General Joseph Wheeler From The Civil War To The Spanish American War

 

General Joseph Wheeler (Munsey's Magazine. 1898)

Joseph Wheeler’s infantrymen plunged into the slaughter at Shiloh in April 1862. Cannons boomed through the woods, musket fire ripped through the ranks, and the young colonel led the 19th Alabama into his first major battle. He’d started the war on foot, but he wouldn’t stay there.

Give Wheeler a horse, and things moved considerably faster.

He’d quit the U.S. Army in 1861 to join the Confederacy. By the end of 1862, he’d climbed to brigadier general and taken charge of cavalry, scouting ahead of Confederate columns and snapping at pursuing Union troops. “Fighting Joe” had found his work.

His riders struck wagon trains, tore up railroad tracks, and cut communications. While Confederate infantry trudged along muddy roads, Wheeler’s horsemen screened their movements and fought to keep Union cavalry away. When the army retreated, they stayed behind to buy it time.

But riding hard didn’t guarantee results. In 1864, Wheeler swept north to wreck William Tecumseh Sherman’s railroad supply line while Union forces pressed toward Atlanta. His men damaged tracks, but repair crews patched them up, and Sherman kept squeezing the city.

Wheeler couldn’t raid the Confederacy out of defeat. In 1865, the shooting stopped, and he eventually traded military orders for speeches in Congress.

Then, thirty-three years later, he put on U.S. Army blue.

At sixty-one, Wheeler volunteered to fight Spain. President William McKinley appointed him a major general of volunteers, and the former Confederate headed for Cuba commanding American cavalry—including regulars, Black Buffalo Soldiers, and Theodore Roosevelt’s Rough Riders.

On June 24, 1898, his columns pushed toward Las Guasimas. Buffalo Soldiers hacked through brush; Spanish riflemen opened fire. The Americans fought forward until the Spanish rear guard withdrew toward Santiago.

A week later, illness couldn’t keep Wheeler away from the fighting at San Juan Heights. He went forward as his cavalrymen, fighting on foot, joined the assault. Afterward, he helped negotiate Santiago’s surrender.

The young officer who’d fought to break the United States apart had returned as a gray-bearded general fighting under its flag. Different coat, different enemy—and Fighting Joe still wouldn’t sit out a battle.