Civil War heroes Lew Wallace and Oliver P. Morton represent Indiana in the U.S. Capitol--Wallace in Statuary Hall and Morton in the Hall of Columns. They know insurrectionists when they see them. I think of them when downhearted.

Months before Abraham Lincoln's inauguration as the 16th president, Wallace, then a Democrat, attended a meeting of Indiana Democrats at the Palmer House hotel in Indianapolis to discuss what to do if southern states seceded from the Union.

Some of the speakers claimed that Hoosier Democrats had no choice if war broke out--they should support the South. Shocked at what he heard, Wallace left the meeting. One of the Democrats, a judge, saw Wallace leave and stopped him outside the hotel to urge him to return.

The judge urged Wallace to support the South, as they would need a man with his military experience (Mexican War vet and local militia leader) if there would be fighting.

"This is my native state," Wallace told the man. "I will not leave it to serve the South. Down the street yonder is the old cemetery where my father [former governor David Wallace] lies there going to dust. I I fight, I tell you, it shall be for his bones."

Wallace crossed the street to call on Governor Morton. They had been friends but had parted when Morton became a Republican. Wallace apologized and told him about the meeting.

Wallace offered his services to the governor if the South went ahead with its threats to secede. Morton shook Wallace's hand and told him he would be the first man he called if war came.

The war came. When Fort Sumter was fired upon, the governor wired Wallace the news and asked him to come to Indianapolis. Wallace accepted Morton's offer to serve as the state's adjutant general to fill its quota of six regiments (approx. 4,600 men) called for by Lincoln.

"They were farmer boys, apprentice lads, leaders in villages, head of public schools," Wallace said of the volunteers, "with here a city-born, and there a college-bred, and nearly all of them in the morning of life."

Wallace received a promise from the governor that he could command one of the regiments. Indiana raised more than double the number of troops required, and Morton put Wallace in charge of the Eleventh Indiana Volunteer Infantry Regiment.

In early May 1861 Wallace marched his regiment out of camp to the Indiana Statehouse, where women from Terre Haute and Indianapolis presented it with two flags--its colors--before a large, cheering crowd.

Addressing his rookie soldiers, Wallace reminded them that at the Battle of Buena Vista during the Mexican War, Jefferson Davis, now head of the traitorous Confederacy, had unfairly charged an Indiana unit with cowardice.

Wallace had his troops kneel and promise to wipe out the disgrace cast on the state by Davis. The regiment took as its motto: "Remember Buena Vista!"