The FReeper Foxhole Profiles Fightin' Joe Wheeler - June 30th, 2005

Military History Magazine | June 1998 | David R. Smith

[SAMWolf]

Lord,

Keep our Troops forever in Your care

Give them victory over the enemy...

Grant them a safe and swift return...

Bless those who mourn the lost.
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FReepers from the Foxhole join in prayer
for all those serving their country at this time.

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General Joseph Wheeler
(1836 - 1906)

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Fightin' Joe Wheeler lived up to his name in two wars and in two uniforms -- one gray, one blue.

Joseph Wheeler first gained the notice of his superiors as a Confederate lieutenant colonel at the Battle of Shiloh in April 1862. After fighting all day, he led his men, who were out of ammunition, in a bayonet attack against Union artillerymen defending Pittsburg Landing. The next day, when the army was forced to retreat, Wheeler's regiment was chosen to serve as rear guard. His grit and determination, which had much to do with the safe escape of the Southern army, earned him a promotion to full colonel. Wheeler was then just 25 years old -- so young that he called himself "the War Child."

Born in Augusta, Ga., on September 10, 1836, Joseph Wheeler grew up in the North. He went to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, finishing a low 19th in his class of 1859. His worst grades were in cavalry tactics; nevertheless he was assigned to the Mounted Dragoons and fought Indians on the frontier for almost two years. When the Civil War broke out in April 1861, he joined the Confederacy, and family connections won him an appointment as a lieutenant colonel in the 19th Alabama Infantry.

When General Braxton Bragg took over the Army of Tennessee shortly after Shiloh, he remembered the young colonel's boldness and skill. In spite of his academy grades, Wheeler got the job as Bragg's cavalry commander in July 1862.

After Shiloh, the Union army was spread out all over Tennessee, and Bragg saw a chance to strike. With Maj. Gen. Edmund Kirby Smith in support, he cut through Tennessee and drove deep into Kentucky. Wheeler's cavalry screened and scouted for Bragg, fighting more than two dozen battles.



When Maj. Gen. Don Carlos Buell finally reacted to the threat, Wheeler's worn-out horsemen could not find the main body of the Union Army of the Ohio. In a daze, Bragg sent Maj. Gen. Leonidas Polk's corps out to fight the entire Union army at Perryville on October 8, 1862. Wheeler, who was with Polk, bluffed one Union corps out of the fight with just 1,400 horsemen. Polk fought the rest of the army to a draw, but the invasion of Kentucky was over.

Now the question for the Confederates was how to get out of Federal territory. Neither Bragg nor Smith thought they could make the journey with their wagons or cannons. Wheeler again took rear-guard duty. His men fought all day and worked all night, blocking every road the Union army could use. The retirement went on for a long, tense week, but in the end it paid off. The Confederates got out not only their own equipment but also the 30 guns and 400 wagons they had taken from the enemy. Wheeler received the star of a brigadier general.

Major General William Starke Rosecrans took over the Union Army of the Cumberland on October 27, absorbing Buell's former command. On the day after Christmas, he moved against the new Southern base at Murfreesboro, Tenn. Bragg sent Wheeler to slow the Union force while he gathered his own men. Then on December 29, he turned Wheeler loose in the Union rear. Wheeler led his men completely around the Union army, making it back before the battle started. On the way, he took nearly 1,000 prisoners, captured or killed hundreds of horses and mules and burned four Union wagon trains. Wheeler and his tired men rested during most of the two-day battle, getting in only a little fighting on the last day.



Although the South saw the Battle of Murfreesboro as a victory, Rosecrans still had the strongest army, and he stood fast. For two nights Wheeler prodded the Union rear. Hearing wagons moving, he thought Rosecrans was retreating. He was wrong -- the wagons were only hauling away the wounded. Finally, it was Bragg who retreated.

Two weeks later, Wheeler was back behind the Union army. On January 13, 1863, he hit Harpeth Shoals, northwest of Nashville, turning his cannons against the ships on the Cumberland River and stopping traffic for days.

In early February 1863, Wheeler struck Dover, Tenn. Brigadier General Nathan Bedford Forrest, the "Wizard of the Saddle," was with him on that sortie. The Confederates outnumbered the Union force, but Forrest argued that Union fortifications would give the Federals an edge.


Wheeler's Cavalry Capturing a Federal Supply Train. J. F. E. Hillen.

