The leading advocate of the prohibitionist movement in the late 1800s and early 1900s, he played a major role in the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which outlawed the manufacture, distribution, and sale of alcoholic beverages.

Wheeler graduated from high school in Sharon, Pennsylvania, received his teaching qualification, and taught for two years before becoming a student at Oberlin College.

In 1902, Wheeler became a leader of the Anti-Saloon League, and perfected a system of single issue pressure politics, including media campaigns and public demonstrations, to win enactment of laws limiting or banning the sale and consumption of alcohol.

As enforcement of Prohibition became increasingly difficult, federal agencies resorted to draconian measures including poisoning alcohol to try to dissuade people from consuming it.

[10] Herrick was a Republican and a conservative and supported a local option bill backed by the ASL but had agreed to some modifications to ensure passage.

[10] For his willingness to compromise, the ASL decreed that Herrick was not sufficiently in favor of prohibition and backed his opponent, the Democrat John M. Pattison, a temperance advocate.

Unlike Francis Willards's Women's Christian Temperance Union, which dealt with many humanitarian issues, Wheeler felt that the only way to challenge the political influence of the beer, wine, and liquor makers successfully was to focus on achieving national prohibition by any means necessary.

Unlike other temperance groups, the ASL recognized the supremacy of the two-party system and worked with Democrats and Republicans, rather than the small ineffective Prohibition Party.

[10] Its influence was felt on issues related to the sale and consumption of alcohol, including Congress's override of President William Howard Taft's veto of the Webb-Kenyon Act.

[10] Congress disagreed, and the override votes in the US Senate and the US House of Representatives were completely unexpected and gave tangible proof of how powerful the ASL and other prohibitionists had become.

[10] As the prohibition movement's power continued to grow, Wheeler adroitly expanded the influence of the ASL through timely alliances with the advocates of other causes.

[10] In addition, Wheeler's influence extended to the Bureau of Prohibition, which gave him control of a patronage operation that hired the enforcement officers responsible for identifying and apprehending illicit alcohol makers, distributors and sellers.

[10] Wheeler's wife was burned to death on August 14, 1927, in a cooking accident at the couple's house in Little Point Sable, Michigan, and her father suffered a fatal heart attack after trying to come to her aid.

[17] Wheeler is not widely known today, but historians familiar with the Prohibition era regard him as playing an important role in the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment.