A Guest of Mr. Lincoln: The Wartime Service of Sergeant Joseph W. Wheeless, Co. K, 32nd NC Infantry Regiment, Confederate States Army

By Col. Jayson A. Altieri US Army Ret.

A Guest of Mr. Lincoln: The Wartime Service of Sergeant Joseph W. Wheeless, Company K, 32nd NC Infantry Regiment, Confederate States Army is a must-read story of four years of America’s colorful history. It is also the story of how the Wheeless family came from England to America in the late 1600’s and spread out across the new Republic to participate in its growth from infancy during the American Revolution to the Internet Age and beyond. This book is a story about the legacy of the Wheeless family and how Joseph survived four years of the bloodiest war ever fought in North America. The book also provides snapshots of Joseph’s life and experiences before, during, and after the war, most based on available documents, letters, and newspapers of the day, and some based on suppositions. This book is not a political statement about the war or its aftermath; it simply adds another chapter to the story of the Wheeless’ long history that helps educate current and future generations.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Feb 20, 2024
• ISBN: 9781663239808

Col. Jayson A. Altieri US Army Ret.

Colonel (Retired) Jayson A. Altieri, US Army, served for 33 years before retiring as the Chief of Staff of the Army’s Chair, National War College, Washington, D.C. Colonel Altieri an award-winning author to several aerospace and military history publications. An active member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, a 501 (c) (3) tax-exempt corporation recognized by the United States government, Jayson regularly gives lectures on the life of Confederate soldiers during the Civil War. 06/20/2022 Jayson A. Altieri, Colonel (Retired), U.S. Army, served for thirty-three years before retiring from the National War College, Washington, D.C. Colonel Altieri, a graduate of Norwich University and Army War College, is an award-winning author of several aerospace and military history publications. An active member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, a federally recognized 501 (c) (3) tax-exempt corporation, he regularly gives lectures on the life of Confederate soldiers during the Civil War.

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Copyright © 2024 COL Jayson A. Altieri, US Army, Ret.

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Opinions, conclusions, and recommendations expressed or implied within are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of Air University, the United States Air Force, the Department of Defense, or any other US Government agency.

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ISBN: 978-1-6632-3981-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6632-3982-2 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-6632-3980-8 (e)

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iUniverse rev. date: 04/04/2024

CONTENTS

Foreword

Chronology

Preface

Chapter 1   The Wheeless Family of North Carolina

Chapter 2   Seeing the Elephant—After Fort Sumter

Chapter 3   Malvern Hill and Home—Spring of 1862

Chapter 4   Gettysburg Campaign—Winter of 1862–1863

Chapter 5   The Mule Shoe—The End of 1863

Chapter 6   A Guest of Mr. Lincoln—The Summer of 1864

Chapter 7   Petersburg—Winter of 1865

Chapter 8   The Death of Dixie—The Final Days

Chapter 9   A New Life—The Final Curtain

Afterword

Bibliography

Endnotes

FOREWORD

by W. Jay Wheless, Manteo, North Carolina

A Guest of Mr. Lincoln: The Wartime Service of Sergeant Joseph W. Wheeless, Company K, Thirty-Second NC Infantry Regiment, Confederate States Army is the insightful story of four years of America’s colorful history. It is also the story of how the Wheeless family came from England to America in the late 1600s and spread out across the new Republic to participate in its growth from its infancy during the American Revolution to the Internet Age and beyond. This book is the story about the legacy of the Wheeless family and how my great-great-grandfather survived four years of the bloodiest war ever fought in North America. The book also provides snapshots of Joseph’s life and experiences before, during, and after the war, some based on facts, some based on suppositions.

Jayson has taken the time to carefully lay out Joseph’s story from his birth and early years on a modest antebellum plantation in Nash County, North Carolina, to his enlistment in the newly formed Confederate States Army; participation in some of the most significant battles of the Civil War such as Malvern Hill, Gettysburg, the Wilderness campaign, and the siege of Petersburg; witnessing Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Court House; and the rebuilding of the nineteenth century postwar South. Along the way, Jayson provides details of Joseph’s day-to-day life during the war—the clothes he wore, the food he ate, the places he saw, and the men he served with in battle.

