Fighting Joe

Major General Joseph Wheeler sitting aside his worn out mount, Jack, thought to himself about the words of a chaplain he'd heard conduct field services near Chickamauga, "We're all strangers in strange lands. Pilgrims looking for our real home."

"Amen," Wheeler said to himself.

Major General Joseph Wheeler, "Fightin' Joe", at twenty-eight years of age was the commander of the Army of Tennessee's cavalry and had been for over a year. In the moonlight darkness of October 8, 1863 on the riverbank, he sat erect in his saddle. His gaze was fixed on his dog-tired troopers fording the Tennessee River near Caladonia Plantation just northeast of Courtland, Alabama. It was nearly midnight and his 2,500 member command was well deserving of a few days of "rest and rearming." He thought. "Rest maybe, rearming doubtful."

A few days earlier, over a hundred and fifty miles to the northeast in Sequatchie Valley, Tennessee, Wheeler's cavalry had destroyed over 1,000 of General William S. Rosecran's Union supply wagons filled with needed supplies. The Union occupiers of Chattanooga faced starvation with this lifeline disrupted. The rich prize was seized just twenty miles from its destination of Chattanooga on the Anderson Turnpike at Walden's Ridge. The corridor of destruction created by Wheeler's raid of this vital supply wagon train, stretched over ten miles back towards Nashville. Saved from the torch and explosives were enough supplies to benefit his command for a month. Scores of the best mules and horses were spared. They became desperately needed fresh stock for the troopers and teamsters. General Braxton Bragg had sent Wheeler and his rough and ragged boys from every Confederate state and some undisclosed places to come around Rosecrans' rear and do as much mischief as they could stir up.