one kind or another." When Wallace decided to write a novel based on the life of Christ is not known for certain, but he had already written the manuscript for a magazine serial about the three magi at least two years before his discussions with Ingersoll. Researching and writing about Christianity helped Wallace become clear about his own ideas and beliefs. He developed the novel from his own exploration of the subject. Ben-Hur was also inspired in part by Wallace's love of romantic novels, including those written by Sir Walter Scott and Jane Porter, and The Count of Monte Cristo (1846) by Alexandre Dumas, père. The Dumas novel was based on the memoirs of an early 19th-century French shoemaker who was unjustly imprisoned and spent the rest of his life seeking revenge. Wallace could relate to the character's isolation of imprisonment. He explained in his autobiography that, while he was writing Ben-Hur, "the Count of Monte Cristo in his dungeon of stone was not more lost to the world." Other writers have viewed Ben-Hur within the context of Wallace's own life. Historian Victor Davis Hanson argues that the novel drew from Wallace's experiences as a division commander during the American Civil War under General Ulysses S. Grant. Hanson compares Wallace's real-life experience in battle, battle tactics, combat leadership, and jealousies among American Civil War military commanders to those of Wallace's fictional character of Judah, whose unintentional injury to a high-ranking military commander leads to further tragedy and suffering for the Ben-Hur family. Wallace made some controversial command decisions, and he delayed in arriving on the battlefield during the first day of the battle of Shiloh, when Grant's Union army sustained heavy casualties. This created a furor in the North, damaged Wallace's military reputation, and drew accusations of incompetence. John Swansburg, deputy editor of Slate, suggests that the chariot race between the characters of Judah and Messala may have been based on a horse race which Wallace reportedly ran and won against Grant some time after the battle of Shiloh. The Judah character's superior horsemanship helped him beat Messala in a chariot race that earned Judah great wealth. F. Farrand Tuttle Jr., a Wallace family friend, reported the story of the horse race between Grant and Wallace in the Denver News on February 19, 1905, but Wallace never wrote about it. The event may have been a Wallace family legend, but