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CHAPTER 1
Militia, Mexico, and Politics
Lewis Wallace's grandfather, Andrew Wallace, settled in the growing town of Brookville, Indiana, during the first decade of the nineteenth century, and the family soon gained prominence. Andrew had been a storekeeper, surveyor, and publisher in Pennsylvania and Ohio before moving west to Indiana. His household eventually included seven sons and one daughter. Andrew secured, for his oldest son, David, an appointment to the U.S. Military Academy through William Henry Harrison, then a U.S. congressman, who befriended Andrew in Cincinnati, Ohio. Andrew had supplied Harrison's troops during the War of 1812.
David Wallace's time at West Point was gratifying to his father, considering that, according to Andrew, John Paul Jones was the cadet's great uncle. David Wallace did well at the academy, graduating in 1821. He was asked to teach mathematics there, and served in that capacity for two years. Wallace then resigned his commission, moving back to Brookville to study law. While David did not remain in the army, his experience and the stories about John Paul Jones had a great effect on the personality and desires of his second son, Lewis. In fact, according to Lew, among "the earliest of my recollections is the gray uniform of Cadet [David] Wallace," and none "of the good man's after honors exalted him in my eyes like that scant garment."
David soon opened a law office in Brookville and married Esther French Test, the daughter of a local politician, John Test. The connections to two Indiana politicians of note, Harrison and Test, probably led the young lawyer to pursue politics as a Whig. After serving in the lower house of the state legislature for three years, David was elected lieutenant governor of Indiana in 1831.
By that time, Esther Wallace had given birth to three boys, William, Lewis, and John. The family, in 1832, moved west to Covington, where David could better serve Indiana and his own interests in law and merchandising. During the move from Brookville to Covington, Lew and his little brother John contracted scarlet fever. John died while the family rested in Indianapolis.
In 1834, the Wallace family again experienced tragedy. Esther died from consumption. His mother's death, combined with his father's numerous travels, led Lew to disobey school masters and guardians in Crawfordsville, Indiana. He eventually developed a love for reading, but formal schooling never excited the future general and author. After three years of traveling and campaigning as lieutenant governor, Lew's father returned to Crawfordsville with a new wife, Zerelda Gray Sanders. William and Lew shunned and disobeyed their stepmother, but she worked hard to eventually earn their trust and love. Zerelda and David, however, failed to break Lew of his rebellious ways.
David's frequent absences may have been a product of the times and the emergence of the self-made man, which produced fathers who spent less and less time with their children. Nineteenth-century Americans often stressed that mothers played the greatest part in helping male children bridge the gap between boyhood and manhood, something that would be understandably difficult for Zerelda to manage. According to some scholars of gender, academic institutions, mothers, and the boy culture of the era were supposed to help boys learn to contain their wildest behaviors as they reached adulthood. For Lew, this combination of influences worked to an extent, but he largely grew to embrace notions of manhood that seemed more martial or rough, rather than restrained or gentlemanly. In fact, a much older Lew fondly remembered a boy culture that encouraged aggression, including the "dare," in which young men would dare each other to complete dangerous feats in order to prove their courage. Such lessons seemed to have the greatest influence on the boy and man.
A future political general would certainly need political connections, and Lew Wallace derived many from the acquaintances and reputation attained by his father, who died in 1859. The peak of David's political career occurred in 1837 when the Whig easily won a bid to become Indiana's next governor. He sponsored spending on ambitious internal improvements, hoping to bring better roads, canals, and railroads to the state. As a result of the election, the family moved once again, this time to Indianapolis.
In addition to the connections gained from the family name, his father's governorship indirectly brought young Lew around to more academic interests. The state library in Indianapolis, while not large, encouraged in him a love for reading and writing that never faded. But, at the same time, a few books from the state library and his father's collection moved the youngster to do something rather rash. Those volumes described Mexico and the Spanish settlement of Latin America. He further read about the Texas Revolution, Sam Houston, and the defeat of General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna. Consequently, the teenager and a companion unsuccessfully tried to round up people to go to Texas and join the Texas Navy shortly after that republic's war for independence. This failed attempt demonstrated the future army officer's tendency to pursue glorious adventures and embrace a more martial manhood, instead of the lucrative occupations and restraint that his father earnestly recommended. Many historians have lamented the propensity of many Civil War generals, especially politically appointed officers, to shy away from risky and intense battles. Wallace, on the other hand, demonstrated early in life his wish to attain glory and honor through such endeavors.
