCord, Lindsey Mintz, Carolyn Pumroy, and Bradley K. Weaver Editorial Assistants
C. M. Harris, Consulting Editor, 1989–2001
Thomas A. Mason, Project Director
Published by the Indiana Historical Society Press, Indianapolis
In cooperation with Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington
Made possible through the generous funding of Lilly Endowment, Inc.
2018
©2008 Indiana Historical Society Press ©2016 Digital Edition Indiana Historical Society Press
Indiana Historical Society Press Eugene and Marilyn Glick Indiana History Center 450 West Ohio Street Indianapolis, Indiana 46202-3269 USA www.indianahistory.org
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The papers of Lew and Susan Wallace [microform] / Douglas E. Clanin [and] Donald E. Thompson, editors; C. M. Harris, consulting editor; Thomas A. Mason, project director. 49 microfilm reels; 35 mm. "Published by the Indiana Historical Society Press, Indianapolis, in cooperation with the Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington." Summary: Reproduces the papers of Lew Wallace, a Civil War general and member of the military tribunal that convicted the Lincoln conspirators and the commandant of Andersonville Prison, a writer (Ben-Hur), a diplomat, and a lecturer; also reproduces the papers of his wife, Susan Wallace, a writer of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and travel accounts. ISBN 978-0-87195-271-4 (set)
The Papers of Lew and Susan Wallace Digital Edition
For Josiah Kirby Lilly Jr. (1893–1966)
Philanthropist, bibliophile, collector, and patron of the arts iv
EDITORIAL BOARD FOR THE PAPERS OF LEW AND SUSAN WALLACE
B. Breon Mitchell, Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington
H. Wayne Morgan, University of Oklahoma, Norman
Katharine M. Morsberger, Claremont, California
Robert E. Morsberger, California State University, Pomona
John Y. Simon, Ulysses S. Grant Association, Morris Library, Southern Illinois
University, Carbondale
Saundra B. Taylor, Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington
Lee Scott Theisen, Schenectady Museum and Planetarium, New York
Robert M. Utley, Georgetown, Texas v
TABLE OF CONTENTS PAPERS OF LEW AND SUSAN WALLACE
Acknowledgments and History of the Project 1 Introduction 6 Biographical Sketches of Lew and Susan Wallace 9 A Select Bibliography 20 Brief History and Overview of the Papers of Lew and Susan Wallace 28 Editorial Method: Selection Criteria, Electronic Finding Aid, and Itinerary File 31 Location Symbols for Manuscript Repositories 35 Abbreviations and Short Title List 40
Series I, Correspondence and Other Documents 32 microfilm reels
Reel 1: 1834–April 18, 1861
Reel 2: April 19, 1861–March 31, 1862
Reel 3: April 1–September 9, 1862
Reel 4: September 10, 1862–July 11, 1863
Reel 5: July 12, 1863–May 3, 1864
Reel 6: May 4–July 8, 1864
Reel 7: July 9–September 5, 1864
Reel 8: September 7–December 26, 1864
Reel 9: December 27, 1864–June 3, 1865
Reel 10: June 4, 1865–May 30, 1866
Reel 11: June 9, 1866–December 31, 1872
Reel 12: January 6, 1873–October 8, 1878
Reel 13: October 9, 1878–April 30, 1879 vi
Reel 14: May 1, 1879–February 26, 1881
Reel 15: March 1–October 24, 1881
Reel 16: October 25, 1881–April 10, 1882
Reel 17: April 11–September 22, 1882
Reel 18: September 23, 1882–February 28, 1883
Reel 19: March 1–June 8, 1883
Reel 20: June 9–September 7, 1883
Reel 21: September 10, 1883–February 23, 1884
Reel 22: February 24–May 7, 1884
Reel 23: May 8, 1884–March 24, 1885
Reel 24: March 25, 1885–April 6, 1887
Reel 25: April 7, 1887–[April 4, 1889]
Reel 26: May 1, 1889–July 29, 1893
Reel 27: August 5, 1893–July 27, 1896
Reel 28: August 11, 1896–March 21, 1899
Reel 29: March 23, 1899–June 29, 1901
Reel 30: July 1, 1901–March 25, 1904
Reel 31: April 1, 1904–April 19, 1909
Reel 32: Undated Documents
Series II, Literary Manuscripts (unless otherwise noted, by Lew Wallace) 16 microfilm reels
Reel 1: “An American Duchess”
Reel 2: “Autobiography”
Reel 3: “Finding the Mother and Sister of Ben-Hur” (an extract from the novel, “Ben- Hur,” located in five readings) “Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ” (novel) vii
Reel 4: “To Bethlehem” by Susan Wallace “The Boyhood of Christ,” holograph manuscript “The Boyhood of Christ,” typescript of holograph manuscript “The Boyhood of Christ,” autograph manuscript Reel 5: “Commodus” (play) Reel 6: Aztec Notes, etc. (holograph manuscripts, 1849–1873), made in writing “The Fair God” “The Death of Teceth, No. 1,” an extract from Lew Wallace’s novel, “The Fair God,” located in five readings “The Fair God,” novel fragment Reel 7: “The Fair God,” holograph manuscript, 1849–1873 Reel 8: “How I Came to Write Ben-Hur,” located in five readings Manuscript Notebook by Susan Wallace, 1859–1874 “Our English Cousin” (play) Reel 9: “Sergius to the Lion” (chapter from “The Prince of India,” located in five readings) Original Holographic Notes for “The Prince of India” Reel 10: “The Prince of India” (novel) (InU-Li) Reel 11: “A Sermon in Sancta Sophia, 1451” (fiction piece, extract from “The Prince of India,” located in five readings) “Wooing of Malkatoon” Reels 12–15: “The Prince of India” (autograph manuscript of novel) (InCW: Robert T. Ramsay Jr. Archival Center, Lilly Library, Special Collections, Uncataloged volumes 178–181) Reel 16: Fragments and Miscellanea Series III, Visual Materials 1 microfilm reel
Acknowledgments and History of the Project
A work of the complexity and size of The Papers of Lew and Susan Wallace could not have been completed without the assistance of a large number of people and organizations.
Space dictates, however, that we, the current staff of The Papers of Lew and Susan Wallace, acknowledge by name only a comparatively few individuals and institutions who assisted us over the years.
In 1984 the Indiana Historical Society (IHS) responded to a proposal presented by
Donald E. Thompson, retired Wabash College librarian and archivist, and began to provide some financial assistance to the fledgling Lew and Susan Wallace Papers project, which was located in the Lilly Library at Wabash College for the first several years. Thompson’s interest in the
Wallaces was an outgrowth of his work on Indiana Authors and Their Books (Crawfordsville,
IN: Wabash College, 1949–81). This digital conversion of the microfilm edition is the culmination of our efforts to bring Thompson’s “big idea” to fruition.
Thomas A. Mason, who became director of Publications in 1987, soon began to direct more of the Society’s resources toward moving the project forward. C. M. Harris (a past National
Historical Publications and Records Commission [NHPRC] Fellow in Advanced Historical
Editing and editor of the Papers of William Thornton) collected copies of Wallace documents during research trips to the Library of Congress, National Archives, and many other repositories, and added thousands of document copies to the Wallace project files. After Thompson’s death in
1992, the project moved from Wabash College to the IHS in Indianapolis. Douglas E. Clanin joined the Wallace project staff after completing The Papers of William Henry Harrison, 1800–
1815, which the Society published in ten microfilm rolls in 1999. He rechecked the principal 2 relevant central Indiana document collections and searched auction catalogs and newspapers.
Clanin retired from the Society in 2005.