This book is not a political statement about the war or its aftermath; it simply adds another chapter to the story of my family’s long history, which includes the change of our surname’s spelling, which will be helpful to educate my children and future decedents. Our family is grateful for Jayson’s dedication seeing this project through to completion. The hours he spent on the road, walking battlefields, photographing locations, and researching historical documents to capture Joseph’s life before, during, and after the war resulted in a book I enjoyed reading, and I trust you will as well.

CHRONOLOGY

10,000 BC—Paleo-Indians migrate to the mid-Atlantic North America region

8,000 BC—Ancestors of the Cherokee and Tuscarora peoples inhabit the region

1524—First Europeans arrive in the region

1565—Dominick Wheeler born in Salisbury, England

1587—Sir Walter Raleigh establishes first English settlement in the region, later known as the Lost Colony

1629—King Charles I of England authorizes a land grant for the region

1633—John and Agnes Ann Wheeler arrive in the Massachusetts Colony

1655—Permanent settlements established in what will become known as the Carolina Colony

1700—Joseph Hyatt Wheeless settles in Surry County, Colony of Virginia

1704—Earliest known record of Joseph Wheeless in the Carolina Colony

1715—Benjamin Wheeless born

1729—Colony of North Carolina established

1754–1763—French and Indian War and 1763 Proclamation limiting English settlements west of the Alleghany Mountains

1775–1783—American Revolutionary War

1781—Benjamin held as a prisoner of war aboard the British prison ship HMS Torbay in Charles Town, South Carolina

1782—US Congress issued a Bounty Land Grant for his service during the American Revolution

1739—Benjamin Wheeless Jr. born

1769—William Wheeless born

1792—North Carolina state capital moved from New Bern to Raleigh

1799—Benjamin Wheeless born

1830—Joseph White Wheeless born in Nash County, North Carolina

1861–1865 American Civil War

1862—Joseph served at the Battle of Dam No. 1, Virginia, and wounded at the Battle of Malvern Hill, Virginia

1863—Joseph transferred to the Confederate Ambulance Corps and Battle of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania

1864—Joseph captured at the Battle of Spotsylvania Courthouse, Virginia, and held as a prisoner of war at Point Lookout, Maryland

1865—Joseph exchanged; served at the Siege of Petersburg, Virginia, and Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Court House, Virginia; marries Zenobia Williams and runs the Wheeless family farm

1865–1877—Reconstruction Era

1880—Joseph opens a general store near Castalia, North Carolina

1884—Joseph’s store closes due to the 1882 stock market crash

1892—Joseph serves as the Nash County Farmers Sub-Alliance secretary

1911—Joseph White Wheeless dies and is buried at the Wheeless family cemetery near Castalia

Map-.jpg

Map courtesy of Isabella G. Altieri

PREFACE

T he American Civil War was perhaps the greatest prolonged mass tragedy in the Republic’s history. It was a war that not only settled the fundamental human rights issue of the modern age once and for all, but a conflict that still resonates with Americans more than 155 years after the war’s last shots were fired between the Second US Texas Cavalry and Second Texas Confederate Cavalry Regiments at the May 12, 1865, Battle of Palmito Ranch, Texas. While the Civil War at its conclusion cost nearly one million human casualties and $1 billion financially, these numbers fail to portray the individual human cost of the war.

This latter fact is important to remember when discussing the causes and impact of the war on American society. The war had its share of heroes, bystanders, and villains on both sides. People on both sides believed that God was on their side and the cause they fought for was just. This moral clarity is a common theme of most civil wars and why wars fought between peoples who share the same culture, language, and history, but with different dreams, are usually the most violent—like the Russian and Chinese civil wars of the twentieth century.

This book, inspired by a request from my family, presents a compendium of facts about the Civil War as it pertains to the life of one thirty-one-year-old former schoolteacher from Nash County, North Carolina—Sergeant Joseph W. Wheeless, Confederate States Army. There were literally hundreds of facts related to Joseph’s military service from 1861 to 1865, and I was faced constantly with the decision of what was important and what could be eliminated. Certain events and facts are well known to the reader, like the battles of Gettysburg and Appomattox, while others, like the history of the Confederate Ambulance Corps and life in a Federal prisoner of war camp, may be quartering new ground for those same readers. To facilitate a better understanding of the events of the Civil War had on Joseph, each chapter walks the reader from the national events of the day down to life in rural North Carolina—or, in the case of a specific battle, from the strategic to the tactical. In the end, it is the wish of this author that the remarkable story of Joseph Wheeless not be lost in the mists of time.

