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One of the figures who saw action at the Battle of Shiloh was a young general from Indiana named Lew Wallace. Because of the high death toll at this Civil War engagement, Northern politicians wanted to know who in the army was to blame. Generals Grant and Halleck used Wallace as a scapegoat, unfairly saying that Wallace's division had been slow to act amid the violent confusion of Johnston's sneak attack. Humiliated, Wallace was shelved for much of the rest of the war until near the end when he was able to redeem himself at the Battle of Monocacy, in which he bravely defended Washington D.C. with only a handful of troops against an invasion force that otherwise would have seized the capitol and would have possibly even captured President Lincoln and the federal government. After the war, Wallace enjoyed a distinguished political career as a territorial governor in New Mexico and as an ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. However, his lasting fame would come in the form of a historical novel he wrote titled "Ben-Hur", a best-selling book that even outdid "Uncle Tom's Cabin" and that was in many respects an autobiographical work containing themes of defamation, courage, reconciliation, and redemption.

Description
One of the figures who saw action at the Battle of Shiloh was a young general from Indiana named Lew Wallace. Because of the high death toll at this Civil War engagement, Northern politicians wanted to know who in the army was to blame. Generals Grant and Halleck used Wallace as a scapegoat, unfairly saying that Wallace's division had been slow to act amid the violent confusion of Johnston's sneak attack. Humiliated, Wallace was shelved for much of the rest of the war until near the end when he was able to redeem himself at the Battle of Monocacy, in which he bravely defended Washington D.C. with only a handful of troops against an invasion force that otherwise would have seized the capitol and would have possibly even captured President Lincoln and the federal government. After the war, Wallace enjoyed a distinguished political career as a territorial governor in New Mexico and as an ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. However, his lasting fame would come in the form of a historical novel he wrote titled "Ben-Hur", a best-selling book that even outdid "Uncle Tom's Cabin" and that was in many respects an autobiographical work containing themes of defamation, courage, reconciliation, and redemption.