Skip to main content

Lew Wallace

Interest in the outlaw has grown recently with the discovery of the first authenticated photographs of Henry McCarty, who died at the age of 21 after a short, notorious life of gambling and gunfights.

He was a capitalist. He was an urban reformer. He was a country boy. He was “Comrade Jesus,” a hardworking socialist. He was the world’s first ad man. For a century and a half, novelists have been trying to recapture the “real” Jesus.

The two most popular novels in nineteenth-century America were Lew Wallace’s Ben Hur (1880) and Charles Sheldon’s In His Steps (1896).

So spoke the Union general a few minutes after he was shot in the crowded lobby of a hotel in Louisville. His killer, a fellow general and subordinate, never regretted the deed—and never paid for it

Surprised and almost overwhelmed, he stubbornly refused to admit defeat. His cool conduct saved his army and his job

In the wild Southwest, Archbishop Lamy of Santa Fe contended with savage Indians, ignorance, and a recalcitrant clergy.

We hope you enjoy our work.

Please support this magazine of trusted historical writing, now in its 75th year, and the volunteers that sustain it with a donation to American Heritage.

Donate