he had completed the novel, Wallace became a believer in God and Christ. In his autobiography, Wallace acknowledged: Composition and publication history Most of the book was written during Wallace's spare time in the evening, while traveling, and at home in Crawfordsville, Indiana, where he often wrote outdoors during the summer, sitting under a favorite beech tree near his home. (The tree has since that time been called the Ben-Hur Beech.) Wallace moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico after his appointment as governor of the New Mexico Territory, where he served from August 1878 to March 1881. He completed Ben-Hur in 1880 at the Palace of the Governors in Santa Fe. Wallace wrote mostly at night after his formal duties had concluded, in a room in the palace that was once described in tours as the birthplace of Ben-Hur. In his memoirs, Wallace recalled how he composed the climactic scenes of the Crucifixion by lantern light: "The ghosts, if they were about, did not disturb me; yet in the midst of that gloomy harborage I beheld the Crucifixion, and strove to write what I beheld." In March 1880, Wallace copied the final manuscript of Ben-Hur in purple ink as a tribute to the Christian season of Lent. He took a leave of absence from his post as New Mexico's territorial governor and traveled to New York City to deliver it to his publisher. On April 20, Wallace personally presented the manuscript to Joseph Henry Harper of Harper and Brothers, who accepted it for publication. At the time of Ben-Hurs publication, the idea of presenting Christ and the Crucifixion in a fictional novel was a sensitive issue. Wallace's depiction of Christ could have been considered by some as blasphemy, but the quality of his manuscript and his assurances that he had not intended to offend Christians with his writing overcame the publisher's reservations. Harper praised it as "the most beautiful manuscript that has ever come into this house. A bold experiment to make Christ a hero that has been often tried and always failed." Harper and Brothers offered Wallace a contract that would earn him 10% in royalties, and published Ben-Hur on November 12, 1880. It initially sold for $1.50 per copy, an expensive price when compared to other popular novels published at the time. Initial publication When Lew Wallace's Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ first appeared in 1880, it