Wallace served as member of the
South Carolina House of Representatives from 1852 to 1855, and from 1858 to 1859 under the
Unionist banner. When South Carolina
seceded from the Union, he withdrew from politics. Wallace quietly refrained from supporting the
Confederacy in any way during the war years, though this was a situation he had to navigate carefully, as his earlier Unionist sympathies made him a target. After the war he immediately joined the Republican Party. He successfully contested as a Republican the election of
William D. Simpson to the
41st Congress. South Carolina's
1868 Constitution barred ex-confederates from voting but did give the franchise to newly freed African-Americans. As a result, most people eligible to vote in the next several elections were African-Americans, northern military officers who had stayed in South Carolina after the war, and whites who worked for the Freedmen's Bureau, all of whom overwhelmingly supported the Republican Party. Under these circumstances Wallace was reelected to the
42nd,
43rd, and
44th and served from May 27, 1870, to March 3, 1877. He served as chairman of the Committee on Revolutionary Claims (42nd Congress). He was an unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1876 to the
45th Congress. While in Congress, Wallace voted for the
Ku Klux Klan Act and the
Civil Rights Act of 1875. After serving in Congress, he engaged in agricultural pursuits until his death near
York, South Carolina, June 27, 1893. He was interred at Rose Hill Cemetery in York. == References ==