Throughout the life of the Wallace project, editorial assistants followed up on document search inquiries with repositories, dealers, and private owners; organized the project files; reconciled the document files with the project control files, which they maintained in a computer database in the form of an electronic finding aid (EFA); and created target pages for each of the microfilmed documents. The most recent editorial assistants and the years they worked on the
Wallace Papers project are Alan A. Bouwkamp and Shaun Chandler Lighty, 2006; Lucinda
Barnhart, 2003–5; Suzanne S. Bellamy, 2001–5; and Marcia R. Caudell, 1999–2003. Other editorial assistants who worked on the Wallace project and their years of service are: Carolyn
Pumroy, 1984–94; Bradley K. Weaver, 1989–95; Laura M. Bachelder, 1994–95; John W. Knorr,
1995–96; M. Teresa Baer, 1996–97; Anita M. Downton, 1997–98; Mark G. Emerson, 1998;
Heather Jo Beatty, 1998–99; Lindsey Mintz, 2000–2001; Jennifer Duplaga, 2003; and Ruth
Dorrel, 2005–6. Martha Cantrell, 1989; Jean Thompson, 1989–92; and Jennifer Weaver, 1991–
92, assisted Thompson during the project’s years at Wabash College. IHS Press editor
Kathleen M. Breen directed the digital edition project with the assistance of managing editor
M. Teresa Baer, along with former senior director Paula Corpuz, who secured rights and permissions. Chris McCoy, IHS graphic designer, created the cover design for the digital edition.
Seyma Coskun traveled to Istanbul in 1999 and 2003 to search the Ottoman Archives and other repositories in Istanbul. She used her fluency in Ottoman Turkish to locate several dozen
Wallace-related documents. In 2004 Johanna R. Herring searched the Robert T. Ramsay Jr.
Archival Center in the Lilly Library at Wabash College and located and copied several Wallace documents. Jo Anne Jager, former manager of the Southwest Collection in the New Mexico State 3
Library in Santa Fe, searched relevant record groups in the New Mexico State Records Center and Archives as well as in other New Mexico repositories in 2004–5. In 2002–4 Shaun Chandler
Lighty searched the Montgomery County Courthouse in Crawfordsville, Indiana, for deed records of Lew and Susan Wallace. He also conducted a major search of key Crawfordsville newspapers for articles by and about the Wallaces. Additionally, Patricia Shires Orr conducted valuable research work in the National Archives and the Library of Congress in 2004–5.
The steadfast support of editorial board members immeasurably assisted the Wallace
Papers project staff. They endorsed the project in 1992 and shared with the project staff their knowledge of Lew and Susan Wallace and their times. Members of the Wallace project editorial board are B. Breon Mitchell and Saundra B. Taylor, Lilly Library, Indiana University,
Bloomington; H. Wayne Morgan, University of Oklahoma, Norman; Katharine M. Morsberger,
Claremont, California; Robert E. Morsberger, California State University, Pomona; John Y.
Simon, Ulysses S. Grant Association, Morris Library, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale;
Lee Scott Theisen, Schenectady Museum and Planetarium, New York; and Robert M. Utley,
Georgetown, Texas.
The staff of the IHS library worked tirelessly on behalf of the Wallace project, notably
Vice President, Archives and Library Suzanne Hahn, former library directors Robert K. O’Neill,
(1981–87) and Bruce L. Johnson (1988–2003); Stephen E. Haller, former senior director,
Collections; Eric Pumroy, head of the library’s Department of Manuscripts, 1981–87;
Alexandra S. Gressitt, curator of manuscripts and archives, 1990–98; Paul Brockman, director,
Manuscripts and Visual Collections; and Dorothy A. Nicholson, archivist, Visual Collections. In the Society’s Preservation Imaging Department, Ramona Duncan–Huse, former senior director,
Conservation and Preservation Imaging; Dennis Hardin, former director; David Turk, manager; 4 and Steve Wiseman, Sarah Fitzpatrick, and Pattie Orr, former imaging technicians, ensured that the microfilming of the Wallace papers adhered to the highest possible quality-control standards.
Both Duncan–Huse and Turk worked diligently in bringing the digital edition to completion.
In the Manuscripts Section, Indiana Division, Indiana State Library, Indianapolis, we acknowledge the particular assistance of the late Marybelle Burch, manuscripts librarian, 1984–
89, and of Jill Costill, manuscript librarian, 1997–2004. In the Indiana State Archives, Indiana
Archives and Record Administration, Indianapolis, Stephen E. Towne, reference archivist, 1988–
2001; F. Gerald Handfield, state archivist, 1989–2001; and Dr. Alan January, former Indiana
State Archives division director, 1990–2018 (acting state archivist, 2001–5), helped to locate
Wallace documents.
The steady support of Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington, led to a cooperative venture with the IHS Press to produce a comprehensive, collected microfilm edition of the Wallace Papers. Among the key staff members at the Lilly Library were B. Breon
Mitchell, director; Saundra B. Taylor, curator of manuscripts; and Cheryl Baumgart, manuscripts cataloger. In late 2004 Taylor and Baumgart brought to the Society the Lilly Library’s collection of Wallace manuscripts. The Society’s Preservation Imaging Department microfilmed this important collection and oversaw the digital conversion of the microfilm.
At the General Lew Wallace Study and Museum in Crawfordsville, Indiana, Joann
Spragg, former coordinator/historian; and Cinnamon Catlin-Legutko, former director, provided important support for this project. At the Crawfordsville District Public Library, Judy Spencer in the Reference Department, 2003–4; and Dellie J. Craig, local history digitizer/genealogist, 2004–
5, arranged for and prepared digital scans of several original Lew Wallace images and articles from Crawfordsville newspapers. 5
The National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) endorsed the
Wallace project in 1993 and 2005. J. Dane Hartgrove, director of research at the NHPRC, helped in the search for documents in the Library of Congress and National Archives. Lilly Endowment,
Inc., funded the digital edition.
We are indebted to several private collectors who generously allowed copies of their original Lew and Susan Wallace documents to be included in this documentary edition: Towne
Bannon, San Diego, California; Ned P. Booher, Kokomo, Indiana; Richard W. Buck,
Jacksonville, Florida; Jill and Karl Frawner, Ladoga, Indiana; D. Maxwell Gray, Indianapolis,
Indiana; C. M. Harris, Dagsboro, Delaware; H. Randel Lookabill, Kokomo, Indiana; Bernard E.
Manker Jr., Crawfordsville, Indiana; Robert E. and Katharine M. Morsberger, Claremont,
California; Floyd E. Risvold, Edina, Minnesota; Michael P. Stevens, Fredericksburg, Virginia; and Mrs. John Turchi, Crawfordsville. 6
Introduction
Lew Wallace’s importance as a subject for serious historical investigation does not rest on his having held high office or on the accomplishments he managed in a single discipline or field. Rather it derives from his exceptional achievements in a wide range of endeavors during the years between the Civil War and the Progressive Era. His literary career, too, is of interest primarily for its historical significance. His best-known novel, Ben-Hur—which Emelyn
Eldredge Story considered “the book of books of this age”—is an important document for the cultural and intellectual history of late nineteenth-century America.1
It is also significant that Wallace, as a writer, diplomat, and speaker, enjoyed such high standing within the Republican Party and the nation. The success of Ben-Hur, and the public approval it received, considerably enhanced his influence within the GOP. In fact, President
James A. Garfield decided to appoint him minister to the Ottoman Empire, centered in
Constantinople, Turkey, rather than chargé d’affaires to Paraguay and Bolivia, after he read the book. Wallace was even able to exert influence on the floor of the Republican National
Convention in 1888, which to his delight nominated his longtime friend Benjamin Harrison for the presidency. His rapidly written campaign biography of Harrison helped to achieve the
Indianan’s victory.2
Portions of this Introduction were previously published in Thomas A. Mason, Marcia R. Caudell, Suzanne S. Bellamy, and Ray E. Boomhower, “Publishing Lew and Susan Wallace in the Twenty-First Century,” Indiana Magazine of History 104 (2008): 176–81, © 2008, Trustees of Indiana University, and are reprinted here with permission.
