num_pages: 120
description: "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. Alabama honored its beloved fighting man by placing his bust in Statuary Hall, Washington, D.C. The nation honored him in 1937 by naming the dam across the Tennessee River at Muscle Shoals for "the South's fightingest general."
language: English
title: Joseph Wheeler: The Fearless Fightin' Joe
titlecomplete: Joseph Wheeler: The Fearless Fightin' Joe (Biography Series: Alabama Roots)
publisher: Seacoast Publishing