Lew Wallace to the Rescue

Perhaps it is at least marginally the prerogative of film critics to express related literary opinions, however dimwitted those might be. And when Richard Maynard calls “Ben-Hur,” one of the best loved books of the 20th century, “awful,” we after all need not take him seriously (“For Better, for Worse,” March 26).

But describing the book’s author, Lew Wallace, as “an unimportant Civil War general” really will not do. Wallace’s delaying campaign against Jubal Early prevented the otherwise almost certain capture of the city of Washington by the Confederacy. Had this capture been effected, morale in the North would likely have dropped to the point that the war would have been concluded soon after with the South established permanently as an independent nation.

Even in the context of events so augustly significant as the Oscars, a man who thus arguably saved the Union cannot be fairly described as “unimportant.”

ROBERT E. GREENE

Pacific Palisades

Pacific Palisades