General Wallace was thus engaged when the news was received from Morgan of the invasion of Kentucky by Kirby Smith.  All eyes turned at once to Governor Morton, many of whose regiments were now ready to take the field, if they only had officers to lead them.  Wallace came promptly to the Governor’s assistance, and offered to take command of a regiment for the crisis.  His offer was accepted, and he was sent to New Albany, where the Sixty-Sixth Indiana was in camp.  In twelve hours he mustered it, paid its bounty money, clothed and armed it, and marched it to Louisville.  Brigadier-General Boyle was in command of Kentucky.  Wallace, who is a Major-General, reported to him at the above-named city, and a peculiar scene occurred.

“General Boyle,” said Wallace, “I report to you the Sixty-Sixth Indiana Regiment.”

“Who commands it?” asked the General.

“I have that honor, Sir,” was the reply.

“You want orders, I suppose?”

“Certainly.”

“It is a difficult matter for me,” said Boyle.  “I have no right to order you.”

“That difficulty is easily solved,” Wallace replied, with characteristic promptness.  “I come to report to you as a Colonel.  I come to take orders as such.”

General Boyle consulted with his Adjutant-General, and the result was a request that General Wallace would proceed to Lexington with his command.  Here was exhibited the ready, self-sacrificing spirit of a true patriot:  he did not stand and wait until he could find the position to which his high rank entitled him, but stepped into the place where he could best and quickest serve his country in her hour of peril.

While Wallace was still at the railway-station, he received an order from General Boyle, putting him in command of all the forces in Lexington.  Here was a golden opportunity for our young commander.  What higher honor could be coveted than to relieve the brave Morgan, pent up as he was with his little army in the mountain-gorges of the Cumberland?  The idea fired the soul of Wallace, and he pushed on to Lexington.  But here he was sadly disappointed.  He found the forces waiting there inadequate to the task:  instead of an army, there were only three regiments.  He telegraphed for more troops.  Indiana and Ohio responded promptly and nobly.  In three days he received and brigaded nine regiments and started them toward the Gap.

No one but an experienced soldier, one who has indeed tried it, can conceive of the labor involved in such an undertaking.  The material in his hands was, to say the best of it, magnificently raw.  Officers, from colonels to corporals, brave though they might be as lions, knew literally nothing of military affairs.  The men had not learned even to load their guns.  Companies had to be led, like little children, by the hand as it were, into their places in line of battle.  There was no cavalry, no artillery.  It happened, however, that