Joseph Wheeler

Joseph "Fighting Joe" Wheeler (September 10, 1836 – January 25, 1906) was a military commander and politician of the Confederate States of America. He was a cavalry general in the Confederate States Army in the 1860s during the American Civil War, and then a general in the United States Army during both the Spanish-American and Philippine–American Wars near the turn of the twentieth century. For much of the Civil War, he was the senior cavalry general in the Army of Tennessee and fought in most of its battles in the Western Theater. Between the Civil War and the Spanish–American War, Wheeler served multiple terms as a U.S. Representative from the state of Alabama as a Democrat. Early life Although of old New England ancestry (descended from the English Puritans who came to New England during the Puritan migration to New England), Joseph Wheeler was born near Augusta, Georgia, and spent some of his early childhood growing up with relatives in Derby, Connecticut while also spending about half of each year in Georgia. Joseph Wheeler and Julia Knox Hull Wheeler were his parents. He was the grandson of Brigadier General William Hull, a veteran of the American Revolution. Despite his being partially brought up in the northern United States, and being appointed to the United States Military Academy at West Point from the state of New York, Wheeler always considered himself a Georgian and Southerner.