He was right. The Rebels were badly shot up. Forrest himself had two horses killed under him. Never a good loser, he turned on his youthful commander with such fury that aides barely prevented a duel. As it was, Forrest swore he would resign if forced to serve under Wheeler again.

Wheeler and his troopers next struck a double blow against the Union railroads, shooting up one train and capturing another. Their haul included 70 Union prisoners, 40 freed Confederates and $30,000 in cash. The total human cost for both attacks was one man wounded.

[SAMWolf]

When he was not in the field, Wheeler found time to write a new Confederate cavalry manual. Among the first to recognize that the day of the mounted charge was over, he advised troopers to ride to battle but fight on foot. That was a lesson many officers had still not learned 50 years later.



Throughout the long summer of 1863, Bragg pulled back before the weight of the Union army. Wheeler watched one flank, Forrest the other. Unable to keep Union raiders at bay, Wheeler was criticized in the Southern press for the first time. The Confederate retreat stopped at Chickamauga Creek. There, on September 19, Bragg hit Rosecrans with everything he had. Wheeler's men drove the Union horsemen from the field, then joined Lt. Gen. James Longstreet as he hammered the Union infantry. By nightfall, a beaten Rosecrans was pulling back to Chattanooga.

Ten days after the battle, Wheeler hit the Union army from behind again. Crossing the Tennessee River, he burned two depots and 400 wagons before rain slowed his progress and the Federals caught up with him. He fought a running battle back to the Tennessee River, losing half of his cannons and a quarter of his men. The high cost of the raid made it his last under Bragg.



Wheeler wasted a month in Knoxville with Longstreet, then rejoined Bragg in Dalton after Bragg's whipping at Chatta-nooga at the hands of the new Union commander in the West, Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant. During the winter, both armies got new leaders. Bragg was replaced by General Joseph Eggleston Johnston. Grant moved east, and Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman stepped into his old command.

On May 7, 1864, Sherman moved forward, starting the Confederates on a two-month-long retreat. Each time they made a stand, the Union troops slipped around a flank and it all started again. Wheeler did some of his best work during that period. Time after time his scouting and screening warned Johnston of Union moves before they could spring the trap on him. In spite of that, Wheeler felt the wrath of the Southern press once more. They did not want retreats, no matter how well handled. They wanted victories. And they wanted Wheeler raiding in the Union army's rear, not reconnoitering.

The Confederate government, like the press, wanted more action. As the Union army crossed the Chattahoochee River, word came from Richmond that Johnston was being relieved of his command. John Bell Hood, promoted to the temporary rank of general, took his place.


"General Hood. We have just completed the killing, capturing, and breaking up the entire raiding party under General McCook--some nine hunderd and fifty prisoners--two pieces of Artillery, and twelve hundred horses and equipments captured."
General Joseph Wheeler CSA

"I can hardly believe it...," a stunned Sherman wired General Halleck. "McCook had 3,000 picked cavalry..."
Gen. William T. Sherman

Hood's mandate was to attack. Wheeler's cavalry and one corps of infantry guarded the right, while the rest of the army hit the left at Peachtree Creek on July 20. When that produced no gain, Hood tried the other side of the Union line on the 22nd, again without success. In support of the second attack, he sent Wheeler on a raid behind the Union forces. That, too, failed.

Going on the offensive, Sherman moved on Ezra Church, west of Atlanta, on July 27. At the same time, he sent two cavalry forces against the railroad at Jonesboro. Brigadier General Edward M. McCook, on the right, had 3,500 men, while Maj. Gen. George Stoneman, on the left, had 6,500. Stoneman also hoped to free Union soldiers in prisoner-of-war camps at Macon and Andersonville. He split his force, leading a third against the prison camps and sending the rest, under Brig. Gen. Kenner Garrard, to meet McCook. Wheeler, with less than 7,000 troopers, was ordered to stop them.

Wheeler hit Garrard first at Flat Shoals on July 28, turning him back 15 miles from his starting point. Wheeler then split his force, sending half of it after Stoneman. The rest of the troopers he led against McCook, whom he spotted at Lovejoy Station on July 30. Having already done considerable damage, McCook fled at Wheeler's approach. In a running battle, McCook lost about 500 men, his entire pack train and two guns.