1 The best modern biography is the most recent, Robert E. and Katharine M. Morsberger, Lew Wallace: Militant Romantic (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1980). Also useful is Lee Scott Theisen’s “The Public Career of Lew Wallace, 1854–1905” (PhD diss., University of Arizona, 1973) and several special studies and shorter works on various subjects (see Morsberger, Wallace, 533–46). Not cited in the Morsberger biography and the most recent book on Wallace’s life is the youth biography by Ray Boomhower: The Sword and the Pen: A Life of Lew Wallace (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society Press, 2005). 2 In his diary for April 1881, Garfield wrote of Ben-Hur: “The plot of the story is powerfully sketched and its tone is admirably sustained. I am inclined to send its author (Lew Wallace) to Constantinople, where he may draw inspiration from the modern East for future literary work” (April 17). After finishing the book (April 19), he 7
Lew Wallace’s friendships with and access to prominent politicians, presidents, and military leaders (which even a well-placed observer like Henry Adams must have envied), and his active participation in, or close observance of, key events and trends, make him an ideal subject for documentary treatment. Because his assembled papers accurately mirror his experiences, and because his honesty and sensibilities united to produce a valuable commentary,
The Papers of Lew and Susan Wallace documentary edition will serve as an enduring research collection for scholars and researchers in several historical fields. Additionally, Wallace’s ability to speak meaningfully to the serious-minded popular audience of the Civil War generation and to give expression to its ideals, fears, and anxieties makes him a key figure for broad historical investigations and reassessments of the postwar era or Gilded Age––thus, it seems certain that the publication of the papers of Lew Wallace and his wife, Susan, will have continuing effects on the interpretation and reinterpretation of late-nineteenth-century American culture.3
Susan Arnold Elston Wallace was one of many women to enjoy her own career as a popular writer in the late nineteenth century. This fact alone makes her papers significant for women’s history and the history of post–Civil War popular culture and publishing, but since her life was closely tied to her husband’s, her correspondence and work also complement his. Her letters to mutual friends often related anecdotes and inside accounts of his official activities, while providing a valuable perspective on their social and domestic life and circle of official and personal acquaintances. This perspective is particularly important for the Wallaces’ periods in observed: “Wallace surprises me with his delicacy and penetration, as well as his breadth of culture. I think Constantinople would give him opportunities for success, and I will try to give him that Mission” (The Diary of James A. Garfield, eds. Harry James Brown and Frederick D. Williams, 4 vols. [East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1967–81], 4:577–78, 563). Harrison had tried to convince Garfield to appoint Wallace secretary of war (ibid., 3:384; Harry J. Sievers, Benjamin Harrison, 3 vols. [Chicago: H. Regnery, 1952–68], 2:194, 368–71). 3 The need for a thoroughgoing, scholarly reassessment of the age was sounded by H. Wayne Morgan in his introduction to, and collection of contributors’ essays, The Gilded Age: A Reappraisal (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1963); see also Alan Peskin, “Why the Gilded Age?,” Hayes Historical Journal: A Journal of the Gilded Age 5, no. 4 (Summer 1981): 5–6; and Charles W. Calhoun, “Benjamin Harrison, Centennial President: A Review Essay,” Indiana Magazine of History 84 (June 1988): 136–42. 8
New Mexico and Turkey. Since most of Susan’s letters to Lew were either destroyed or lost, her letters to third parties frequently provide information about him not found elsewhere—and his responses to her and his other correspondents also serve to re-create her documentary record. For these reasons, the Indiana Historical Society Press staff believes that Susan Wallace’s papers properly and usefully belong in this comprehensive, collected edition and has determined to include them. 9
Biographical Sketches of Lew and Susan Wallace
Lewis (Lew) Wallace (1827–1905)
When Lew Wallace died in his Crawfordsville, Indiana, home on February 15, 1905, his name was well known to the American public. It is still recognizable to many Americans who have read or heard of his immensely successful popular novel Ben-Hur (1880), although the name of Charlton Heston, who played the lead role in director William Wyler’s 1959 movie version, may be easier for most people to identify (A new film version was released in 2016).
Indianans, of course, know Wallace as one of their state’s principal historical figures and leading writers; his statue is one of the two from Indiana that stands in the Statuary Hall in the U.S.
Capitol. Civil War buffs will also recognize him as a Union general conspicuous in several battles––most will likely identify him as the commander who went the “wrong way” at the Battle of Shiloh on April 6, 1862, thus, as the story goes, delaying the arrival of reinforcements that would have allowed General Ulysses S. Grant to win a great victory in one day instead of two.
Fame, as is frequently the case, has tended to stereotype Wallace and mask the more significant qualities represented in his life, which render him particularly valuable as a subject for serious historical study. He was a leading figure in a generation that knew the challenges and isolation of the early frontier. He played a prominent role in his generation’s (and the nation’s) single most shaping event, the Civil War. And he witnessed America’s rapid transformation as an economic power, participated in its rise to wealth and world influence, and both articulated and helped to shape the serious popular culture of the postwar era that effectively expressed and accommodated those enormous changes. 10
The son of one of Indiana’s first governors, David Wallace (1799–1859)––West Point graduate (1821), leading figure in the Whig party in Indiana, a member of Congress, 1841–434–– and Esther French Test Wallace (1806–34), Lew was born in Brookville, Indiana, on April 10,
1827, and grew up there and in other small towns in Indiana during its first decades of statehood.
In his autobiography, he recalled a barefoot, Huck Finn-like childhood, full of boyish mischief and good fun. He enjoyed to the utmost the freedom and wonders of nature but confessed also, owing to the early death of his mother, a degree of alienation from adult society. A frequent truant from school (and recipient of corporal punishment), he nevertheless developed interests in reading, literature, and drawing, and dreamed of all things heroic and military. He joined a literary and debating society and wrote a romantic novel that he read to his fellow members, but, after proclaiming his intentions to be a painter, Wallace heeded some sobering advice from his father. Instead of pursuing art, he read law and prepared for a legal and political career.5
In 1842 or 1843 Wallace and a boyhood chum tried to run away to join the navy of the
Texas Republic before they were caught and sent back home. A few years later he was old enough to fight in the Mexican War and was elected to a lieutenancy in the First Indiana
Volunteers. He found little romance or glory behind the lines in northern Mexico, witnessing, for the most part, only the horrors of sickness, pointless death, and mind-dulling routine. He returned to Indiana in 1847, resumed his legal career, and on May 6, 1852, in Crawfordsville married
Susan Arnold Elston, daughter of an influential business and political figure in Crawfordsville,
4 G. W. Cullum, Biographical Register of the Officers and Graduates of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, 3 vols. (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1891), 1:24. David Wallace taught mathematics at West Point after graduating from the Academy. He was widely read in history and literature, a particular admirer of Thomas Babington Macaulay, and subscribed to such British journals as the Edinburgh Review (Lew Wallace: An Autobiography, 2 vols. [New York: Harper and Brothers, 1906], 1:81–83). 5 Father advised son: “In our country art is to have its day, and the day may not come in your time. There is no demand for pictures. Rich men are too few, and the poor cannot afford to indulge a taste of the kind. To give yourself up to the pursuit means starvation” (Wallace, Autobiography, 1:50). 11 where the two settled the year after they were married and where their only child, Henry Lane
Wallace (1853–1926), was born.
As the Civil War approached, Wallace won elections as prosecuting attorney and state senator as a Douglas Democrat (his party choice reflecting his dislike of Whig General Zachary
Taylor as much as his independent spirit). Like most Americans, he was worried by the nature rather than the justice of the abolitionist appeal and drawn to those who preferred compromise to disunion. He continued his interest in the military and formed his own company, the
Montgomery (County) Guards. At the outbreak of the war in 1861, Indiana Governor Oliver P.
Morton appointed him state adjutant general with the task of raising Indiana’s first contingent of troops for the Union army, a task he completed quickly. Wallace dedicated himself totally to the
Union cause, which led him, and so many others, to a lifelong association with the Republican
Party of Abraham Lincoln.
The Civil War provided Wallace with chances for glory and propelled him from a promising career in Indiana onto the national stage. He first gained public notice in the early months of fighting when he led the Eleventh Indiana Volunteers, his specially trained unit of
Zouaves, in a successful raid on Romney, Virginia. Flattering accounts of his regiment and of this much-welcomed Union victory, well illustrated by Winslow Homer in Harper’s Weekly
Magazine, helped to make him a much-needed popular hero.
Wallace quickly gained promotion from colonel to brigadier general and then to major general. As a colonel, he took command of the reorganized Eleventh Indiana (the term of service of the first unit expired after three months). As a brigadier general, he commanded a brigade in
Paducah, Kentucky, and played a prominent part in Grant’s early campaigns in the West, particularly at the battle of Fort Donelson, which resulted in the first surrender of a Confederate 12 army. His reputation as a field commander rose until the Battle of Shiloh, or Pittsburg Landing,
Tennessee (April 6–7, 1862), where he commanded one of Grant’s six divisions of the Army of the Tennessee. This great and bloody battle, the largest in United States history to that point, was by textbook measures a Union victory, but in terms of public confidence, especially because of the enormous loss of life (with a casualty total of nearly twenty-four thousand from both sides killed, wounded, or missing), it represented a serious psychological and tactical setback for the
Union cause.
