Colonel W. H. L. Wallace (USV)

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Colonel William Hervey Lamme Wallace (USV)

William Hervey Lamme Wallace was born in Urbana, Ohio, on 8 July 1821. In 1836, he was educated at Rock River Seminary in Mount Morris, Illinois. Although, he planned to study law with Abraham Lincoln in Springfield, he joined Theophilus Lyle Dickey's practice in Ottawa, Illinois, instead. In 1851, he married Dickey's daughter, Martha Ann. He became license in law in 1846 and that same year he joined the 1st Illinois Infantry as a private. He rose to the rank of second lieutenant and adjutant and participated in the Battle of Buena Vista during the Mexican-American War. He became district attorney in 1853.

At the start of the Civil War, Wallace volunteered as a private with the 11th Illinois Infantry. He was elected the unit's colonel. He rose up the ranks and commanded a brigade of Brig. Gen. John A. McClernand's division of Grant's Army of the Tennessee at the Battle of Fort Donelson in 1862. During the battle much of McClernand's division had been driven back with heavy losses and Wallace's coolness under fire was especially noted. Brig. Gen. Lew Wallace described W.H.L. Wallace as looking like a "farmer coming from a hard day's plowing". Both realized they shared both the same surname and had commanded their respective states' 11th regiments.

W.H.L. Wallace was promoted to brigadier general of volunteers after Fort Donelson. During the expedition to Savannah, Tennessee, Maj. Gen. Charles F. Smith injured his leg and was forced to turn over command of his division to Wallace. At the Battle of Shiloh, Wallace managed to withstand six hours of assaults by the Confederates, directly next to the famous Hornet's Nest, or Sunken Road. When his division was finally surrounded, he ordered a withdrawal and many escaped, but he was mortally wounded. He was carried to his wife, who helped tend to him on the way back to Grant's headquarters in the Cherry Mansion in Savannah, Tennessee. He died three days later in his wife's arms on 10 April 1862. His brother, Martin Reuben Merritt Wallace became a brevet brigadier general later in the war.