Alva Review-Courier -

A few weeks ago, I wrote about a woman who gave up a career as a singer in order to become a baseball umpire. As part of that story, I argued that all lives are important and that many of them are extremely interesting.

If that is so, I will never run out of ideas for this column! With that in mind, this week I am going to tell you about a man named Lew Wallace.

He was born in 1827 and died in early 1905 at the age of 77; he was from Indiana. Wallace was successful in several endeavors during his lifetime. He first became a lawyer, serving as a prosecutor for the state.

In 1856 he was elected to a two-year term in the Indiana State Senate as a Democrat. After his term ended, he resumed the practice of law but decided that he did not like it. So he tried the military.

The Civil War began in April 1861 – two days after Wallace celebrated his 34th birthday. Wallace volunteered for the Union army, rising to the rank of major general. He participated in several battles, the most famous of which was Shiloh in April 1862.

The North (Union) won the Battle of Shiloh, but the commanding general during the conflict, U.S. Grant, for years blamed Wallace for exhibiting poor judgment that nearly cost the North its victory. After the war, however, Grant changed his mind – but the controversy followed Wallace for years.

Wallace resigned from the army when the war ended in 1865, and decided to try politics again. Switching to the Republican Party, he twice ran unsuccessfully (in 1868 and 1870) for a seat in the United States House of Representatives. He also decided to try to write novels.

In 1878, President Rutherford B. Hayes appointed Wallace to be the Territorial Governor of New Mexico, a post in which he served until 1881. It was not a particularly appealing position for several reasons – as we will see next week in Part 2 of this story.