David Wallace (24 April 1799-4 September 1859) was the Whig Governor of Indiana from 6 December 1837 to 9 December 1840 (succeeding Noah Noble and preceding Samuel Bigger) and a member of the US House of Representatives (W-IN 6) from 4 March 1841 to 3 March 1843 (succeeding William W. Wick and preceding John Wesley Davis).
Biography[]
David Wallace was born in Mifflin County, Pennsylvania in 1799, the brother of William H. Wallace and John M. Wallace. Wallace was raised in Cincinnati, Ohio before moving to Brookville, Indiana in 1817 and graduating from West Point in 1821. Wallace became a lawyer and fathered the famed writer and general Lew Wallace (and his brother Edward Wallace) before entering politics as a state representative from 1828 to 1831. Wallace served as Lieutenant Governor from 1831 to 1837 and as Governor from 1837 to 1840, presiding over the state's financial crisis that resulted from the Panic of 1837. The financial crisis crippled the state's internal improvement projects, and he attempted to delay the state's inevitable insolvency; the state went bankrupt in his successor's term. He went on to serve in the US House of Representatives from 1841 to 1843 and then as a state judge until his death in 1859.