† William Ross Wallace, lawyer and poet, was born in Lexington, Kentucky, in 1819. He studied law at Hanover College, in Indiana, from 1833 to 1835, then entered the law school at Lexington, Kentucky. He removed to New York in 1841 and practiced law, but wrote poetry and some novels as a pastime during the next twenty years. He contributed to Harper's Magazine, Harper's Weekly, Godey's Lady's Book, the New York Ledger, and the Louisville Daily Journal. He wrote patriotic songs after the outbreak of the Civil War, some of which were set to music. One of the best-known poems was "The Hand that Rocks the Cradle Is the Hand that Rules the World." Wallace was twice married and had three children. He died May 5, 1881, in New York City.

† REFERENCES: Scribner's Dictionary of American Biography, XIX, New York, 1936, 378-79; obituary notices in the New York Herald and New York Times, May 7,1881; William T. Coggeshall; Poets and Poetry of the West, New York, 1864, 227-37, gives a good biography up to that date; a good portrait "is given as the frontispiece to Wallace's Meditation in America and Other Poems, New York, 1851.

†Songbook. Military Song Book, 1861.

† Correction made as per Volume 3.