This book would not have been possible without the encouragement of my wife, Shelle Wheless Altieri, and her family, whose love and passion for their forebear’s remarkable history mirrors my own. Naturally, I must recognize Shelle’s research, sacrificing her time and many important personal tasks while the work on this book was in progress. I am also grateful to Stacey Donald Hall, Shelle’s stepfather and Korean War veteran, who took the time to share his experiences growing up in rural central North Carolina and serving as a living historian to nineteenth and early twentieth-century farm life in the South. Credit is also due to Lieutenant Colonels James Jim Diehl, United States Marine Corps retired, and Todd Shugart, United State Air Force retired, both true scholars and warriors, who provided much needed feedback and motivation to complete this book. I also need to thank the US Army Education and Heritage Center, Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania; US National Park Service; Commonwealth of Maryland Park Service; Georgia Department of Natural Resources; Commonwealth of Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation; and the Old Court House Museum, Vicksburg, Mississippi, docents, employees, and volunteers who graciously allowed me access to archives, buildings, documents, maps, property, and records related to the Federal and Confederate armies and their battles. Finally, I also wish to thank my fellow members of the Prattville Dragoons, Sons of Confederate Veterans, Camp 1524, for their encouragement and opportunity to present my research at their monthly meetings. Finally, thank you, dear reader, for your willingness to increase your knowledge of an important period in our Republic’s history.

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CHAPTER 1

THE WHEELESS FAMILY OF NORTH CAROLINA

The Colony of North Carolina

T he land Joseph Wheeless knew as North Carolina extends from the eastern edges of the Mississippi River basin to the barrier islands of the Outer Banks. The highest point of the state is today known as Mount Mitchell, and the highest point in the eastern United States. From these peaks in the Appalachian Mountains, the state is just under 500 miles east to the Atlantic Ocean coastline, by which the powerful Gulf of Mexico passes on its journey north. Thousands of years before the Wheeless ancestors set foot on this Carolina soil, another people inhabited what would become the state of North Carolina. The people who originally inhabited the land, termed Indians by Christopher Columbus, were, in fact, the first Carolinians. ¹ Most of these Indian peoples migrated from the western part of the North American continent, bringing with them agricultural and some early metal working techniques that allowed them to take advantage of the land’s natural resources. ²

The two major tribes that inhabited the state before the arrival of Europeans and Africans were the Cherokee and Tuscarora peoples. Modern archeologists believe their ancestors, known today as Paleo-Indians, migrated to the area 10,000 years earlier.³ The land they encountered was very different from today, as glacial ice still overlaid most of the region, making the ground cold and wet.⁴ The migration did not happen by accident, as these people followed the migration of large animal herds, like bison.⁵ As the Ice Age entered its last stages 8,000 years ago, these peoples began to cultivate and hunt on the land, and these tribes began to settle down in the region. The cultivation of crops like corn, beans, and squash, requiring constant care, would both be a precursor of modern farming and provide an opportunity for future migrations.

The arrival of the first Europeans to the area now known as Cape Fear occurred in 1524, when the 100-ton French ship, La Dauphine, with a crew of fifty, including Italian navigator Giovanni da Verrazano, arrived as part of an expedition to find a sea route to China.⁶ Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto followed in 1540, to be followed by later English expeditions, financed by Sir Walter Raleigh, in 1584.⁷ Eventually, Raleigh’s expeditions would establish a colony in 1587 on what would become Roanoke Island. This colony would famously disappear but would earn itself a place in North Carolina history as the Lost Colony. Following the failure of the Raleigh colony, it would not be until 1655 that a permanent European settlement would be established in the area.⁸ The area would eventually be named Carolina, taken from the Latin word for Charles (Carolus), honoring King Charles I of England (who made the original land grant in 1629). The land would become North Carolina in 1729, when the Carolina colony was divided in two between North and South Carolina.

