Joseph Wheeler

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Wheeler, Joseph (1836–1906) U.S. and Confederate army officer. Born in Augusta, Georgia, on September 10, 1836, Joseph Wheeler was graduated from West Point and commissioned a lieutenant of dragoons in 1859. He served in New Mexico until April 1861 when he resigned and accepted a commission in the Confederate army. Assigned to Fort Barrancas, Florida, he was soon offered the colonelcy of the 19th Alabama Infantry. He rose to command an infantry brigade in 1862 before transferring to command the cavalry of the Army of Mississippi in July 1862. He subsequently earned a reputation as the leading Confederate cavalry commander in the western theater, conducting successful rearguard actions after the battles of Shiloh, Perryville, Stones River (all 1862), and Chickamauga (1863). In 1864–1865, Wheeler's cavalry opposed Sherman's march to the sea and through the Carolinas. Wheeler was captured near Atlanta, Georgia, in May 1865, as he attempted to protect the fleeing Confederate President, Jefferson Davis. After the Civil War, he ran a hardware store, became a successful plantation owner, practiced law, and entered Democratic politics in Alabama, winning a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1883. He served eight terms in Congress and was a member of the
House Military Affairs Committee. Following the United States declaration of war on Spain in April 1898, President William McKinley offered Wheeler a commission as a major general of volunteers. He was placed in command of the cavalry forces for the invasion of Cuba, and he successfully attacked the Spaniards at Las Guasimas (June 24, 1898), urging his men to “Give them Yankees hell, boys!” He subsequently obtained an assignment as a brigadier general of volunteers in the Philippines in June 1899. There he proved able, at the advanced age of 63, to outmarch soldiers forty years his junior. He returned to the United States in January 1900, received promotion to brigadier general in the Regular Army, and commanded the Department of the Lakes until his retirement in September 1900.

Joseph Wheeler 1836–1906, Confederate general in the American Civil War, b. Augusta, Ga. He resigned from the U.S. army in Apr., 1861, to fight for the Confederacy. He commanded a regiment at Shiloh (Apr., 1862) and became chief of cavalry in the Army of Tennessee (Oct.). Wheeler took part in Braxton Bragg's Kentucky campaign and in the Chattanooga campaign, in which he destroyed William Rosecrans's supplies in a brilliant raid through middle Tennessee (Oct.). Wheeler operated against William T. Sherman in the Atlanta campaign, the march to the sea, and the advance through the Carolinas. He surrendered with Joseph E. Johnston's army in Apr., 1865. After the war Wheeler, a lawyer and planter in Alabama, served in the House of Representatives (1881–82, 1883, 1885–1900). A major general of volunteers in the Spanish-American War, he commanded cavalry in the invasion of Cuba. He also led a brigade in the Philippine insurrection (1899–1900). He was made a brigadier general in the regular army shortly before he retired in Sept., 1900. Wheeler wrote The Santiago Campaign (1899).

Bibliography: See biography by J. P. Dyer (rev. ed. 1961).