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Background
Wallace, who had been successful as a general in the field and a territorial governor in the West, was appointed Ambassador to Constantinople because he was successful as a novelist. President Garfield, relaxing with a copy of Wallace’s popular new novel, Ben Hur, had an inspiration: he would send Wallace to Constantinople to gather material for a sequel. Thus, this calling card as “Minister Resident of the United States of America to Turkey” - and Wallace’s lively, colorful and essentially anti-Semitic novel, The Prince of India or Why Constantinople Fell, whose title character is neither a prince nor an Indian, but the legendary Wandering Jew in disguise.
Calling Card Signed, as Minister Resident of the United States of America to Turkey, sextodecomino, no place or date (c. 1881 -1885).
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