In the aftermath of Shiloh, the public and the politicians sought the reasons behind the enormous loss of life. Wallace had taken a long and circuitous route from his camps, several miles from the battlefield, believing he was obeying the orders hastily scribbled by one of
Grant’s aides. Unfortunately, the orders were lost on the march. Wallace arrived on the field at the end of the first day too late to participate. Grant believed Wallace guilty of incompetence and the accusation stuck. Wallace was relegated to secondary duty and, bored, he voluntarily left
Grant’s army in June 1862, never to return. Though he repeatedly requested a new field command, it never materialized due to Grant’s accusation and the implacable opposition of
Major General Henry W. Halleck, commander-in-chief of all the Union armies. Halleck, a West
Pointer, bitterly resented the quick rise of the nonprofessional “political” generals and did everything in his power to sidetrack their careers.6 Wallace felt himself in the shadow of Shiloh until the end of his life, continuing until his last days to attack Halleck as an indecisive desk officer and to refute all imputations of fault. The controversy was never fully resolved––the nature of the dispute put Grant in the position of having to indict himself in order to exonerate
6 Halleck inscribed on Wallace’s formal request for a court of inquiry on the Shiloh issue: “I do not think that General Wallace is worth the trouble & expense of either a court of inquiry or a court Martial. His only claim to consideration is that of gas” (July 24, 1863). Wallace to Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, July 18, 1863, National Archives; RG 94, Adjutant General’s Office, Wallace compiled service file. Wallace indicated his willingness to waive his rank to regain a field command (to Adjutant General, January 22, 1864, A.G.O., M22, roll 111). 13
Wallace, although he offered an exoneration of sorts, in a footnote in his published autobiography, just before he died.7
Through the intervention of Governor Morton, Wallace was assigned to lead the defense of Cincinnati in September 1862, when two Confederate armies advanced into Kentucky. His leadership in blocking the Confederate advance drew high praise in the national press, but
Halleck, his inveterate foe, now general-in-chief of the army, thwarted his repeated requests for a meaningful assignment. Grant succeeded Halleck as general-in-chief of the army in March 1864, and President Lincoln gave Wallace the command of the Eighth Army Corps and of the Middle
Department (comprised of Delaware and most of Maryland). Though considered the “graveyard of commanders,” this command became an eventful posting. On July 9, 1864, Wallace won a strategic victory at Monocacy Junction, Maryland, where he delayed the superior forces of
Confederate Lieutenant General Jubal Early, providing time for reinforcements to reach a vulnerable Washington, DC.
Wallace proved an able and resolute military administrator while serving as commanding general of the Middle Department. He was as firm in his commitment to the “radical” social goals that emerged from the war effort as he was to the immediate goal of defeating the enemy in the field.8 His cooperation with the governor of Maryland ensured the abolition of slavery there in November 1864, making Maryland the first state to emancipate its slaves voluntarily. He mercilessly pursued Confederate sympathizers and agents of slave owners seeking the return of fugitives. He strictly enforced measures to protect slaves and freedmen in their new liberties. Not
7 Grant dated the note June 21, 1885, and inserted it at the end of his chapter 25 (Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, ed. E. B. Long [1885; reprint, New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1952], 182–83). 8 After Susan Wallace had returned home from a visit with him in Paducah, Kentucky, Lew Wallace wrote her on December 22, 1861: “However we may go into the war, we shall come out of it abolitionists” (Lew Wallace Collection, 1799–1972, M 0292, Indiana Historical Society). 14 without risk to his career, he even quartered homeless freedmen in Baltimore’s exclusive (pro-
Confederate) Maryland Club.
In January 1865 Wallace was dispatched by Grant on a secret assignment to negotiate surrender terms with Confederate general Kirby Smith, cut off in Texas by Union forces, and also undertook a secret mission in Mexico. Resuming his command in Baltimore in April, he joined the search for the Lincoln conspirators, supervised the transit of the dead president’s casket through Maryland, then after the conclusion of hostilities received appointment to the important military tribunals that tried and convicted the Lincoln conspirators and also Captain
Henry Wirz, the director of the notorious prisoner-of-war camp at Andersonville, Georgia.
After resigning his commission in 1865, Wallace became active in the cause of liberating
Mexico from Ferdinand Maximilian, the emperor appointed by France. Wallace accepted a commission in the army of General Benito Juárez and was instrumental in raising funds in the
United States to keep it supplied and fighting. At the same time, he succumbed to “silver fever” and the lure of riches in Mexican mining ventures. All of these plans came to nothing, and he returned to Crawfordsville to the practice of law and the pursuit of politics. He made two attempts to win a seat in Congress, gaining the Republican nomination for his home district in
1870 before losing the general election by a narrow margin.
Reduced in his sphere of activity and bored by legal work, Wallace lectured around the state on “Mexico and the Mexicans” and began writing with serious purpose. He reworked his early novel, a romantic tale of the Aztec struggle against the Spanish, inspired by William H.
Prescott’s History of the Conquest of Mexico (1843). It was published as The Fair God by
Osgood and Company of Boston in 1873 and enjoyed critical and popular success. He was soon 15 at work on his most famous novel, journeying to Washington to research Jewish history in the
Library of Congress.
Wallace remained active in Republican politics and campaigned for the party’s nominees
Grant and Rutherford B. Hayes, as well as for Indiana candidates. He returned to national attention during the disputed presidential election of 1876, when President Grant designated him one of the Republican Party’s “visiting statesmen” to investigate charges of vote fraud in
Louisiana and Florida. Wallace carried out his responsibilities to the Republican Party by helping to ensure that those states went for Hayes. He also represented the party as legal counsel in
Florida––which led to an accusation of bribery, although he was soon cleared of the implication by Congress. Like the other “visiting statesmen,” he was offered an appointment by the new president, although in his case the offering suggested that Hayes was not under a great obligation. Having indicated his preference for the ministry of Italy (and, after that, in descending order, those of Brazil, Spain, and Mexico), Wallace was considerably deflated by the offer of Bolivia, which he declined. However, he soon accepted the governorship of New
Mexico, although it carried with it only half the salary ($2,400 annually). His legal and military background may have convinced Hayes to send him to that territory, which had fallen into lawlessness. The assignment was a dangerous and tough one––no less a figure than Major
General John C. Frémont was governor of the neighboring Arizona Territory.
In accepting the challenge of the territorial governorship in September 1878, Wallace placed himself in a most interesting historical role. He became the agent of law and order, in effect the representative of American–Victorian civilization, in a setting that was its very antithesis––a stark, sparsely settled region in the grip of livestock thieves, gunslingers, and an assortment of corrupt characters and desperadoes. The historical drama was complete when the 16 governor sat down to a private meeting with William H. Bonney, alias Billy the Kid, in March
1879. The following year he completed Ben-Hur in the long, one-storied adobe building on the plaza in Santa Fe known as the governor’s “palace.” Conditions improved and regular settlement increased in the years following Wallace’s tenure as governor, due in part to some of the actions he took, but primarily as a consequence of the penetration of the railroad and the telegraph, which reduced the territory’s isolation. Significantly, Wallace arrived in New Mexico by stagecoach in 1878; he departed the territory in 1881 in a Pullman railway car.
Wallace left New Mexico to accept President James A. Garfield’s offer of the post of
U.S. minister to Turkey, the Sublime Porte. Although secured by his literary achievements, this appointment was not merely an honorary station. The Turkish Empire stood tenth among nations in total volume of foreign trade, and, alone among the established nations of Europe, had given unswerving support to the position of the Lincoln administration in its “war of the rebellion”–– having even refused to permit Confederate privateers the rights of belligerency. The good relations Wallace managed to cultivate with the autocratic Sultan Abdul Hamid II were recognized when he became the first U.S. minister to Turkey to be given the rank of envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary.
