The Mockingbird's Ballad

After a rambunctious campaign and election, the Democratic candidate was declared the winner by a margin of 43 votes out of a total of 24,773 votes cast. Ex-General Wheeler went to Washington and Congressman Lowe went to court. The court returned the seat to Lowe after the general had served ten months of the eleven-month session of congress. Tuberculosis struck down the newly declared Congressman and emerging progressive leader in October 1882. The general went to the huge Huntsville funeral. The next year he won the seat handily and would be so honored in the following eight Congressional elections.

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A second son, Thomas Harrison Wheeler, was born in March 1881. Cataba, Miss Daniella and the six children kept the home fires burning while the general was at the nation's capitol. They all met the Congressman at the new "Wheeler Station" on the Memphis and Charleston Railroad. The feisty new congressman took to the new field of national governance as the young cavalryman had - with zest, creativity and long hours. Among his enduring contribution to the nation was his vision of the significance of the Muscle Shoals region and of the Tennessee River and the whole valley drained by the Tennessee. Over the years he secured finances for improvements and publicity on the untapped potential of the shoals of the Tennessee. A progressive thinker and diligent toiler for his district and region, Congressman Wheeler extensively researched the background and necessity of the legislation he proposed. He worked diligently for a weather service for the gulf coast in order to help that region to better endure the faithful and destructive storm seasons. In the 1890's, he became chair of the most powerful Ways and Means Committee. In his subterranean office in the Capitol he became an expert on the nation's tax structure. The economic issues of the national life and the government's primary role - tariffs - were the responsibility of his committee. A low-tariff Democrat, his powerful Republican opponents sought high tariffs. The struggle was decades long and the Republicans held sway.

The increasingly wizened, pert but shy and austere representative of the people became one of the most informed and diligent members of Congress. Never a Beau Brummel in civilian attire, the "Honorable Member from Alabama" briskly navigated the Capitol with his big hat in hand or on his head, his lengthening and steadily whitening beard whisked back by his fast pace of walking, his arms filled with books, and his coat and vest pockets jammed with papers of state. "Fightin' Joe's" natural gate was "advance at a trot."

In world affairs, American trade and influence was pushing the nation toward the status of being a world leader. It was a troubling development for the revolutionary democracy - the first to successfully rebel against the British Empire. Would the United States become another powerful nation - an empire?