behind AotW

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Charles Wallace was the son of a prominent Atlanta businessman and politician, and first enlisted for war service in May 1861 with the First Georgia Infantry at age 17. When they were disbanded in early 1862 he enlisted again, as a trooper in Cobb’s Legion Cavalry Battalion. He was wounded in Maryland that September (probably at Quebec Schoolhouse) and sent home to recover. By the end of 1863 he was First Lieutenant of Company D of the 2nd Regiment, Confederate States Engineers and served with them to their surrender in May 1865.

The sad story of his death at just 25 years old is seen in the clipping above, from the 19 March 1869 edition of the Georgia Enterprise of Covington, GA.

At least one other newspaper account added a political dimension, suggesting that Wallace’s Clipper was a Ku Klux Klan paper and Wallace was a Democrat, and that Dr George Washington Darden (b. 1825) was a “highly respectable and wealthy citizen and well known loyalist” and supposed Republican, and that the mob who killed Dr Darden were KKK members.

the mob who killed