Lew Wallace’s American Civil War Career

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During the first months of the war, when the Union suffered almost continual setbacks, Wallace received adulatory publicity for leading his Indiana Zouaves on a 45-mile dash through the mountains to Romney, Virginia, where he surprised a much superior Confederate force, drove them off, and captured their equipment and supplies. Three months later, he was promoted from colonel of volunteers to brigadier general. At the Battle of Fort Donelson, the first major Union victory, Wallace played a decisive role in stopping a Confederate sortie, and he received the commander’s surrender. Shortly thereafter, he became a major general, the youngest in the army and the third highest ranking commander in the Western Theater.

But a month later, in April 1862, his brilliantly begun military career almost foundered. At Shiloh, the union army was surprised and almost driven into the Tennessee River on the first day of combat; reinforcements arriving, Grant took the offensive the second day and drove the Confederates from the field. But the Union suffered 13,000 casualties, and public opinion demanded a scapegoat. This was Wallace.

Though Grant had been nine miles north of the field when the battle began and did not arrive until midmorning, he blamed Wallace for the first day’s near defeat. Wallace, following Grant’s hasty and unclear command, marched his 6,500 troops from Crump’s landing, five miles upriver, to where the right of the Union army should have been, only to receive a second message from Grant informing him belatedly that the Union forces had retreated several miles and that he was heading into the main body of the enemy. Wallace had to countermarch and then begin again on another route, so that by the time his troops arrived after sixteen miles of forced marching, the first day’s fight was over.

Though Wallace’s division was the first in the field the next morning, and though Grant’s orders had been confusing, Grant blamed Wallace for incompetence in taking the wrong route and for ‘dilatoriness’ in obeying orders. After Shiloh, Wallace proceeded to capture Memphis. Then he went home on leave of absence, only to find himself rusticated because of his role at Shiloh. But by one of the war’s many ironies, Wallace’s personal defeat at this time benefited the Union, for his removal from the field caused him to be the one general on hand to save Cincinnati from an unexpected Confederate offensive drive.

Relieved from field command, Wallace retired to Crawfordsville, Indiana under a formal order from Secretary of War Stanton to remain there until further instructions. During July and most of August, he found some solace in hunting and fishing on the Kankakee River. But late in August he was summoned unexpectedly to Indianapolis by Governor Oliver P. Morton, who notified him that General Braxton Bragg had ‘broken loose’ from Chattanooga and was moving into Kentucky, posing a threat to Louisville and to Indiana across the river.

What had happened was that Bragg and Major General E. Kirby Smith decided to work together to destroy the Union army of Major General Don Carlos Buell. In early August, they met in Chattanooga and planned a campaign that would lead to the retaking of Cumberland Gap and the expulsion of the union forces from central Tennessee and Kentucky. But Kirby Smith started precipitously on his own; without support from Bragg, he left Knoxville alone and marched north into Kentucky. Trying to protect Smith, whom Buell outnumbered three to one, Bragg then moved north from Nashville into the mountains between Buell and Smith and then entered Kentucky himself with Buell in pursuit. Kentucky was thus invaded on two fronts, and someone had to stop the Confederate thrust before it reached Ohio and Indiana.

Morton explained to Wallace that he had organized five regiments for which he needed colonels and in this emergency he asked several generals to accept these commands. three others refused; but Wallace, though a major general, agreed to take the provisional rank of colonel and command the 66th Indiana. To get back into the field, he was ready to do anything–provided Morton would take Stanton and General-in-Chief Halleck off his back during the emergency.

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Tags: 19th Century, American Civil War, Civil War Times, Historical Conflicts, Historical Figures

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