Editing Joseph Wheeler (section)

==U.S. House of Representatives==
[[File:1730 New Hampshire Avenue NW.JPG|thumb|Wheeler's former residence in [[Washington, D.C.]]]]
After the war, Wheeler became a planter and a lawyer near [[Courtland, Alabama]], where he married and raised a family. His home, [[Joseph Wheeler Plantation|Pond Spring]], in an area now known as [[Wheeler, Alabama]], is a historical site owned by the [[Alabama Historical Commission]].

In 1880, Wheeler was elected from Alabama as a [[Democratic Party (United States)|Democrat]] to the [[United States House of Representatives]]. Wheeler's opponent, [[United States Greenback Party|Greenback]] incumbent [[William M. Lowe]], contested the election. After a contentious legal battle that lasted over a year, Lowe was declared the winner and assumed the seat on June 3, 1882. Lowe served only four months before dying of [[tuberculosis]]. Wheeler won a special election to return and serve the remaining weeks of the term.<ref name="F2hDy" />

Wheeler supported the election of [[Luke Pryor]] in 1882 and did not run for reelection, but was elected again in 1884 and re-elected to seven subsequent terms before resigning in 1900. While in Congress, Wheeler strove to heal the breach between the slave states and the United States and championed policies to help rebuild the southern U.S. economy. At the [[1884 Democratic National Convention]], Wheeler supported [[Grover Cleveland]] to be the Democratic Party's nominee for President of the United States.<ref>"Fightin' Joe" Wheeler by John Percy Dyer Louisiana State University Press, 1941 pg. 280</ref>

In foreign policy, Wheeler was outspokenly Anglophile; he sought a closer relationship between the United States and the [[British Empire]] and is regarded as one of the earliest advocates of what would later be called the "[[Special Relationship]]" between the [[United States of America]] and the [[United Kingdom]]. When he was asked during the [[1888 United States presidential election]] if he believed that President Grover Cleveland was "as pro-British as people say", Wheeler replied by saying, "No, but he ought to be." While in Washington DC between 1886 and 1887, he formed a friendship with [[Lionel Sackville-West, 2nd Baron Sackville]], the British ''Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the United States''. He described Sackville West as "an absolute gentleman" and "very forward" as well as "manful" and "impeccably honest." By contrast, he described French President [[Jules Grévy]] as "a dumb sumbitch" in a statement which he later refused to retract, despite pressure from allies in Washington DC to do so.<ref>Joseph Wheeler: "Fightin' Joe" Wheeler by John P. Dyer - Louisiana State University Press, 1941 - pg. 111, 119</ref>

In January 1890, when House Speaker [[Thomas Brackett Reed]] began the process of eliminating the [[disappearing quorum]] by calling the names of House members who refused to answer, Wheeler climbed onto one of the desks and then proceeded to leap from desk to desk in an attempt to reach the center and stop the Speaker.<ref>{{cite book |first=Evan |last=Thomas |title=The War Lovers: Roosevelt, Lodge, Hearst, and the Rush to Empire, 1898 |pages=114|date=2010 |publisher=Back Bay Books }}</ref>