"The blow was too heavy to cause pain, suffering comes hours afterward." So wrote Ann Wallace of the news that her husband, Brigadier General H. L. Wallace, had been critically wounded and left for dead in enemy territory on the Shiloh battlefield. She had arrived at Pittsburg Landing early on April 6, 1862, expecting to surprise him; instead she spent an endless night fighting her feelings of despair by tending the wounded.
The next day, Mrs. Wallace got another shock. Federal troops recovering lost ground found her husband wrapped in a blanket by some kindly Confederate; he was weak but still alive. His staff rushed him aboard a steamboat, where she joined him. "Will recognized my voice right off and clasped my hand. I had believed him dead! And he was alive! And he knows me!" Wallace was taken to Gen. Grant's headquarters , and his wife kept a vigil at his bedside. "His pulse was strong and healthy," she wrote, "and we could not but hope that he would recover."
But his terrible wound proved untreatable and became infected. On April 10 Wallace died. Said Mrs. Wallace: "He faded away like a fire going out."
The General was buried at home in Illinois. Then, to honor his memory, his wife arranged for the photograph shown below.
"The Civil War, The Road to Shiloh", Time - Life books, page 153
Three mementoes of Gen. W. H. Wallace honor him in a haunting array at the door of his home in Ottowa, Illinois: his portrait in uniform, his horse and the flag for which he died in the Shiloh battle.
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