Today is Employee Appreciation Day! If you’re a manager, take a moment to say thank you to your staff. If you’re an employee who hasn’t received appreciation today…take heart. Even the great Lew Wallace didn’t always receive thanks for his brilliant job performance.
As he wrote in his autobiography:
There can be no question, I think, that my services were fully appreciated except in Washington and the executive office in Indianapolis. Acknowledgements pour in upon me from every quarter save the two, silencing my detractors, especially such of them as had made light of the danger and my methods of meeting it and the other set who had sought to displace me.
General U.S. Grant, in particular, was less than appreciative of Lew’s services, largely because of their misunderstanding at the Battle of Shiloh. It wasn’t until the end of Grant’s life that he acknowledged his condemnation of Lew might have been mistaken.
Regardless of official appreciation during the Civil War, Lew went on to do great things, including serving as a territorial governor, receiving several patents, and writing the best-selling novel of all time.
