William Almon Wheeler

William Almon Wheeler 1819-87, American legislator, vice president of the United States (1877-81), b. Malone, N.Y. Admitted to the New York bar (1845), he was district attorney of Franklin co., N.Y. (1846-49), Whig member of the state assembly (1850-51), and a Republican member and president pro tempore of the state senate (1858-59). After 1851 he turned from law to banking and railroad finance. He presided over the New York constitutional convention (1867-68) and sat (1861-63, 1869-77) in the U.S. House of Representatives. His most notable service in Congress was devising the Wheeler compromise, which settled (1875) a disputed election in Louisiana. Wheeler was little known when the Republicans nominated him for vice president in 1876. He was elected with Rutherford Hayes in the disputed election of that year.

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.

Wheeler, Earle G. (1908–1975), general, U.S. Army; chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), 1964–79.Gen. Earle Wheeler's tenure as the nation's top military officer spanned the height of America's involvement in the Vietnam War. President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed Wheeler chairman of the JCS in July 1964 to succeed Gen. Maxwell Taylor. Wheeler oversaw and supported the expanding U.S. military role in the conflict in the mid‐1960s, consistently backing the field commander's requests for additional troops and operating authority. Concerned that the U.S. buildup in Vietnam depleted U.S. military capabilities in other parts of the world, he urged the president to mobilize American reserve forces. In February 1968, after the Tet Offensive, Wheeler extracted from Gen. William C. Westmoreland, the U.S. military commander in Vietnam, a request for some 200,000 additional ground troops to be gained by mobilizing reserve forces. However, Wheeler intended to use most of these troops to reconstitute a general reserve in the United States. His request was not approved and, together with the Tet offensive and shifts in U.S. public opinion, resulted finally in President Johnson's decision to de‐escalate the war.

After the election of President Richard M. Nixon, Wheeler oversaw the implementation of the “Vietnamization” program, whereby South Vietnamese forces assumed increasing responsibility for the war as U.S. forces were withdrawn. He retired from the army in July 1970 and died in 1975.
[See also Army Reserves and National Guard; Mobilization; Vietnam War.]

Bibliography

Herbert Y. Schandler , The Unmaking of a President: Lyndon Johnson and Vietnam, 1977.
Mark Perry , Four Stars, 1989.

Herbert Y. Schandler