Early Life and Career
Wallace was born in Brookville, Indiana, to David Wallace and Esther French Test Wallace. His father was a graduate of the United States Military Academy and served as lieutenant governor and Indiana Governor. When Wallace's father was elected as lieutenant governor of Indiana, he moved his family to Covington, Indiana. Wallace's autobiography contains many stories from his boyhood in Covington, including the account of the death of his mother in 1834. In 1836, at the age of nine, he joined his brother in Crawfordsville, Indiana, where he briefly attended Wabash Preparatory School. His father remarried, to Zerelda Gray Sanders Wallace, a prominent suffragist and temperance advocate, who was stepmother to the boys. Lew Wallace rejoined his father in Indianapolis.
In 1846 at the start of the Mexican-American War, Wallace was studying law. He left that to raise a company of militia and was elected a second lieutenant in the 1st Indiana Infantry regiment. He rose to the position of regimental adjutant and the rank of first lieutenant, serving in the army of Zachary Taylor, although he personally did not participate in combat. After hostilities, he was mustered out of the volunteer service on June 15, 1847.
Read more about this topic: Lew Wallace
Famous quotes containing the words early, life and/or career:
“...to many a mother’s heart has come the disappointment of a loss of power, a limitation of influence when early manhood takes the boy from the home, or when even before that time, in school, or where he touches the great world and begins to be bewildered with its controversies, trade and economics and politics make their imprint even while his lips are dewy with his mother’s kiss.”
—J. Ellen Foster (1840–1910)
“I declare
Two lineages electrify the air,
That will like pennons from a mast
Fly over sleep and life and death
Till sun is powerless to decoy
A single seed above the earth:
Lineage of sorrow: lineage of joy....”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)
“My ambition in life: to become successful enough to resume my career as a neurasthenic.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)