The Fighting Joe Wheeler Camp has individuals that serve as living historians who go into various grade, middle and high schools and share life as it was during the Civil War. We have visited dozens of schools and reached thousands of children in the Birmingham area. We also share reading lists and challenging essays with teachers to help them rethink and present differently the events of the period.

Each year we encourage schools to provide us with a calendar of open dates that we might assist them with our presentations. If you are involved in the educational sector and would like to invite us to present our program please contact our Commander, Steve Johnson on the Officers page of our site. We represent the Confederate soldiers during the Civil War period, giving a full southern perspective of life during those trying times.

About the Wheeler Camp 1372 Flag
The Fighting Joe Wheeler camp flag was adopted at the camp's June, 1996, meeting. Sewn by Angela Bowers, the flag was presented to the camp during its January 29, 1998, Lee-Jackson Dinner at Arlington. The flag is based on a description of one made in 1862 by the ladies of Mobile and presented to General Joseph Wheeler. As the exact details and dimensions of the original are unknown, the camp relied on the advice of Confederate flag authority Howard M. Madaus in determining the design. A description of the original flag follows:

Reprinted by the Selma Daily Reporter, December 13, 1862.

General Wheeler's Cavalry. -- We have before us a flag of a new and beautiful device, made by some ladies of Mobile for the battle flag of General Wheeler's cavalry, attached to the army of the Mississippi. It is cut in the shape of a swallow's tail, one-half blue, the other yellow, with a bar of white cutting it diagonally and displaying eleven blue stars. The whole is bound with red. The flag goes to Murfreesboro in a day or two in charge of one of General Wheeler's aids, and will soon be given to the "battle and the breeze" -- for it is a part of the daily business of Wheeler's cavalry to fight the enemy. Justice has not been done by the press to this gallant cavalry officer, and we feel in part guilty of the charge. We are promised the means of repairing the neglect in a few days, in some notes on his brilliant career, of a part of which we were witness. During the Kentucky expedition General Wheeler fought the enemy in thirty engagements. He hovered on the rear of the Confederate army, and never allowed the enemy to get within fifteen miles of it. Again and again did the marching columns of that army hear the boom of Wheeler's guns giving battle to the enemy in the rear, and effectual checking his advance. With Wheeler to cover the march the army journeyed as confidently secure as if it had been on parade. Mobile Advertiser