CSA General Joseph Wheeler’s farewell address to his men

Via Carl

 Joseph Wheeler as a West Point Cadet

Headquarters Cavalry Corps, April 29, 1865

Gallant Comrades—

You have fought your last fight, your task is done. During a four years’ struggle for liberty you have exhibited courage, fortitude, devotion. You are the sole victors of more than two hundred sternly contested fields. You have participated in more than a thousand conflicts of arms. 

You are heroes, veterans, and patriots. The bones of your comrades mark battlefields upon the soil of Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, North and South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi. You have done all that human exertion could accomplish. 

In bidding you adieu I desire to tender thanks for your gallantry in battle, your fortitude under suffering, and your devotion at all times to the holy cause you have done so much to maintain. 

I desire also to express my gratitude for the kind feeling you have seen fit to extend toward myself, and to invoke upon you the blessing of our heavenly Father, to whom we must always look for support in the hour of distress. Brethren in the cause of freedom, comrades in arms, I bid you farewell,

Joseph Wheeler, Maj. Gen.
“W. E. Wails, Maj. and A.A.A.G.”