Smoke, Sound & Fury; The Civil War Memoirs of Major-General Lew Wallace, U.S. Volunteers

Portland: Strawberry Hill Press (A Guidon Press Book), 1998. Presumed First Edition, First printing thus. Reprint of 1906 original posthumously published edition. Trade paperback. Very good. xi, 7-288 pages. Footnotes. Illustrations. Maps. Selected Bibliography. Index. Jim Leeke attended journalism school at Ohio State University after serving in the U.S. Navy during the Vietnam War. He wrote for newspapers and national magazines as a police reporter, lifestyle columnist, sportswriter, and business and technology writer. Jim is a contributor to the Society for American Baseball Research Baseball Biography Project, as well as the writer or editor of several books on U.S. and military history. Adapted from Lew Wallace: An Autobiography, this book offers the sights and sounds of the Civil War. Lew Wallace was first a lawyer whose leadership and talent for action won him fame in the Civil War. Brash, handsome and charismatic, he quickly rose from colonel of a volunteer regiment to major-general of a division. A popular hero in western Virginia and the capture of Fort Donelson, he later saw his military career nearly ruined at Shiloh, where a series of disastrous miscommunications delayed his division's arrival on the field. Wallace helped turn aside Confederate invasions of Kentucky and Ohio and was hailed as the savior of Cincinnati. In 1864, Abraham Lincoln made him a military governor in Maryland, where he seized an opportunity for redemption. Assembling a small Union force at an obscure railway point called Monocacy Junction, Wallace blocked Confederate General Jubal Early's path to Washington. Fighting desperately against long odds, he delayed Early's rebel army long enough to prevent it from seizing the capital-a sacrifice unparalleled in the history of the republic. Lewis Wallace (April 10, 1827 - February 15, 1905) was an American lawyer, Union general in the American Civil War, governor of New Mexico Territory, politician, diplomat, artist, and author from Indiana. Among his novels and biographies, Wallace is best known for his historical adventure story, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1880), a bestselling novel that has been called "the most influential Christian book of the nineteenth century." Wallace's military career included service in the Mexican-American War and the American Civil War. He was appointed Indiana's adjutant general and commanded the 11th Indiana Infantry Regiment. Wallace, who attained the rank of major general, participated in the Battle of Fort Donelson, the Battle of Shiloh, and the Battle of Monocacy. He also served on the military commission for the trials of the Lincoln assassination conspirators, and presided over the trial of Henry Wirz, the Confederate commandant of the Andersonville prison camp. Wallace resigned from the U.S. Army in November 1865 and briefly served as a major general in the Mexican Army, before returning to the United States. Wallace was appointed governor of the New Mexico Territory (1878-1881) and served as U.S. minister to the Ottoman Empire (1881-1885). Wallace retired to his home in Crawfordsville, Indiana, where he continued to write until his death in 1905.