General Joseph Wheeler & His daughter Annie Early Wheeler

Stoneman's column reached Macon on July 30, but the troopers were held on the outskirts of town by the Georgia Militia. Three of Wheeler's brigades, under Brig. Gen. Alfred Iverson, arrived the next day and cut Stoneman off at Sunshine Creek. Like McCook, Stoneman ran for it -- and like McCook, he did not make it. Stoneman made a stand with one brigade at Hillsboro, hoping to slow the Southern horsemen long enough for his other two brigades to get away. He was overrun, and instead of freeing the Union prisoners, he and 700 of his troopers joined them. One of Stoneman's other brigades was also caught and destroyed.

[SAMWolf]

Hood, full of praise for Wheeler, sent the cavalryman forth again in less than a week. At the same time, he sent Forrest in another direction. Hood was "hopeful that this combined movement would compel Sherman to retreat for want of supplies, and thus allow me an opportunity to fall upon his rear with our main body."


McKinley (left) and General Wheeler (right) inspect a military hospital on Montauk Point

In five days, Wheeler's men ripped up 30 miles of railroad track and burned a bridge on the Etowah River. They ordered Union troops in Dalton to surrender on August 14, but Colonel Bernard Laiboldt's men held off two assaults in two days. After that, Wheeler headed northeast, almost to Knoxville, burning a second bridge at Strawberry Plains. Then he crossed the Tennessee River and turned southwest.

Wheeler tore up more railroad tracks on the way to Tuscumbia, Ala. On his 28th birthday, he crossed back to the south side of the river, saying later that he "averaged 25 miles a day, swam or forded 27 rivers" and seized "1,000 horses and mules, 200 wagons, 600 prisoners and 1,700 head of beef cattle." Wheeler's cavalry force also "captured, killed or wounded three times the greatest effective strength it has ever been able to carry into action." He lost 150 men killed and wounded, along with a number of stragglers who were captured.


Teddy Roosevely with General Joseph Wheeler and Leonard Wood 1898

But all of Wheeler's efforts were not enough. Hood now learned the same lesson Sherman had: Cavalry raids alone could not compel an enemy to retreat. Worse, while Wheeler and Forrest were away, Hood was driven out of Atlanta on September 1. When Hood marched north, Wheeler was left behind, becoming the only major force opposing Sherman in his March to the Sea. For the most part, he was not strong enough even to make Sherman pay attention to him.

But "Fightin' Joe" Wheeler's men continued to fight -- first under Maj. Gen. Wade Hampton, then under Joe Johnston -- holding off the Federals as best they could until they heard of Lee's surrender on April 9, 1865. Wheeler fled for Texas, hoping to keep up the fight from there. It was not to be. His party was caught just east of Atlanta.


Major George Dann, Major Brodie, General Joseph Wheeler, Chaplain Brown, Colonel Leonard Wood, and Lieutenant Colonel Theodore Roosevelt, June 1898. This photo was taken at the American embarkation camp at Tampa, Florida, just before the voyage to Santiago de Cuba (Photo by U.S. Army Signal Corps; print acquired by Philip S. Hench).

Wheeler spent two months in prison. After his parole, he married a woman he had met during the war. They moved to Loui-siana and opened a hardware store. Four years later, he sold the store and bought a farm in Alabama, near his wife's family. He then passed the bar and set up a law practice. In 1880 Wheeler ran for a seat in the House of Representatives and lost, but he won in 1883, serving for the next 16 years. The Army remained his first love, and he kept up with it through an appointment to the House Military Affairs Committee.

When war with Spain came in 1898, President William McKinley commissioned a number of ex-Confederates, Wheeler among them. Now a major general of U.S. Volunteers, Wheeler commanded the Cavalry Division in the invasion of Cuba. Malaria compelled Wheeler to relinquish command of the division to brevet Brig. Gen. Samuel S. Sumner before the assaults up San Juan Hill and Kettle Hill on July 1, but Wheeler managed to rise from his sick-bed in time to participate in the battle. At the sight of blue-coated Spaniards retreating, he reportedly yelled: "Hurrah! We've got the damn Yankees on the run!"



After the war, he lost a bid to regain his old House seat and returned to the Army with a regular commission as a brigadier general. After commanding a brigade in the Philippines between August 1899 and January 1900, followed by a brief command of the Department of the Lakes, he retired on September 10, 1900, and spent his last years traveling around the country. The former scourge of the Yankees died in Brooklyn, N.Y., on January 25, 1906.