By the early 1700s, North Carolina had become a prosperous colony, especially in the trading of naval stores of pitch, tar, turpentine, and wood for Royal Navy vessels, some of which were used to keep pirates, including Blackbeard, at bay.⁹ The new colony was both profitable and a destination for settlers from across Europe, including the English; German Palatinates; Scottish, Swiss, and Welsh colonists resettling from Virginia and Pennsylvania; and slaves from Africa.¹⁰ By the mid-1700s, while North Carolina was a profitable and stable colony, the French and Indian War (1754–1763) and the impact of the 1763 Proclamation limiting British settlements west of the Alleghenies and the Revenue Acts of 1764, 1765, and 1767 on sugar, stamps, teas, and other goods, created dissent among many colonists.

This dissent resulted first in the establishment of the First Continental Congress in 1774 to address these issues with the British government. Finally, when no resolutions were forthcoming from the Crown, the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783) began, and a little over one year after the first shots fired, the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776. Although North Carolina had sent delegates to the Continental Congress, many in the state were Loyalists (or Tories), who opposed independence. Those opposed to royal sovereignty over the colony were first known as Regulators and later as Whigs. They suffered an early series of defeats against Loyalist forces, starting with the 1771 Battle of Alamance. Eventually, in 1781, Continental Army General Nathanial Greene drove out the British army under General Lord Cornwallis at the Battle of Guilford Court House. By the end of 1781, North Carolina, along with the twelve other colonies that signed the Articles of Confederation, formed the newly recognized United States of America.

From Cornwall to the Carolinas

The story of the Wheeless family’s journey to North Carolina mirrors the arrival of European colonists to North America. The surname Wheeless can trace its history to the many generations and branches of the Wheeler family, who can all place the origins of their surname with the ancient Anglo-Saxon culture. Their name suggests that an early member worked as a wheelwright. In medieval times, wheels were wooden and quite fragile, requiring much maintenance. Thus, there was a high demand for both wheels and skilled people to make and repair them. The Wheeler name, of which there are many spelling variations—including Weel, Wheele, Wheeler, Wheale, and Wheless, among others—derives from either the name Le Whele (the Norman name for an old Roman Road in the north of England) or the original bearer’s residence, in Wales.¹¹ The family heraldry or coat-of-arms would include a wheel or wagon wheel, sometimes with decorative spokes, often as an image of transport.¹²

Current research by the Wheeless family has traced their lineage as far back as June 3, 1565, with the birth of Dominick Wheeler to Francys and Margerye Wheeler in Salisbury, England. The first known descendants to immigrate to the Americas were John and Agnes Ann Wheeler, who arrived in Massachusetts in 1633 on the ship Mary and John. It is thought that John and his wife came to the New World as part of the Puritan migration to settle in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. One of their descendants, Joseph Hyatt Wheeless (at some point, around 1700, the family name changed) was part of the great migration south to the Southern colonies and settled near the Jamestown Colony settlement in Surry County, a colony of Virginia, in 1700.

The earliest records of the Wheeless family in North Carolina date from 1704, based on a 1981 letter from Doctor William M. Mann Jr., to Mrs. Zenobia Wheeless Means, both of whom were descendants of Joseph Wheeless. Joseph Wheeless lived in King William County, Virginia, in 1704 and owned land there. He was either the father or grandfather of Benjamin Wheeless, who married a woman named Elizabeth and came to Edgecombe County, North Carolina (that part which became Nash County), where they lived near a crossroads called Taylor’s Store, sometime in 1746.¹³

Benjamin, born in 1715 in Virginia, may have had a brother also named Joseph, who settled in Halifax County, North Carolina.¹⁴ It also appears that Benjamin was an exceptionally sharp businessman who had land dealings in Surry County, Virginia, through Halifax, Edgecombe, and Nash counties in eastern North Carolina, and out to Surry County in western North Carolina, at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains.¹⁵ One of Benjamin’s real estate transactions, dated April 1, 1762, and listed in the 1759 to 1772 Edgecombe County deed, reads,

Bought for 50 Pounds Virginia money 412 acres lying on both side of Swift Creek, adjoining J.P. Shelly land on one side and his own land on the other. It was part of a former grant from Thomas Hill.¹⁶