Despite his growing love of books, Lew continued to be quite the truant, and it likely took some time and energy for David Wallace to convince his son to study law. Lew approached these studies with little enthusiasm; it was merely a means to make a living and support a family. In the meantime, the teenager found much more enjoyment in a militia company that he joined in 1841, as well as his related study of Winfield Scott's Infantry Tactics. The Marion (County) Rifles, as the unit was called, soon elected Wallace to be their second sergeant, and he relished the chance to drill and train for a battle. The experience, and some natural ability, certainly helped to prepare him for later service in the Mexican War and the Civil War, where he excelled as a colonel, but it did not adequately prepare him for higher command.
According to Wallace, time with the Marion Rifles solidified that fighting, or martial, spirit that seemed to possess him in later years. One instance especially affected an impressionable young officer. Wallace's company of militia had a rival, a troop called the "City Greys." That organization assembled first, and it consisted of wealthier, older, and more established citizens of Indianapolis. Tension abounded since the "Rifles despised the aristocratic airs of the Greys" while "the Greys laughed at the Rifles," eventually referring to them derogatorily as "Arabs." They could have called them "roughs," given the competing masculinities of the day.
The Marion Rifles got revenge for the name-calling and turned-up noses during a mock battle for a town celebration. The battle initially went as planned, the Greys attacking and the Rifles returning fire. However, in the heat of this pretend fight, the captain of the Rifles ignored the schedule. The company was supposed to retreat, but the captain forgot to order the men to fall back. As might be expected, the "mêlée that ensued was tremendous." The Rifles won the fight and managed to take prisoners. In addition to cementing a passion for the military and encouraging his embrace of martial manhood, this incident foreshadowed future incidents during Wallace's career. The captain had succeeded by not following the script, or the rules, and this experience (or at least his evolving memory of it) may have encouraged an older Wallace to deviate from rules and orders during the Civil War, sometimes for the good, but often for the bad.
Such pursuits were good preparation for a future colonel of infantry, but not for a lawyer. Father Wallace took the son under his wing, helping him to study, but Lew could not keep his mind on such practical endeavors. And as the day approached for the nineteen-year-old Wallace to take the bar exam to become a lawyer, the Mexican War began. His earlier excitement over Texas, and his love of books on Mexico, could not be contained once the United States and Mexico had exchanged declarations of war.
Along with others, Wallace reported to the chambers of Supreme Court Justice Isaac Blackford for the bar exam, and a bailiff took the applicants to a quiet room in order to take the essay test. The young Indianan worked on the exam until approximately 2:00 A.M. but realized that he had not done well. Putting the exam in the provided envelope, he included a flippant, if not disrespectful, note to Justice Blackford: "I hope the foregoing answers will be to your satisfaction more than they are to mine; whether they are or not, I shall go to Mexico." The answers did not satisfy the judge, who replied that the "Court interposes no objection to your going to Mexico." A license to practice law did not accompany the letter, so Wallace happily formed a company of recruits and became a second lieutenant in the 1st Indiana Infantry.
Wallace later claimed that he needed only three days to fill the company. The group soon elected officers: James P. Drake was the captain, and John McDougal became the first lieutenant. The men elected Wallace to be the second lieutenant. The election of officers was important because it set the stage for Wallace's first confrontation with a superior officer. He had few problems with Captain Drake, but McDougal and Wallace seldom saw eye to eye. Early in life, Lew had rebelled against his father's authority, and this propensity to irritate superiors continued in Texas and Mexico. He never learned how to be a dutiful and patient follower, something taken for granted by his father and by other officers trained at the United States Military Academy.
The city of Indianapolis held a farewell celebration, drawing thousands of citizens, to wish luck to the company. Then the volunteer soldiers proceeded by train to the Ohio River, merely the first leg of a one-month voyage to Mexico. While at camp on the Ohio River, Wallace's company was assigned to the 1st Indiana Regiment, part of the Indiana Brigade under Brig. Gen. Joseph Lane. The Indianans arrived at Brazos de Santiago, near the mouth of the Rio Grande, in late July of 1846.
The 1st Indiana had already suffered six deaths due to illness by 25 July. Nevertheless, Lieutenant Wallace wrote to his brother, raving about the climate in Brazos de Santiago while describing problems that would mirror his Civil War experience. On a positive note, the "sun and continual sea-breeze which sweeps around me seems to have made a favorable compact with my constitution." But diseases infected and killed others in his company, seven men having been buried the day before while another seven were "unfit for duty," leading Wallace to say that "we live in the midst of death."
