It had been a good fortnight for Wheeler's cavalry and Bragg's Army of Tennessee. The Confederate forces - infantry, artillery and cavalry - under General Braxton Bragg had stopped General William S. Rosecrans' Army of the Cumberland cold at Chickamauga Creek in north Georgia on September 21. The Union army was stymied in Chattanooga with a short supply of food and desperate need for the most necessary items - clothing, medicine and ammunition.
Now Wheeler's cavalry, three quarters of Bragg's horse soldiers, were retiring into north Alabama three days ahead of the pursuing U. S. Cavalry led by General George H. Crook. Once across the Tennessee River, they were in friendly territory. Crook wouldn't come after them without infantry support and Rosecrans had none to send. Wheeler's scouts had located a good site for the trooper's encampment. By daybreak, the recently victorious and successful cavalry of the Army of Tennessee would be in camp, their stock fed and in temporary corrals, the cook fires burning, arms stacked and their bodies and souls prostrate from fatigue.
The commanding general had sent his senior staff officer, Major A. S. Stevenson, to the owner of the land Wheeler had chosen for the cavalry's temporary camp. The crusty major, a career field officer with 17 years in uniform, felt old enough to be his young general's father.
"General Wheeler presents his compliments," Major Stevenson announced when presented to Colonel Richard Jones, the third largest landowner in all of Alabama. Jones' twenty-two-year-old widowed daughter - Daniella Jones Sherrod - was standing beside her father.
After the necessary pleasantries and after her father had welcomed the Confederate soldiers to his domain, she spoke up. "Major, is that General Wheeler, 'Fightin' Joe'?"
"Yes, Ma'am," Major Stevenson confirmed.
"I'd like to see him," Mrs. Sherrod responded.
"Well, madam," the Major said with a little smile, "You won't see much when you do."
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General Joseph Wheeler, West Point Class of '59, stood 5 foot 5 inches erect, which was his straight, natural posture. He weighed 120 pounds at his heaviest. He was certainly less than that after 2½ years of army vittles. He'd earned his nickname, "Fightin' Joe", while stationed in the New Mexico territory before the War Between the States. Assigned to the Mounted Rifles, US Army, at Fort Craig; he, a teamster, and a surgeon were assigned escort duty for a new mother and baby enroute from Hannibal, Missouri to Fort Craig. A small band of marauding Apaches attacked them in the slow army ambulance. The wagon train it was trailing had moved several miles ahead. Halting the ambulance, Wheeler ordered the driver to keep firing at the raiders. The new 2nd Lieutenant Wheeler, twenty-three years old, shot down one of the attackers and then on horseback charged the remaining half dozen, screaming a wild yell and blasting away with his Colt pistol. The surprised hostiles took flight. After the muleskinner and physician had told of the actions of Joseph Wheeler, he became "Fightin'Joe" and would be known by that nickname for the remainder of his life.