Dear Saint Lew Wallace: "Gen'ral Wallace -- Bring Me a Dream. Make It the BIGGEST That I've Ever Seen!!!"

Lewis "Lew " Wallace in his twenties.

Lew Wallace as Union General -- as you might imagine, he FINALLY married LATER!!!

Lewis Thornton Powell, who was one of four hanged for the assassination of President Lincoln, Lew Wallace sitting on the Military Tribunal that condemned them to death. Daguerreotypes from here: http://mydaguerreotypeboyfriend.tumblr.com/

>>> YES, I AM CONNECTED TO EVERYONE IN THE UNIVERSE (except Joel Osteen, thank God)!!!

First of all, Lew Wallace never had an interest in religion at all -- until on a night train to a Soldiers' Reunion, Robert Ingersoll, then the most prominent atheist in the United States, challenged him with some ideas. And Ingersoll was ALSO a prominent Republican (yes, y'all, Republicans included atheists and BLACK PEOPLE -- as opposed to Uncle Toms -- back then), having given a rousing speech at their Convention to nominate a Republican Presidential candidate -- and a veteran of the Battle of Shiloh in the Civil War, whose inglorious conclusion had been placed squarely on Gen. Lew Wallace's shoulders, and he was removed from command, to head the defense of Cincinnati -- the future birthplace of both Scott Kenan and Ted Turner.

Of those two, only Scott Kenan was born on "Blooms Day", the birthday of not only Joyce Carol Oates, but of Jesus Christ, Himself, according to latest scholarship of that being June 13 - 19, the 16th falling right in center: http://www.ucg.org/doctrinal-beliefs/biblical-evidence-shows-jesus-christ-wasnt-born-dec-25/

And LOOK!!! Lew Wallace was born in THIS house, which was torn down and replaced with a simple gingerbread Victorian, in which my mother's cousins Dot and Mary Rifle lived -- and I visited many times, amazed by the big granite marker in front about who had been born there.

Mary married late in life (about 1945), and immediately suffered a serious stroke, leaving her bedridden and unable to speak. Her husband attended her bedside for twenty years until her death, they living on Dot Rifle's income as a much-loved English teacher.

And that house was eventually torn down for an expansion of St. Michael's Catholic Grade School, attached to the church where Father Sahm married my parents on June 10, 1950.

Now I DON'T know that Gen. Wallace became Catholic, and Catholics in those days assumed that all Protestants go to hell, but I can TRY to pray to him, following the general theme of this song, which includes the lyric, "and lots of wavy hair like LIBERACE!!!": 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNuX7bs2qAM

Now getting back to Gen. Wallace, himself, he wrote the BIGGEST SELLING BOOK of the Nineteenth Century -- even eventually beating out UNCLE TOM'S CABIN -- and during the Gilded Age, even the Bible at times. It is STILL considered continuously in print since originally published in 1880, and FOUR movies were made of it:

And although recent books might have outsold it, it is considered the BIGGEST "Christian Best-seller" ever. Everyone was making money on it:

Of course Lew Wallace was too dead to prophet or even PROFIT off this.

Well, if you care to read more about Lew Wallace, he was an ASTOUNDING character, having belonged PASSIONATELY to four political parties over his life -- and always haunted by Shiloh, he actually tried to enlist and raise a regiment for the Spanish-American War in 1898, but was turned down since he was then 70 years old (and he was governor of New Mexico Territory -- like his father had been Governor of Indiana).

More: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lew_Wallace

And THIS is a very informative article: http://www.slate.com/articles/life/history/2013/03/ben_hur_and_lew_wallace_how_the_scapegoat_of_shiloh_became_one_of_the_best.html

General Wallace grew very rich from his writing, eventually, he writing many books. And he even was offered a General's Commission in the Mexican Army to chase out the French (but that was disastrous). Rutherford B. Hayes made him the US Minister to the Ottoman Empire in the early 1880s, at a salary of $7,000.00 per year -- a FORTUNE in those days.

Now you might assume, because he spent most of his life in or returning to Connorsville, Indiana, where my mother's father taught English and coached high school basketball, that my nephew Connor Kenan got his name there. He didn't. Connor was named for an Irish character in a Leon Uris book my brother fell in love with.

But look at Connor now -- the self-proclaimed "Gay Darth Vader", although Connor is sexually STRAIGHT!!!

And besides, it's CONNERSville, silly!!!

Scott

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