Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 1.djvu/762

710 itable energy, operating on all sides of Sherman ’s columns, he was enabled to keep the government and commanders of our troops advised of the enemy’s movements, and by preventing foraging parties from leaving the main body, he saved from spoliation all but a narrow tract of country, and from the torch millions worth of property which would otherwise have been certainly destroyed.&quot; In 1865 he stubbornly contested Sherman s advance through the Carolinas, receiving the thanks of the State of South Carolina; on March 10th, inflicted severe punishment upon Kilpatrick s command; fought with Hardee at Averysboro, and at Bentonville, under Lieut. -Gen. Wade Hampton, after a desperate struggle drove back Sherman s right wing which had seized Johnston s only line of retreat. He fought his last fight April 15th, and the 29th, after the surrender, issued his farewell address to the cavalry, summarizing their career and his own in the eloquent words: You are the sole victors of more than two hundred severely contested fields; you have participated in more than a thousand conflicts of arms; you are heroes, veterans, patriots; the bones of your comrades mark the battlefields upon the soil of Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi ; you have done all that human exertion could accomplish.&quot; During three years following the war General Wheeler was in the commission business at New Orleans, leaving there in 1869 for his plantation in Lawrence county, Alabama, where he entered the practice of law, declining, in 1866, the professorship of philosophy in the Louisiana State seminary. In 1880 he was elected the representative of his district to Congress, and has ever since been regularly re-elected by his people. In Congress he has be come one of the most distinguished members. Notable among his speeches in that body have been his defense of Fitz John Porter, his reply to Mr. Hepburn, of Iowa, and his arguments upon the force bill and the tariff.