Additional Sources:

sherpaguides.com/georgia
www.cs.amedd.army.mil
freepages.books.rootsweb.com
www.rootsweb.com
www.cr.nps.gov
www.med.virginia.edu
www.cubaheritage.com
www.generalsandbrevets.com
www.webbgarrison.com
www.battleofbrownsmill.org

[SAMWolf]

General Joseph "Fightin Joe" Wheeler

General Joseph Wheeler was the only one of 425 Confederate general officers to attain the same rank later in the United States Army. Three decades after he commanded Confederate cavalry forces, he volunteered at the outbreak of the Spanish-American War and was commissioned a Major General of Volunteers in Cuba. He later became a Brigadier General of the Regular Army in the Philippines.



Fresh from the West Point class of 1858, with strong personal convictions and unshakable courage, he fought for his native Georgia at the outbreak of the Civil War and won fame as a cavalryman. During the Civil War he was in more than 500 skirmishes; commanded in 127 full-scale battles; had 18 horses shot from under him; and lost 36 staff officers from his side.

"Fighting Joe" moved to Alabama in 1869, practiced law, and operated his plantation in Lawrence County. He was elected to Congress in 1884 and to successive terms until 1898, when he again entered military service. It was his intense desire to show that Southerners could be counted on as citizens of the United States that prompted him to volunteer, at 62, for service in the Spanish-American War.



During one of the engagements of the Spanish-American War, General Wheeler started on the two-mile journey to the front in an ambulance (he was suffering from yellow fever). About halfway to the front, he met some litters bearing wounded. The veteran General against the protest of the surgeons, immediately ordered his horse, and after personally assisting the wounded into the ambulance, mounted and rode onward. The men burst into frantic cheers, which followed the General all along the line.



James Lindsay Gordon in the New York Tribune wrote the following poem to mark the moment:

General Wheeler at Santigo

Into the thick of the fight he went, pallid and sick and wan,
Borne in an ambulance to the front, a ghostly wisp of a man;
But the fighting soul of a fighting man, approved in the long ago,
Went to the front in that ambulance and the body of Fighting Joe.

Out from the front they were coming back, smitten of Spanish shells
Wounded boys from the Vermont hills and the Alabama dells;
"Put them into this ambulance; I’ll ride to the front," he said:
And he climbed to the saddle and rode right on, that little old ex-Confed

From end to end of the long blue ranks rose up the ringing cheers,
And many a powder-blackened face furrowed with sodden tears,
As with flashing eyes and gleaming sword, and hair and beard of snow,
Into the hell of shot and shell road little old Fighting Joe!

Sick with fever and racked with pain, he could not stay away,
For he heard the song of the yester-years in the deep-mouthed cannon’s bay
He heard in the calling song of the guns there was work for him to do,
Where his country’s best blood splashed and flowed ‘round the old Red, White and Blue.

Fevered body and hero heart! This Union’s heart to you
Beats cut in love and reverence --- and to each dear boy in blue
Who stood or fell mid the shot and shell, and cheered in the face of the foe,
As, wan and white, to the heart of the fight rode little old Fighting Joe!

General Joseph Wheeler died in 1906 and is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

[SAMWolf]

Veterans for Constitution Restoration is a non-profit, non-partisan educational and grassroots activist organization. The primary area of concern to all VetsCoR members is that our national and local educational systems fall short in teaching students and all American citizens the history and underlying principles on which our Constitutional republic-based system of self-government was founded. VetsCoR members are also very concerned that the Federal government long ago over-stepped its limited authority as clearly specified in the United States Constitution, as well as the Founding Fathers' supporting letters, essays, and other public documents.

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Actively seeking volunteers to provide this valuable service to Veterans and their families.

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We here at Blue Stars For A Safe Return are working hard to honor all of our military, past and present, and their families. Inlcuding the veterans, and POW/MIA's. I feel that not enough is done to recognize the past efforts of the veterans, and remember those who have never been found.

I realized that our Veterans have no "official" seal, so we created one as part of that recognition. To see what it looks like and the Star that we have dedicated to you, the Veteran, please check out our site.

Veterans Wall of Honor

Blue Stars for a Safe Return

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UPDATED THROUGH APRIL 2004



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[snippy_about_it]

"FALL IN" to the FReeper Foxhole!



