Page:Men of Mark in America vol 2.djvu/467

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JOSEPH WHEELER
391

deprived of his seat June 3, 1882. He was at once reelected and completed the term. He was not a candidate for the forty-eighth but was elected to the forty-ninth and successive Congresses including the fifty-sixth, 1885-1900. He was given the second place on the committee on Military Affairs and on the committee on Expenditures in the War Department in the forty-ninth Congress; was made chairman of the committee on Expenditures in the Treasury Department and a member of the committee on Public Lands in the fiftieth Congress by Speaker Carlisle. He had a place on the committees on Merchant Marine and Fisheries in the fifty-first Congress and on Military Affairs in the fifty-first and fifty-second Congresses and on Columbian Exposition and Post Offices and Post Roads in the fifty-second Congress. He was also for five years a member of the committee on Ways and Means. Speaker Crisp made him chairman of the committee on Territories and a member of the committee on Military Affairs in the fifty-third Congress. During his service in the war with Spain he was excused from duty in the house but returned to his seat December 1898. He was the senior member on the Democratic side of the house and resigned his seat April 20, 1900.

On May 4, 1898, he was appointed major-general United States volunteers and was on duty with General Brooke at Chickamauga, May 11 and 12, 1898; was assigned to command the cavalry division United States army at Tampa, Florida, May 14, 1898; landed at Daiquiri, Cuba, June 22, 1898; planned and commanded the battle of Las Guasimas, Cuba, June 24, 1898; engaged in the battle of San Juan, July 1-2, 1898, where he was senior officer and commanded on the field and was commended in general orders of July 4, 1898, 5th army corps, for conduct in said battle. He was in command of the cavalry division, 5th corps in Cuba from June 22 to the surrender of Santiago, July 17, 1898, and was senior member of the commission which negotiated the surrender of the Spanish army, and the city of Santiago to the American army, July 17, 1898. He was in command of troops at Montauk Point, Long Island, August and September, 1898; commanded the 4th army corps at Huntsville, Alabama, October-December, 1898; commanded the 1st brigade, 2d division, 8th army corps at Luzon, Philippine Islands, August, 1899-January, 1900; commanded troops in engagements at Santa Rita, September 9 and 16, 1899; commanded the force which carried the enemies' intrenchments at Porac, September 28, was in immediate