Wallace adjutant-general of the State at the first sign of hostilities, but he served in this capacity for a short time only, and organized the Eleventh Indiana Regiment, with his original Crawfordsville company as nucleus, and began an active and brilliant career in the army. Almost immediately his regiment distinguished itself in West Virginia. He was a brigadier-general before the capture of Fort Henry, and was made major-general for gallantry at Donelson. A year after Shiloh, a friend called General Wallace’s attention to the official reports of that engagement, and he learned for the first time that he had been censured for his conduct on the first day of the battle. He asked at once for a court of inquiry, which was denied, and a long controversy followed. This died out for a time, but was renewed when Grant began the serial publication of his memoirs. It was always maintained by General Wallace’s friends that Grant was unjust to Wallace; that the Indiana officer faithfully obeyed orders actually given him; and certainly no one who ever had any acquaintance with General Wallace would believe him capable of intentionally taking a circuitous route to a battle-field. The effective service of his command on the second day of the battle should forever have stilled criticism; as it was, Grant wrote in his memoirs--the last words that ever came from his pen--a footnote to his account of Pittsburg Landing that fairly acquitted General Wallace of all blame. Much has been written, by participants and others, touching the incident, and it has been made the subject of an exhaustive study by George F. McGinnis.[43] While stationed at Baltimore, in 1864, General Wallace prevented a Confederate descent upon Washington by intercepting Jubal Early at Monocacy. He threw 6,000 men against Early’s force of 28,000, suffering defeat, but detaining the enemy until Grant could send reënforcements from Virginia. This was one of the most important of all his military services, and he received for it Grant’s cordial praise. General Wallace was a member of the court that tried the conspirators implicated in the assassination of Lincoln; and he was president of the commission that tried and convicted Captain Henry Wirz, commandant of Andersonville Prison.