Life and Letters of General W. H. L. Wallace

Foreword

FOREWORD William Hervy Lamme Wallace, the highest-ranking Union officer who fell at Shiloh, is rarely commemorated. Many standard reference sources botch his two unfamiliar middle names, and his career, which lasted less than one year into the Civil War, is neglected even in his hometown. He deserves better, as his adopted daughter recognized when she wrote a biography first published in 1909 and now ripe for presentation to a new circle of readers. Wallace was, indeed, a hero of the Union cause. Major General Ulysses S. Grant had divided his forces into six divisions at and near Pittsburg Landing, Tennessee, before Confederates launched a surprise attack at Shiloh Church on Sunday, April 6, 1862. Grant himself had spent the night at the Cherry mansion in Savannah some nine miles downriver, planning to meet General Don Carlos Buell to coordinate their two armies for an advance upon Corinth, Mississippi. The guns of Shiloh announced to Grant his army's peril. OfGrant's six division commanders, only General William T. Sherman had professional military training, and of all the field commanders , he had been most scornful of ominous signs of attack. Confederates possessed every advantage of surprise. Yet even before Grant reached the battlefield, Union troops had rallied from initial panic to mount a stubborn defense. Confederate General Albert Sidney Johnston had promised to water his horses in the Tennessee River that evening, a boast that required the destruction of Grant's army. Even though Johnston died on the battlefield, his army came close to fulfilling his ambition. Wallace played a major role in saving the Union army. v FOREWORD Wallace held command by accident. Major General Charles F. Smith, one of the most admired officers of the old army, commandant of cadets when Grant attended West Point, had injured his leg on the way to Pittsburg Landing and was confined to bed in the Cherry mansion. Wallace commanded Smith's division, presumably on a temporary basis. Smith's minor scrape led to an infection that ended his life two weeks after the battIe, a tragedy that might have given Wallace permanent command. But Wallace himselfhad already died. Wallace was a citizen soldier and lawyer-politician of Ottawa, Illinois. Born in 1821 in Urbana, Ohio, he was the son of a carpenter with eleven children and little money who had moved to Illinois in 1834. William was educated at the Rock Springs Seminary in Mount Morris. On his way to study law with Abraham Lincoln in Springfield in 1844, he had been persuaded by T. Lyle Dickey to join him instead in Ottawa. Wallace developed a taste for military life during the Mexican War, then settled into a legal career in Ottawa, where he married Dickey's daughter. Eleven years younger than William, Martha Ann, who rarely used her first name, was only sixteen when they were engaged, eighteen in 1851 when they married. The biography written by their adopted daughter Isabel is a love story as well as a political and military biography. Isabel Wallace, born January 14, 1858, was the daughter of Thomas Good and the former Eliza Parrott, residents of Ottawa, married in 1852, and parents of four children. At the age of thirty, Eliza died bearing Isabel, who, on May 3, 1858, formally became Wallace's ward. Thomas Good died two years later at the age of forty. Isabel, an only child, called Blossom by the Wallaces, remained a devoted daughter for seventy-five years.! In addition to its worth as a biography of General Wallace, the book serves as a source of information about T. Lyle Dickey, more prominent in Illinois politics than his son-in-law. Born in Kentucky in 1811, Dickey was raised in Ohio, where he graduated from Miami University. In 1834 he settled in Illinois, where he practiced law, vi FOREWORD edited a newspaper, and speculated in real estate before moving to Ottawa in 1839; here law absorbed all his talents. He frequently practiced in informal partnership with Lincoln, a relationship maintained for a half dozen years. Dickey later served as judge of the Ninth Judicial Circuit (1848-52). Lincoln, who usually followed the adjoining Eighth Circuit, had enough legal association with Dickey to continue their close relationship. Although unsuccessful in obtaining a Whig nomination for Congress in 1850, Wallace served as district attorney (1852-56) while retaining higher political ambitions. The political revolution that followed the Kansas-Nebraska Act...