Good Thursday Morning Everyone.

If you want to be added to our ping list, let us know.

[Aeronaut]

Good morning Snippy.

[SAMWolf]

Morning Aeronaut.

[Aeronaut]

Hey Sam.

[Iris7]

Looks like General Wheeler went to the Spanish-American War when he was 62 years of age. If he could do it I can.

Figure I probably could do it when a lot older than 62, since I for sure am a lot meaner old galoot!!!!!!!

Fitness program making a little headway. It is wonderful.

Roy Rogers: "Let me handle that for you, Gabby, I am a lot younger than you are."

Gabby Hayes: "You are, are you? Well, you'll have to prove it!!"

[E.G.C.]

Good morning, Snippy and everyone at the foxhole.

[The Mayor]

June 30, 2005

Instinctively Wrong

Read:
Jude 1:18-20

You, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God. —Jude 1:20

Bible In One Year: Amos 7-9

Saul Gellerman, in his book How People Work, says, "Solving tough organizational problems may require counter-intuitive strategies." In business, counter-intuitive is a fancy way of referring to ideas that go against common sense.

Consultants who advocate such thinking are simply reinforcing the advice of Jesus. Over and over, He urged His followers to do what God said was right, not what desire, instinct, and intuition told them to do.

Desire says, "I want it." Jesus said, "It is more blessed to give than to receive" (Acts 20:35).

Instinct says, "Me first." Jesus said, "The last will be first, and the first last" (Matthew 20:16).

Intuition says, "I'll feel better if I get revenge." Jesus said, "Do good to those who hate you" (Luke 6:27).

Wanting something doesn't make it good. Achieving something doesn't make it valuable. And having strong feelings about something doesn't make it right. As Jude wrote, those who follow their own desires and instincts lead others into conflict and division (1:18-19).

The alternative is to be spiritual, which means doing what does not come naturally. In fact, it requires supernatural strength that only God can give. —Julie Ackerman Link

More about Jesus would I know,
More of His grace to others show,
More of His saving fullness see,
More of His love who died for me. —Hewitt

You can trust your instincts when you are trusting Christ.

FOR FURTHER STUDY
10 Reasons To Believe Real Christians Can Look Like They're Not

[Neil E. Wright]

Greetings youngsters .... just stopped by to wish you both, and everyone in the foxhole, an enjoyable and SAFE 4th of July weekend!!! I'll be out of town and off the 'puter till the 5th, so I'm gonna have a lot of catching up to do when I get home .... :)

MEMO to the NAVY: If the government can recall Gen. Wheeler at age 62 .... then you can recall ME in the current war!!!

±

"The Era of Osama lasted about an hour, from the time the first plane hit the tower to the moment the General Militia of Flight 93 reported for duty."
Toward FREEDOM

[SAMWolf]

Morning Iris7.

Fitness program making a little headway

I think I'm way beyond any help. :-(

[SAMWolf]

Morning E.G.C.

Looks like it's gonna a be a good day weather wise. :-)

[SAMWolf]

Morning Mayor.

[SAMWolf]

Morning Neil.

Enjoy your 4th and stay safe.

[GailA]

Good morning ALL, another hot, humid, hazy day in Memphis.

[E.G.C.]

Good morning folks.

Gonna be a hot day today. Forecast high 101.

One day away from the pacemaker replacement procedure for my Dad. Getting ready for it.

How's it going, Snippy?

[PzLdr]

The reputation of Wheeler's cavalry suffered after Atlanta, in large part to depredations they committed against Georgia civilians when they, in theory, tried to impede Sherman's March to the Sea.

Wheeler almost caught Judson "Kill Cavalry" Kilpatrick in flagrente delecto with a Southern lady not his wife, resulting in Kilpatrick fleeing the scene at a gallop, in his underwear.Like most Cavalrymen in the West [with the exception of Forrest, Wilson, and Grierson's Raid], Wheeler had no substantial strategic impact on the war.And except for Holly Springs, the long distance raid proved to be of ephemeral, and negligible military value.

[alfa6]

Thursday Bump for the Freeper Foxhole. Just had a brief thundershower move through the Kansas City area.

Hope to get the slide assembled and installed today if I can round up some extra muscle help.

A Thursday funnie pic since I did not have any on topic pics.

Regards

alfa6 ;>}