During Benjamin’s time living in Surry County, he possibly lived as a neighbor of the Daniel Boone family and may have known Daniel quite well, as they both served and fought in the American Revolution.¹⁷ Benjamin’s military service during the American Revolution would include being captured by British forces and held aboard the prison ship HMS Torbay in Charles Town (today Charleston) Harbor, South Carolina, in 1781.¹⁸ A year later, as a result of his seven years of service during the war, Benjamin was granted a US Government Bounty Land Grant of 400 acres in Surry County, North Carolina, on the southside of the Yadkin River, in what would later become known as Yadkin County.¹⁹

Benjamin sired six sons and reared five of them to manhood, leaving each 200 acres of land upon his death in 1790, the same year his wife, Elizabeth, passed away.²⁰ One of his six sons, also named Benjamin Wheeless Jr., born October 11, 1739, would marry his wife, Mildred, and raise at least three children, one named William Boyd Wheeless, born sometime in 1769. William, as was the tradition of the period, also inherited 250 acres from his father.²¹ By the end of his life, he had amassed over 2,000 acres of land, encompassing property around which today sits the Wheeless family cemetery in Nash County, North Carolina. William and his wife, Morning Whitfield, would also raise six children (two who were twins). A son, Benjamin, was born in 1799. He, along with his wife, Martha Ann White, born 1803, would raise at least six children in Nash County.

Benjamin Wheeless’s children included Sarah, born in 1829; Joseph, born in 1830; Lucy, born in 1833; Elizabeth, born in 1835 (at age twenty-eight, married Moses Phillip Simpson in Madison, Mississippi, and died in 1873 after raising two children with Moses); Francis, born in 1838; Temperance, born in 1840; James H., born sometime in 1842 or 1843 and who would perish in 1862 during the Seven Days Campaign; and the youngest daughter, born in 1845. It was into this antebellum North Carolina state society that Joseph would spend his early years.

The State of North Carolina

The end of the American Revolution was a time of great change in the Tar Heel State. First, in 1792, the capital was moved from New Bern to Raleigh, farther up the Neuse River. Second, settlements in the western half of the state, known as the backcountry, began to emerge as part of the new nation’s western migration. Additionally, the Napoleonic War and War of 1812, along with industrialization (particularly the development of Eli Whitney’s cotton gin), increased the demand for North Carolina staples, such as corn, pork, flour, and naval stores, as well as the new cash crop—cotton.²² A traveler visiting North Carolina in the 1820s could not help but notice that the state’s main economic foundation was agricultural.²³ Plantations and slave quarters, frame houses and log dwellings, and gin mills and gristmills would have dotted the landscape. But the political and social order of the state was changing, a transformation famously noted by the French writer Alexis de Tocqueville in his 1835 book Democracy in America, and county boundaries as early as the American Revolution were beginning to reflect these changes.

Nash County, located on the border of the Coastal Plain and Piedmont regions of North Carolina, was formed in 1777 from Edgecombe County and named for Revolutionary War General Francis Nash, founder of the aforementioned Regulators; Nash died at the Battle of Germantown.²⁴ Early inhabitants of the area included the Tuscarora Indians, followed by English and Irish settlers. The county seat, Nashville, was named for the county and incorporated in 1815.²⁵ Nash County shares the towns of Rocky Mount, Whitakers, and Sharpsburg with adjacent counties; communities wholly within Nash County include Spring Hope, Bailey, Stanhope, Castalia, and Momeyer. The county’s notable physical features include the Tar River, White Oak Swamp, and Moccasin, Swift, and Deer Branch creeks. Nash County farmers produced agricultural commodities, such as tobacco, sweet potatoes, cucumbers, soybeans, corn, peanuts, cotton, beef and dairy cattle, and poultry.²⁶ The second textile mill in the state established in 1818, Rocky Mount Mills, operated until the end of the twentieth century. Minerals such as gold and iron were mined in the county.²⁷

A significant foundation to this economy included the slave population. Nash County, just prior to the Civil War, according to some estimates, was anywhere from 50 to 75 percent white and 25 to 50 percent black.²⁸ Even though 70 percent of North Carolina’s white population owned no slaves, many whites considered slaves both a subordinate race and an integral part of the state’s economic well-being. In a foreword by Rosser Howard Taylor in his book Slaveholding in North Carolina: An Economic View, Rosser writes,

From the economic standpoint, there was probably a greater variety of slaveholding interests in North Carolina than was to be found in any of the slaveholding states. The situation was unique in that both cotton