Why did Southerners, who were bitter after the Civil War, decide to join the U.S. Army during the Spanish-American War?


 Look no further than ‘Fighting Joe Wheeler’ - ex Confederate Cavalry General officer, wounded three times, with 16 horses shot from beneath him between 1861–1865, serving as a General of Volunteers in Cuba in 1898 at the tender age of 61. He commanded young Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders and even shouted to his command in the heat of the moment at the Battle of Las Guasimas (June 24, 1898):


"Let's go, boys! We've got the damn Yankees on the run again!”


He would later accept an appointment into the Regular Army as a Brigadier General, in 1900, 39 years after he had resigned his commission and served under Arthur MacArthur as a Brigade Commander in the Philippines.


He also attended the hundredth-anniversary celebration of the U.S. Military Academy (West Point, New York) in 1902, and met some of his former fellow Confederate officers, including James Longstreet and Edward Porter Alexander while wearing his dress uniform of general in the U.S. Army. Longstreet reportedly recognized him and said:


"Joe, I hope that Almighty God takes me before he does you, for I want to be within the gates of hell to hear Jubal Early cuss you in that blue uniform."


Wheeler passed away in 1906, at the age of 69. He is buried at Arlington National Cemetery, one of a unique few former Confederate officers there.

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