It was strange, most strange. He had not thought of his mother in a long time -years. Yet his awake dream was of his mother, her light blue eyes, soft hands, lavender scent and sad face. She'd been dead over twenty years. His short life of 28 years had been full of upheavals and travels. His mother was gone when he was six. He was sent to live with Aunts, Mary and Augusta Hull, in Connecticut, a thousand miles away from his Augusta, Georgia home and his father, older two sisters and brother, William. On his 18th birthday, September 10, 1854, he was in West Point, New York and had been a plebe at the U. S. Military Academy for three months. He'd been in New York City that spring. His uncle Sterling Smith, his mother's brother-in-law, had wanted him to enter business with him, but the undersized Georgia teenager had other ideas. Through his persistence, his family relented and he got a five-year appointment, just extended from a four-year program, to the United States Military Academy at West Point. A distant relative, Congressman John Wheeler of New York, secured his place. Brevet Colonel Robert E. Lee was in his first year as superintendent of the military academy in 1854 when Wheeler entered. West Point did become a home of sorts where the small cadet was known as polite, aloof and very serious. His sense of self would not allow him to be a little jester. He aspired to a dignified place in the scheme of things, short or not. That passage of training ended and he was posted to the strange barren scenery of New Mexico. There he was christened by fire as a professional soldier and officer. The Apaches were very effective teachers.
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.