WHEELER, JOSEPH (1836-1906), American soldier, was born at Augusta, Ga., in 1836, and entered the U.S. cavalry from West Point in 1859. He resigned to enter the Confederate service. In a short time he became colonel of infantry and took part in the desultory operations of 1861 in Kentucky and Tennessee. He commanded a brigade at the battle of Shiloh, but soon afterwards he returned to the cavalry arm, in which he won a reputation second only to Stuart's. After the action of Perry ville he was promoted brigadier general, and in 1863 major general. Thenceforward throughout the campaigns of Chickamauga, Chat tanooga and Atlanta he commanded the cavalry of the Con federate army in the west, and when Hood embarked upon the Tennessee expedition, he left Wheeler's cavalry to harass Sher man's army during the "March to the Sea." In the closing
operations of the war, with the rank of lieutenant general, he com manded the cavalry of Joseph Johnston's weak army in North Carolina, and was included in its surrender.
At the outbreak of the Spanish-American War, in 1898, Presi dent McKinley commissioned Wheeler as major general of United States volunteers. He commanded the cavalry in the actions of Guasimas and San Juan, was afterwards sent to the Philippines in command of a brigade, and in 1900 was commissioned a brigadier general in the regular army. He died on Jan. 25, 1906. He wrote The Santiago Campaign' (1898).
See John Witherspoon Du Bose, General Joseph Wheeler and the Army of Tennessee (1912) ; W. C. Dodson, Campaigns of Wheeler and his Cavalry (1899), from material furnished by Wheeler.