Upon Democrat Grover Cleveland’s election to the presidency in 1884, Wallace submitted his resignation as minister, much to the dismay of the Sultan, who tried to keep him in place. Although he would make return trips to Turkey, Wallace left his official station in mid-
1885 and returned with Susan to Crawfordsville. Once home he wrote several magazine pieces and another large, if less successful, novel for Harper and Brothers and made tours from time to time on the lecture circuit. He declined President Benjamin Harrison’s offers of other posts, 17 although, certainly appreciating the irony, he did accept appointments to the Board of Visitors of the U.S. Military Academy and to that of the U.S. Naval Academy.
At the outbreak of the Spanish–American War in 1898, Wallace, now seventy-one years old, volunteered for active field duty, specifically requesting command of a unit of black troops.
He was not in fact recalled to military service, but he remained a national celebrity and retained an active interest in state, national, and international affairs. He died while writing his autobiography, which was completed by his wife, a popular writer in her own right, and published posthumously by Harper and Brothers in 1906. This last work reinforced his great appeal for the Civil War generation, well expressed by the review published by his friend Major
General Oliver Otis Howard: “Nothing I have read, except, perhaps, Ben-Hur, has so filled my heart and mind and thrilled me as this autobiography of General Lew Wallace.”9
Susan Arnold Elston Wallace (1830–1907)
Susan Wallace enjoyed success as an author of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and travel accounts. Born in Crawfordsville on December 25, 1830, she was the third daughter of Major
Isaac Compton Elston (founder of the Elston Bank in Crawfordsville and proprietor of Michigan
City, Indiana) and Maria Eveline Akin Elston. She completed her schooling in Poughkeepsie,
New York, in 1849. Three years later, she married Lew Wallace, who was then serving as prosecuting attorney in Covington, Indiana. In 1853 the young couple moved to Crawfordsville, where they lived, except for Lew’s years of government service, for the rest of their lives.
Susan’s poetry first appeared in the Cincinnati Daily Gazette in 1858 and was reprinted in Harper’s Magazine the next year. Numerous poems and articles in periodicals followed. Since
9 O. O. Howard, “Lew Wallace: An Autobiography,” North American Review 183 (December 21, 1906): 1294–99; quotation is on page 1294. 18
Susan Wallace is not listed in Notable American Women, 1607–1950: A Biographical
Dictionary, ed. Edward T. James, et al., 3 vols. (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard
University Press, 1971) or American Women Writers: A Critical Reference Guide from Colonial
Times to the Present, 4 vols. (New York: Ungar, 1979–82), The Papers of Lew and Susan
Wallace will help to redress this neglect and attract scholarly attention to her works. Her books include The Storied Sea (Boston: James R. Osgood, 1883); Ginèvra; or, The Old Oak Chest, A
Christmas Story (New York: Worthington, 1887 [published 1886]); The Land of the Pueblos
(New York: John B. Alden, 1888); The Repose in Egypt, A Medley (New York: John B. Alden,
1888); Along the Bosphorus and Other Sketches (Chicago and New York: Rand, McNally,
1898); and The City of the King: What the Child Jesus Saw and Heard (Indianapolis: Bobbs–
Merrill, 1903).
Lew and Susan were unusual if not unique among literary couples of the Victorian era in that they were both published authors of fiction and nonfiction. They encouraged each other’s writing and work—a welcome contrast to Nathaniel Hawthorne and Sophia Peabody, to pick one example from that era.10 Susan encouraged other writers, notably the sisters Caroline Virginia
Krout and Mary Hannah Krout, a suffragist and widely published nonfiction author. Lew’s stepmother, Zerelda Wallace, was also a prominent suffragist leader. After Lew died, Susan worked to bring her husband’s autobiography to publication with Mary Hannah Krout’s assistance. She had long acted as an editor and critic for Lew, and Indiana Authors and Their
Books noted, “It has been suggested that the literary taste of Mrs. Wallace was somewhat superior to that of her illustrious husband and that his work could have been improved, in style
10 T. Walter Herbert, Dearest Beloved: The Hawthornes and the Making of the Middle-Class Family (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993). 19 and structure, by even more of her editing than it received.”11 Susan Wallace died in her
Crawfordsville home on October 1, 1907.
11 Indiana Authors and Their Books, 3 vols. (Crawfordsville: Wabash College, 1949–81): 1:331; See also Dorothy Ritter Russo and Thelma Lois Sullivan, Bibliographical Studies of Seven Authors of Crawfordsville, Indiana (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, 1952), 417–46. 20
Selected Bibliography
For a more extensive bibliography of works by or about Lew and Susan E. Wallace, see
Robert M. Morsberger and Katharine M. Morsberger, Lew Wallace: Militant Romantic (New
York: McGraw–Hill, 1980), 532–46. At Kansas State University, Professor Roger C. Adams compiled a large bibliography that includes a variety of works by and about the Wallaces
(http://www-personal.ksu.edu/~rcadams/lewbib.html). Dorothy Ritter Russo and Thelma Lois
Sullivan’s Bibliographical Studies of Seven Authors of Crawfordsville, Indiana (Indianapolis:
Indiana Historical Society, 1952), [305]–446, lists the first editions of not only books but also ephemera, contributions, and periodicals containing first appearances written by the Wallaces.
For a comprehensive listing of literary manuscripts by Lew and Susan Wallace, published as well as unpublished, see the Finding Aid for this edition.
Adams, Roger C. “Panic on the Ohio: The Defense of Cincinnati, Covington, and Newport,
September 1862.” Journal of Kentucky Studies 9 (September 1992): 80–98.
Banta, R[obert] E., comp. Indiana Authors and Their Books, 1816–1916. Crawfordsville, IN:
Wabash College.
Boomhower, Ray E. “Major General Lew Wallace: Savior of Washington, DC” Traces of
Indiana and Midwestern History 5, no. 1 (Winter 1993): 4–13.
———. The Sword and the Pen: A Life of Lew Wallace. Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society
Press, 2005.
Burton, Richard. “Lew Wallace as a Poet.” Book Buyer 15 (December 1897): 454–58.
Dunn, Jacob Piatt. Indiana and Indianans. 5 vols. Chicago: American Historical Society, 1919. 21
Forbes, John D. “Lew Wallace, Romantic.” Indiana Magazine of History 44 (December 1948):
385–92.
Gordon, Leland James. American Relations with Turkey, 1830–1930. Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1932.
Grant, Ulysses S. “General Lew Wallace and General McCook at Shiloh: Memoranda on the
Civil War.” Century 30, new series 8 (August 1885): 776.
———. The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant. Edited by John Y. Simon. 31 vols. to 2018. Carbondale:
Southern Illinois University Press, 1967–.
———. Personal Memoirs. 2 vols. New York: Charles L. Webster, 1886.
Hamilton, Edward Joseph. Indiana Writers of Poems and Prose. Chicago: Western Press
Associates, 1902.
Haselberger, Fritz. “Wallace’s Raid on Romney in 1861.” West Virginia History 27 (1966): 87–
110.
Horn, Calvin. New Mexico’s Troubled Years: The Story of the Early Territorial Governors.
Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1963.
Howard, Oliver Otis. “Lew Wallace: An Autobiography.” North American Review 183
(December 21, 1906): 1294–99.
Jones, Oakah L. “Lew Wallace: Hoosier Governor of Territorial New Mexico, 1878–81.” New
Mexico Historical Review 60 (April 1985): 129–58.
Keleher, William A. Violence in Lincoln County, 1869–1881: A New Mexico Item. Albuquerque:
University of New Mexico Press, [1957].
Lighty, Shaun Chandler. “The Fall and Rise of Lew Wallace: Gaining Legitimacy through
Popular Culture.” MA thesis, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, 2005. 22
Lingelbach, Anna Lane. “Wallace, Lewis.” In Dictionary of American Biography. Edited by
Allen Johnson and Dumas Malone. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1927–36.
McKee, Irving. “Ben-Hur” Wallace: The Life of General Lew Wallace. Berkeley and Los
Angeles: University of California Press, 1947.
———. “The Early Life of Lew Wallace.” Indiana Magazine of History 37 (September 1941):
205–16.
Miller, Robert Ryal. “The American Legion of Honor in Mexico.” Pacific Historical Review 30
(August 1961): 231–50.
