"This is my native state"

[Gen Lew Wallace]

Lew Wallace quit the Democratic Party when fellow Indiana Democrats urged him to support the Southern cause following Abraham Lincoln's election in 1860.  "This is my native state," Wallace later quoted himself saying when pressed to throw his allegiance to the South.  "I will not leave it to serve the South.  Down the street yonder is the old cemetery, and my father lies there going to dust.  If I fight, I tell you, it shall be for his bones."

Excerpted from Desperate Engagement by Marc Leepson