[2] Although he planned to study law with Abraham Lincoln in Springfield, he joined Theophilus Lyle Dickey's practice in Ottawa, Illinois, instead.

After this first time meeting upon the Fort Donelson battlefield, the two quickly learned each possessed the same surname and had commanded their respective states' 11th regiments, prompting Lew Wallace to muse the coincidence must have caused "great profanity in the army post office".

During the expedition to Savannah, Tennessee, Maj. Gen. Charles Ferguson Smith injured his leg and was forced to turn over command of his division to Wallace.

[5] At the Battle of Shiloh, Wallace was a new division commander, yet he 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 wounded and only later found barely alive on the battlefield by his troops.