———. “Herman Sturm: Hoosier Secret Agent for Mexico.” Indiana Magazine of History 58
(March 1962): 1–15.
———. “Lew Wallace and the French Intervention in Mexico.” Indiana Magazine of History 59
(March 1963): 31–50.
Morgan, H. Wayne, ed. The Gilded Age. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1963.
Morrow, Barbara Olenyik. From Ben-Hur to Sister Carrie: Remembering the Lives and Works of
Five Indiana Authors. Indianapolis: Guild Press of Indiana, 1995.
Morsberger, Robert E. “The Battle that Saved Washington.” Civil War Times Illustrated 13 (May
1974): 12–27.
———. “Latter-Day Lord of Baltimore.” Maryland Magazine 9 (Summer 1977): 2–6.
———. “The Savior of Cincinnati.” Civil War Times Illustrated 11 (November 1972): 30–39.
Morsberger, Robert E., and Katharine M. Morsberger. “After Andersonville: The First War
Crimes Trial.” Civil War Times Illustrated 13 (July 1974): 30–41.
———. “‘Christ and a Horse-Race’: Ben-Hur on Stage.” Journal of Popular Culture 8 (Winter
1974): 489–502. 23
———. Lew Wallace: Militant Romantic. New York: McGraw–Hill, 1980.
Mott, Frank Luther. Golden Multitudes: The Story of Best Sellers in the United States. New
York: Macmillan, 1947.
Nicholson, Meredith. “Lew Wallace.” Reader 5 (April 1905): 571–75.
Nolan, Frederick. The Lincoln County War: A Documentary History. Norman: University of
Oklahoma Press, 1992.
Parsons, Joseph A., Jr., “Indiana and the Call for Volunteers, April 1861.” Indiana Magazine of
History 54 (March 1958): 1–23.
Platteborze, Peter L. “Crossroads of Destiny: Lew Wallace, the Battle of Monocacy, and the
Outcome of Jubal Early’s Drive on Washington, DC” Army History PB 20-04-2 (No. 61)
(Spring 2005): 4–19.
Rasch, Philip J. “Exit Axtell, Enter Wallace.” New Mexico Historical Review 32 (July 1957):
231–45.
Rich, Joseph W. The Battle of Shiloh. Iowa City: State Historical Society of Iowa, 1911.
Russo, Dorothy Ritter, and Thelma Lois Sullivan. Bibliographical Studies of Seven Authors of
Crawfordsville, Indiana: Lew and Susan Wallace, Maurice and Will Thompson, Mary
Hannah and Caroline Virginia Krout, and Meredith Nicholson. Indianapolis: Indiana
Historical Society, 1952.
Rutman, Darrett Bruce. “The War Crimes and Trial of Henry Wirz.” Civil War History 6 (June
1960): 117–33.
Schultz, G. A. “Lew Wallace’s ‘Mexican Project.’” Civil War Times Illustrated 14 (November
1975): 20–31. 24
Shoemaker, Raymond L. “Lew Wallace and the Mexican Connection: The United States and the
French Intervention in Mexico, 1861–1867.” Indiana Military History Journal 3 (January
1978): 6–17.
Shumaker, Arthur W. A History of Indiana Literature. Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Bureau,
1962.
Smith, Herbert F. “Wallace, Lew.” In American National Biography, edited by John A. Garraty
and Mark C. Carnes. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Stephens, Gail M. “Lew Wallace’s Fall from Grace.” North & South 7 (May 2004): 32–46.
Swift, Gloria Baker, and Gail M. Stephens. “Honor Redeemed: Lew Wallace’s Military Career
and the Battle of Monocacy.” North & South 4 (January 2001): 34–46.
Theisen, Lee Scott. “A ‘Fair Count’ in Florida: General Lew Wallace and the Contested
Presidential Election of 1876.” Hayes Historical Journal 3 (Spring 1978): 21–32.
———, ed. “Frank Warner Angel’s Notes on New Mexico Territory, 1878.” Arizona and the
West 18 (Winter 1976): 333–70.
———. “‘The Land of Sudden Death,’ Governor Lew Wallace of New Mexico, 1878–1881.”
The Smoke Signal (Spring 1980): 174–85.
———. “‘My God, Did I Set All of This in Motion?’ General Lew Wallace and Ben-Hur.”
Journal of Popular Culture 18 (Fall 1984): 33–41.
———. “The Public Career of General Lew Wallace, 1827–1905.” PhD diss., University of
Arizona, Tucson, 1973.
Thompson, Donald E. “Lew Wallace and Ben-Hur.” Indiana Libraries 7 (1988): 28–38.
Thompson, Maurice. “General Lew Wallace.” Philadelphia Book News 6 (March 1888): 301–2. 25
Thornbrough, Emma Lou. Indiana in the Civil War Era, 1850–1880. Indianapolis: Indiana
Historical Bureau and Indiana Historical Society, 1965.
Towne, Jackson E. “Lew Wallace’s Ben-Hur.” New Mexico Historical Review 36 (1961): 62–69.
Treichel, James A. “Lew Wallace at Fort Donelson.” Indiana Magazine of History 59 (March
1963): 3–18.
Utley, Robert M. Billy the Kid: A Short and Violent Life. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press,
1989.
———. Four Fighters of Lincoln County. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1986.
———. “Who Was Billy the Kid?” Montana: The Magazine of Western History 37 (Summer
1987): 2–11.
Volpe, Vernon L. “‘Dispute Every Inch of Ground’: Major General Lew Wallace Commands
Cincinnati, September, 1862.” Indiana Magazine of History 85 (June 1989): 138–50.
Wallace, Harold Lew. “Lew Wallace’s March to Shiloh Revisited.” Indiana Magazine of History
59 (March 1963): 19–30.
Wallace, Lew. Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1880.
One literary manuscript and three fragments are included in Series II.
———. The Boyhood of Christ. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1889 [1888].
Two literary manuscripts are included in Series II.
———. Commodus: An Historical Play. [Crawfordsville, IN]: Privately published by the author,
1876. One literary manuscript and four fragments are included in Series II.
———. The Fair God; or, The Last of the ‘Tzins: A Tale of the Conquest of Mexico. Boston:
James R. Osgood, 1873. One literary manuscript and three fragments are included in
Series II. 26
———. The First Christmas, from “Ben-Hur.” New York: Harper and Brothers, 1899.
———. Lew Wallace: An Autobiography. 2 vols. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1906.
One literary manuscript and two fragments are included in Series II.
———. Life of Gen. Ben. Harrison. Philadelphia: Hubbard Brothers, [1888].
———. The Prince of India; or, Why Constantinople Fell. 2 vols. New York: Harper and
Brothers, 1893. One literary manuscript and notes are included in Series II.
———. The Wooing of Malkatoon [and] Commodus. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1898
[1897]. A literary manuscript of each work is included in Series II.
Wallace, Susan E. Along the Bosphorus and Other Sketches. Chicago and New York: Rand,
McNally, 1898.
———. The City of the King: What the Child Jesus Saw and Heard. Indianapolis: Bobbs–
Merrill, 1903.
———. Ginèvra; or, The Old Oak Chest, A Christmas Story. New York: Worthington, 1887
[1886].
———. The Land of the Pueblos. New York: John B. Alden, 1888.
———. The Repose in Egypt, A Medley. New York: John B. Alden, 1888.
———. The Storied Sea. Boston: James R. Osgood, 1883.
The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate
Armies. 128 vols. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1880–1901.
Whittlesey, Charles. “Wallace at Shiloh.” Magazine of Western History 2 (July 1885): 213–22.
Wilson, Edmund. Patriotic Gore: Studies in the Literature of the American Civil War. New
York: Oxford University Press, 1962. 27
Young, William. Lew Wallace’s Ben Hur: A Play Arranged for the Stage. New York: Harper and
Brothers, 1899. 28
Brief History and Overview of the Papers of Lew and Susan Wallace
In the state of Indiana, the Indiana Historical Society holds the principal collection of
Lew and Susan Wallace, totaling 1,627 documents, the bulk of which were purchased in 1940 from the Wallaces’ grandson, Lewis Wallace Jr.12 This core collection appears to have originally consisted of two groups of papers. One, housed in the Lew Wallace Study (today a museum) in
Crawfordsville, Indiana, certainly formed Lew Wallace’s personal archive during his lifetime, and the origin of the other group is unclear. Since 1940 the IHS has received a few additional donations and made purchases of Wallace materials (principally from auctions and collectors); these items have been added to its core Lew Wallace Collection, which also includes the papers of Susan Wallace. Series 1 (titled “Papers and Correspondence”; out of thirteen series) of the
Indiana Historical Society’s Lew Wallace Collection (M 0292) was microfilmed in 1985 and was also calendared.
