December 31, 1863

Sidney Wallace’s father was murdered in front of his house by several men wearing Union army coats. Accounts vary concerning whether the attackers were Union soldiers or local bushwhackers in disguise. Several writers claim that, nine years later, Wallace began tracking down his father’s killers for revenge after his twenty-first birthday. Wallace became a legendary part of the state’s folklore during Arkansas’s Reconstruction. Some portrayed him as boldly resisting bushwhackers and carpetbaggers, while he symbolized to others the lawless frontier life that Arkansas needed to transcend.