Wallace loved "the continual excitement — the increasing change of character and scene — with which I come in daily contact." However, following such a comment, the Indianan described the beginnings of his first serious confrontation with a superior officer. According to the young second lieutenant, John "McDougal is beginning to show the tyrannical nature given him by public opinion in years gone by. Impositions and unjust exactions are beginning to be read to us every morning or so." Moreover, McDougal "can lie as sweetly as a ... [bird] can sing." The elder lieutenant was promoted to captain when Drake became a colonel, and subsequently became domineering. Wallace, however, was not interested in making real, lasting peace.
While Wallace learned that such treatment did not endear men to their leader, knowledge that would be an asset to him in the Civil War, he had not learned, and appeared uninterested in learning, how to subtly or openly get along with an immediate superior in such a situation. In addition, the episode seemed to mirror the dueling conceptions of manhood that Lorien Foote associates with later Civil War soldiers and officers. McDougal represented the "gentleman" who insists on discipline and restraint, while Wallace was the "rough" who rebels from the rules and discipline that many Americans abhorred as violations of their rights as U.S. citizens.
By October, many more soldiers had become sick, and they were frustrated with the medical care that the army provided. Wallace joked that the volunteers believed, and hoped, that one particular doctor had drowned. But "alas! for the hopes of all who had been sick, who most devoutly wished it might be true, and looked upon the occurrence as one in which the interposition of Providence was clearly visible, the gentleman made his appearance in camp and commenced his duties day before yesterday." The lieutenant believed him and his two assistants to be "beautiful specimen[s] of the genus 'Quack'" because wherever "they proceed, whenever they administer medicine, death is the consequent attendant."
The young Indianan also hoped that his unit might "be called into more active service, and a chance offered us to redeem the tarnished honor of our state." He voiced such concerns even before an Indiana regiment embarrassed the state at the Battle of Buena Vista in February 1847. Wallace's regiment had received little action, as would be the case for the remainder of the war, and he desperately yearned for some sort of honorable fight. Thus, Wallace was "burning to see more active service, and pray but for one engagement before we return home." While the young officer never witnessed a major battle in Mexico, he acquired some understanding of logistics and supply, mentioning that he "went with the companies which escorted the 250 [wagon] train as far as Matamoras, and yet think it the most beautiful sight I ever saw. As each wagon was drawn by five mules, the whole of them together, from front to rear, covered a track two miles in length."
While Wallace gained some experience in dealing with supply and sickness, both possibly being of value during the Civil War, his negative attitude was more important to his future. He hated the lack of a good fight, and he continued to anguish over his inability to prove his bravery and attain honor for the home state. He largely blamed Gen. Zachary Taylor, a haughty and unkempt officer, at least in Wallace's opinion, for the lack of action. Taylor commanded the Army of Occupation during the Mexican War. This negative view of a long-serving officer, a professional by early nineteenth-century standards, never left the mind of the future political general.
The quarrel with McDougal only intensified, Wallace finding ways to infuriate the captain. McDougal had been sending information back to Indiana, much of it critical of the lieutenant. According to the senior officer, Wallace argued that McDougal was sick, drunk, and unfit for duty because of a desire to become captain. Wallace denied that he was plotting to take his superior's rank. As for the captain's supposed drunkenness, "to the best of my recollection I never stated or wrote it; if I did, why men have eyesight, and so have witnesses." A dispute over Wallace owing the company some money, as well as accusations that he stole some supplies, eventually led to a court of inquiry. The young officer was acquitted, but the incident certainly made matters worse.
The 1st Indiana's first major mission after landing at Brazos de Santiago was to occupy and secure the town of Matamoras. Wallace liked the "beautiful city which has sheltered us for so long a time and almost re accustomed [sic] us to the pleasures and conveniences of civilized life," but the labor at Matamoras was tedious, continuous, and not so honorable in his opinion. The impatient lieutenant gained some valuable insights at Matamoras about occupying a city: "[O]fficers and soldiers are perpetually busy. Day and night find us on an eternal trot." He came to understand the myriad of duties involved as this "man is to be seen here, that Mexican is to be taken there, while scouting parties are coming and going at all hours, and pickets and patrol guards traversing every street and ... alley in the place." This experience must have been useful when Wallace found himself occupying and guarding the state of Maryland for the Union in 1864–65.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Politician in Uniform"
by .
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