A second important collection of Lew and Susan Wallace materials is held by the Lilly
Library at Indiana University, Bloomington. This collection of 1,045 manuscripts is largely composed of holograph manuscripts of novels and other writings and literary correspondence.
A third significant collection of 190 Wallace documents is located in the Manuscript
Section of the Indiana Division, Indiana State Library, Indianapolis. This collection consists largely of a grouping of papers that relate to the defense of Cincinnati in 1862, as well as some additional miscellaneous manuscripts.13
A fourth important collection of Wallace documents is contained in the Indiana State
Archives, Indiana Archives and Record Administration, Indianapolis. This repository contains
681 Wallace manuscripts, primarily dating from the Civil War period.
12 Eric Pumroy with Paul Brockman, A Guide to the Manuscript Collections of the Indiana Historical Society and Indiana State Library (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, 1986), 193–94. 13 Ibid., 407 and ff. 29
Outside of Indiana, major collections of Wallace documents were located by Wallace project staff members in two principal repositories in Washington, DC: the National Archives and the Library of Congress. In the former repository, the staff found 3,644 Wallace documents; in the latter repository, 370 Wallace manuscripts were discovered.
Initially, Wallace project staff members conducted searches almost exclusively by mail.
From the outset, staff inquiries to repositories included questions about their holdings of Susan
Wallace documents.
After the early searches by letter, the Wallace project staff made a systematic search of the twenty-nine volumes published in 1959–93 in the reference series titled National Union
Catalog of Manuscript Collections (NUCMC). These NUCMC volumes list 72,300 collections from 1,406 repositories. Since 1993 additional manuscript collections have been listed on a
Library of Congress website: http://www.loc.gov/coll/nucmc/.
Another key reference work that the project staff consulted to assist them in locating additional Wallace manuscripts was American Literary Manuscripts: A Checklist of Holdings in
Academic, Historical, and Public Libraries, Museums, and Authors’ Homes in the United States,
2d ed., compiled by J. Albert Robbins, et al. (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1977).
In 2004–5, Wallace project editor Douglas E. Clanin made an Internet search of several online manuscript collections posted by various repositories in the United States and Europe.
Clanin located several dozen additional Lew and Susan Wallace manuscripts that were not found during the searches of NUCMC and American Literary Manuscripts.
In addition to the libraries and archives listed above, Wallace project staff members found significant numbers of Lew and Susan Wallace manuscripts in the following repositories:
General Lew Wallace Study and Museum, Crawfordsville, Indiana; Crawfordsville District 30
Public Library, Indiana; Cincinnati Historical Society, Ohio; Duke University, Durham, North
Carolina; Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts; Historical Society of Pennsylvania,
Philadelphia; Huntington Library, San Marino, California; Karpeles Manuscript Library, Santa
Barbara, California; Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston; Museum of New Mexico–Fray
Angélico Chávez History Library, Santa Fe; New Mexico State Records Center and Archives,
Santa Fe; New York Public Library, New York City; Oberlin College, Ohio; Ohio History
Connection, Columbus; Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center Library, Fremont, Ohio;
University of Rochester, New York; University of Virginia, Charlottesville; Yale University,
New Haven, Connecticut; Ottoman Archives, Istanbul, Turkey; and Public Record Office of
Northern Ireland, Belfast.
In addition to reference works that list manuscript sources for Lew and Susan Wallace documents, the Wallace project staff gave attention to the Wallaces’ published writings by examining the works listed in the following books: Dorothy Ritter Russo and Thelma Lois
Sullivan, Bibliographical Studies of Seven Authors of Crawfordsville, Indiana (Indianapolis:
Indiana Historical Society, 1952); Robert E. Morsberger and Katharine M. Morsberger, Lew
Wallace: Militant Romantic (New York: McGraw–Hill, 1980); and Indiana Authors and Their
Books, 1816–1916, compiled by R[obert] E. Banta (Crawfordsville: Wabash College, 1949). 31
Editorial Method: Selection Criteria, Electronic Finding Aid, and Itinerary File
Selection Criteria
In this documentary edition, the “papers” of Lew and Susan Wallace are broadly defined to include correspondence to and from, and documents written by, Lew or Susan Wallace. Series
I includes correspondence and other documents in chronological order. Categories of noncorrespondence include: addresses, applications for appointments or patents, magazine and newspaper articles, commissions, court cases, deeds, essays, financial account statements
(selected), general orders, interviews, legal documents, memoranda, notes, orders, patents, petitions, poems, proclamations, quotations, reports, resolutions, special orders, speeches, statements, stories, and testimony. Selections are also included from the published and manuscript records of statements by Lew Wallace as president of the military commission for the trial of Henry Wirz.
Categories of documents written to or by Lew or Susan Wallace but excluded from this edition are: canceled checks, receipts, personal bills, autographs, most financial account statements, invoices (except for Civil War invoices for uniforms, etc.), envelopes (except when they provide information such as address of sender or recipient not available in the letter they enclosed), wedding announcements, dinner menus, invitations, calling cards, expense reports for lecture tours, documents relating to compensation paid to Lew Wallace by Montgomery County for his services as attorney, requisitions for payment signed by Lew Wallace as governor of the
New Mexico Territory, and illegible documents (notably letterpress copies in DNA: RG 393,
Records of the U.S. Army Continental Commands).
Series II includes literary manuscripts and fragments (novels, plays, and the autobiography). Printed books by Lew or Susan Wallace, available in libraries and in reprint 32 editions, are not included in this edition. Series III includes visual materials: photographs, portraits, paintings, drawings, and sculpture by or of Lew or Susan, reproduced only in black and white.
Documents not to, from, or by Lew or Susan (what might be called “third-party documents”) are generally excluded from this edition. Categories of such third-party documents not in this edition, but of which a researcher should be aware, include: box-office receipts and statements for performances of the theatrical production of Ben-Hur (InU-Li: Wallace MSS. II), communications between Henry Lane Wallace (son of Lew and Susan, acting as their agent) and various tradesmen and insurance companies (InHi: Lew Wallace Collection: Henry Lane
Wallace letterbooks, most of which are illegible), correspondence related to William Henry
Smith’s attempt in 1902 to get the War Department to award a Medal of Honor to Lew Wallace
(DNA: RG 94, AGO Bureau of Volunteer Service), correspondence and other documents of federal and state commissions related to the placement of monuments at the Shiloh National
Military Park (InHi: Lew Wallace Collection; and Shiloh National Military Park Commission,
Shiloh, Tennessee), and newspaper articles that do not contain speeches or quotations by, or interviews with, Lew or Susan (with a few exceptions).
The editors made a few exceptions to the exclusion of such third-party documents.
Included in this edition are selected documents relating to the controversy over Wallace’s movements at the battle of Shiloh, selected communications from military aides to Wallace, writing at Wallace’s direction, letters recommending Wallace for positions in the federal government, major reviews of books by Lew or Susan, selected correspondence among military commanders concerning civil–military relations in New Mexico Territory, correspondence of
Henry Lane Wallace with Klaw and Erlanger and Harper and Brothers concerning the 33 dramatization of Ben-Hur during Lew Wallace’s lifetime, and a limited selection of obituaries and condolence letters for both Lew and Susan.
Electronic Finding Aid (EFA)
Users may view the documents in this edition and locate them by means of the Electronic
Finding Aid that accompanies this edition. A database in Microsoft Excel, the finding aid contains three tables: EFA, Image, and Itinerary.
EFA (Series I, Correspondence and Other Documents; and Series II, Literary
Manuscripts) contains the following fields: “Series,” “To,” “To Sort,” “From,” “From Sort,” “To
From Name,” “To From Name Sort,” “Date,” “Date Sort,” “Comments,” “Enclosures,”
“Repository,” and “Repository Sort.” The user may search and sort by any of those fields— alphabetically by name of sender, recipient, or repository; or chronologically by date of document. The “Series” field is blank for Series I (9,444 records) and indicates “Series II” for the
43 records of that series. The “To” field indicates the recipient of correspondence; the “From” field indicates the sender of correspondence or author and other description of noncorrespondence (essay, order, speech, etc.). The “To From Name” field provides the name of correspondent other than Lew or Susan Wallace or description of noncorrespondence. In the
“Sort” version of those fields, the last name appears first, and senders acting as aides or agents for Lew Wallace are listed as “Wallace, Lew.” Within the “Date” field, elements (day or month) missing on the original document are indicated by dashes, and missing elements of dates are supplied within square brackets. In the “Date Sort” field, dates with day missing are assigned to the end of the month; dates with day and month missing are assigned to the end of the year; undated documents for which no approximate date could be assigned have “n.d.” and a number 34 in the “Date” field and “1/1/1980” in the “Date Sort” field. Titles of works such as articles, essays, interviews, poems, and speeches, appear within quotation marks as in the original. Titles of such works, not within quotation marks, are assigned by the editors.
Image (Series III, Visual Materials, with 172 records) contains the following fields:
“Medium” (photograph, drawing, painting, etc.), “Creator,” “Creator Sort,” “Date,” “Date Sort,”
“Title,” “Description,” “Comments,” “Repository,” and “Repository Sort.” The user may search and sort by any of these fields—alphabetically by medium, creator, title, or repository; or chronologically by date of image. Elements of dates missing on the original image are treated as in the EFA table (see discussion above). Titles of images appear within quotation marks as in the original. Titles of images, not within quotation marks, are assigned by the editors.
Itinerary provides 1,175 records of the whereabouts of Lew and Susan Wallace, the date(s) they were in certain locations, and the source of that information, in the following fields:
“Location” (geographical place name), “Date,” “Date Sort,” “Source,” and “Comment” (activity of Lew or Susan at the geographical location). The user may search and sort by any of these fields—alphabetically by location or source of information, or chronologically by date. Elements of dates missing on the original source for an itinerary entry are treated as in the EFA table (see discussion above). 35
Location Symbols for Manuscript Repositories
With only a few exceptions, the following list of location symbols for manuscript repositories was obtained from the Library of Congress.
CaLaNHM Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, Seaver Center for Western
History Research, CA
CHi California Historical Society, San Francisco
CLU-URL University of California, Los Angeles, Library Special Collections
CoCCC Colorado College, Colorado Springs
CoHi Colorado Historical Society, Denver
CSmH Huntington Library, San Marino, CA
CStbK Karpeles Manuscript Library, Santa Barbara, CA
CtHi Connecticut Historical Society Library, Hartford
CtY Yale University, Sterling Memorial Library, New Haven, CT
CtY-BR Yale University, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, New Haven, CT
CU-BANC University of California, Berkeley, Bancroft Library
CU-MARK University of California, Berkeley, Mark Twain Papers, Bancroft Library
CU-SB University of California, Santa Barbara, Main Library
De-Ar Delaware Public Archives, Dover
DeU University of Delaware Library, Newark
DLC United States, Library of Congress, Washington, DC
DNA United States, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, DC
DSI-AAA Smithsonian Institution, Archives of American Art, Washington, DC 36
FTaSA State Library and Archives of Florida, Tallahassee
GEU Emory University, Atlanta, GA
IaMC Mason City Public Library, IA
ICHi Chicago History Museum, Chicago, IL
ICMB Moody Bible Institute, Chicago, IL
ICNAGL United States, National Archives at Chicago, IL
ICU University of Chicago Library, IL
IGK Knox College, Galesburg, IL
IHi Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, Springfield, IL
In Indiana State Library, Indianapolis
In-Ar Indiana Archives and Records Administration, Indianapolis
InCvLWS General Lew Wallace Study and Museum, Crawfordsville, IN
InCvPL Crawfordsville District Public Library, IN
InCvMCH Montgomery County Historical Society, Crawfordsville, IN
InCW Wabash College, Crawfordsville, IN
InHan Hanover College, IN
InHi Indiana Historical Society, Indianapolis
InI Indianapolis Public Library, IN
InIMu Newfields Indianapolis Museum of Art, IN
InNd University of Notre Dame, IN
InU-Li Indiana University, Lilly Library, Bloomington
InUpT Taylor University, Upland, IN
IU-R University of Illinois, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Urbana 37
KyLoF Filson Historical Society, Louisville, KY
MB Boston Public Library, Central Library in Copley Square, MA
MBU Boston University Libraries, MA
MdAN United States Naval Academy, Annapolis, MD
MdBCA Baltimore City Archives, MD
MdBJ-E Johns Hopkins University, Milton S. Eisenhower Library, Baltimore, MD
MdBJ-P Johns Hopkins University, Archives of the Peabody Institute, Baltimore, MD
MdHi Maryland Historical Society, Baltimore
MeB Bowdoin College Library, Brunswick, ME
MH-H Harvard University, Houghton Library, Cambridge, MA
MHi Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston
MiU University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
MiU-C University of Michigan, William L. Clements Library, Ann Arbor
MnHi Minnesota Historical Society, Saint Paul
N New York State Library, Albany
NBuBE Buffalo and Erie County Public Library, Buffalo, NY
NcD Duke University, Durham, NC
NcWsW Wake Forest University, Winston–Salem, NC
NhD Dartmouth College, Dartmouth Library, Hanover, NH
NhHi New Hampshire Historical Society, Concord
NHi New-York Historical Society, New York, NY
NjHi New Jersey Historical Society, Newark
NjP Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 38
NmAlCSR Center for Southwest Research and Special Collections, University Libraries,
University of New Mexico, Albuquerque
Nm-Ar New Mexico State Records Center and Archives, Commission of Public Records,
Santa Fe
NmSM Fray Angélico Chávez History Library and Palace of the Governors, New Mexico
History Museum, New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs, Santa Fe
NmSSL New Mexico State Library, Santa Fe
NN New York Public Library, New York, NY
NNAB American Bible Society Library and Archives, New York, NY
NNAJHS American Jewish Historical Society, New York, NY
NNC Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University Libraries, New York, NY
NNPM Morgan Library and Museum, New York, NY
NNU-F New York University, Fales Library and Special Collections, New York, NY
NPV Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, NY
NRU University of Rochester, NY
NWefHi Chautauqua County Historical Society, Westfield, NY
OCHP Cincinnati History Library and Archives, Cincinnati Museum Center, OH
OCl Cleveland Public Library, Special Collections, OH
OClWHi Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, OH
OFH Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center Library and Museums, Fremont, OH
OHi Ohio History Connection, Columbus
OMC Marietta College, Legacy Library, OH
OO Oberlin College and Conservatory, OH 39
OOxM Miami University Libraries, Oxford, OH
PCarlMH U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center, U.S. Army Military History Institute,
Carlisle, PA
PHC Haverford College, PA
PHi Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
PPL Library Company of Philadelphia, PA
RPB-JH Brown University Library, John Hay Library, Providence, RI
TShiNMP Shiloh National Military Park, TN
TxAuHRH University of Texas at Austin, Harry Ransom Center, TX
Uk British Library, London, England
UPB Brigham Young University, Harold B. Lee Library, Provo, UT
ViHi Virginia Historical Society, Richmond
ViNO Old Dominion University, Special Collections and University Archives, Norfolk,
VA
ViU University of Virginia, Charlottesville
ViW William and Mary, Williamsburg, VA
VtU University of Vermont, Burlington
WaU University of Washington, Seattle
WHi Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison 40
Abbreviations and Short Title List
F.R.U.S. United States Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States.
Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1861– .
Grant Papers The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, edited by John Y. Simon. 32 vols.
Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1967–2012.
Lincoln Works The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, edited by Roy P. Basler. 9 vols.
New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953–55.
LW Autobiography Lew Wallace: An Autobiography. 2 vols. New York: Harper and Brothers,
1906.
O.R. The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the
Union and Confederate Armies. 128 vols. Washington, DC: Government
Printing Office, 1880–1901.