Henry Wager Halleck (January 16, 1815 – January 9, 1872) was a senior United States Army officer, scholar, and lawyer. A noted expert in military studies, he was known by a nickname that became derogatory: "Old Brains". He was an important participant in the admission of California as a state and became a successful lawyer and land developer. Halleck served as the General-in-Chief of the Armies of the United States from 1862 to 1864, and then became Chief of Staff for the remainder of the war when Ulysses S. Grant was appointed to that position.
Early in the American Civil War, Halleck was a senior Union Army commander in the Western Theater. He commanded operations in the West from 1861 until 1862, during which time, while the Union armies in the East were repeatedly defeated and held back, the troops under Halleck's command won many important victories. However, Halleck was not present at those battles, and his subordinates earned most of the recognition. The only operation in which Halleck exercised field command was the so-called siege of Corinth in the spring of 1862, a Union victory which he conducted with unnecessary caution, which allowed the Confederate force to escape. Halleck also developed rivalries with several of his subordinate generals, such as Grant and Don Carlos Buell. In July 1862, following Major General George B. McClellan's failed Peninsula Campaign in the Eastern Theater, Halleck was promoted to general-in-chief. Halleck served in this capacity for about a year and a half.
Halleck was a cautious general who believed strongly in thorough preparations for battle and in the value of defensive fortifications over quick, aggressive action. He was a master of administration, logistics, and the politics necessary at the top of the military hierarchy, but exerted little effective control over field operations from his post in Washington, D.C. As general-in-chief he refused to give orders to his subordinate commanders, instead offering advice, but leaving the final decisions up to the generals in the field. As a result, his subordinates frequently criticized him and often ignored his instructions. Still, Halleck's earlier contributions to military theory are credited with encouraging a new spirit of professionalism in the army.Fredriksen, p. 910.
In March 1864, Grant was promoted to general-in-chief, locating his headquarters with the Army of the Potomac in the field, while Halleck was relegated to serving as chief of staff in Washington, providing the necessary administrative support to fulfill Grant's orders to the various armies. Without the pressure of having to control the movements of the armies, Halleck performed capably in this task, ensuring that the Union armies were as well-equipped and supplied as possible.
Early life Halleck was born on a farm in Westernville, Oneida County, New York, the third child of 14 of Joseph Halleck, a lieutenant who served in the War of 1812, and Catherine Wager Halleck. Young Henry detested the thought of an agricultural life and ran away from home at an early age to be raised by an uncle, David Wager of Utica.Marszalek, pp. 6–8. He attended Hudson Academy, Union College in Schenectady, New York, then the United States Military Academy. He became a favorite of military theorist Dennis Hart Mahan and was allowed to teach classes while still a cadet.Fredriksen, pp. 908–911. He graduated in 1839, third in his class of 31 cadets, as a second lieutenant of engineers.Eicher, p. 274. After spending some time as a member of the teaching staff at the academy, and a few years improving the defenses of New York Harbor, he wrote a report for the United States Senate on seacoast defenses, Report on the Means of National Defence, which pleased General-in-Chief Winfield Scott, who rewarded Halleck with a trip to Europe in 1844 to study European fortifications and the French military.Ambrose (1999), p. 7 Returning home as a first lieutenant, Halleck gave a series of twelve lectures at the Lowell Institute in Boston that were subsequently published in 1846 as Elements of Military Art and Science.California State Military Museum His work, one of the first expressions of American military professionalism, was well received by his colleagues and was considered one of the definitive tactical treatises used by officers in the coming Civil War. His scholarly pursuits earned him the later derogatory nickname "Old Brains".
During the Mexican–American War, Halleck was assigned to duty in California. During his seven-month journey on the transport USS Lexington around Cape Horn, assigned as aide-de-camp to Commodore William Shubrick, he translated Henri Jomini's Vie politique et militaire de Napoleon ("Political and Military Life of Napoleon"), which further enhanced his reputation for scholarship. He spent several months in California constructing fortifications, then was first exposed to combat on November 11, 1847, during William Shubrick's capture of the port of Mazatlán, Lt. Halleck served as lieutenant governor of the occupied city. He was awarded a brevet promotion to captain in 1847 for his "gallant and meritorious service" in California and Mexico, and would later be appointed captain in the regular army on July 1, 1853. He was transferred north to serve under General Bennet Riley, the governor general of the California Territory. Halleck was soon appointed military secretary of state, a position which made him the governor's representative at the 1849 convention in Monterey where the California state constitution was written. Halleck became one of the principal authors of the document. The California State Military Museum writes that Halleck "was [at the convention] and in a lone measure its brains because he had given more studious thought to the subject than any other, and General Riley had instructed him to help frame the new constitution." He was nominated during the convention to be one of two men to represent the new state in the United States Senate, but received only enough votes for third place. In 1851, he served as the Judge Advocate for Joseph Hooker's court martial in Sonoma, CA. Hooker had been charged with conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman for profiteering off the army. During his political activities, Halleck found time to join a law firm in San Francisco, Halleck, Peachy & Billings, which became so successful that he resigned his commission in 1854. The following year, he married Elizabeth Hamilton, granddaughter of Alexander Hamilton and sister of Union general Schuyler Hamilton. Their only child, Henry Wager Halleck Jr., was born in 1856, and died in 1882.
Halleck became a wealthy man as a lawyer and land speculator, and a noted collector of "Californiana". He obtained thousands of pages of official documents on the Spanish missions and colonization of California, which were copied and are now maintained by the Bancroft Library of the University of California, Berkeley the originals having been destroyed in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire. He built the Montgomery Block, San Francisco's first fireproof building, home to lawyers, businessmen, and later, the city's Bohemian writers and newspapers. He was a director of the Almaden Quicksilver (Mercury) Company in San Jose, president of the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad, a builder in Monterey, and owner of the 30,000 acre (120 km2) Rancho Nicasio in Marin County. But he remained involved in military affairs and by early 1861 he was a major general of the California Militia.
Civil War Western Theater As the Civil War began, Halleck was nominally a Democrat and was sympathetic to the South, but he had a strong belief in the value of the Union. His reputation as a military scholar and an urgent recommendation from Winfield Scott earned him the rank of major general in the regular army, effective August 19, 1861, making him the fourth most senior general, after Scott, George B. McClellan, and John C. Frémont. He was assigned to command the Department of the Missouri, replacing Frémont in St. Louis on November 9, and his talent for administration quickly sorted out the chaos of fraud and disorder left by his predecessor. He set to work on the "twin goals of expanding his command and making sure that no blame of any sort fell on him."Nevin, p. 59.
Halleck established an uncomfortable relationship with the man who would become his most successful subordinate and future commander, Brig. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant. The pugnacious Grant had just been repulsed at the minor, but bloody, Battle of Belmont but had ambitious plans for amphibious operations on the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers. Halleck, by nature a cautious general, but also judging that Grant's reputation for alcoholism in the prewar period made him unreliable, twice rejected Grant's plans. However, under pressure from President Lincoln to take offensive action, Halleck reconsidered and Grant conducted operations with naval and land forces against Forts Henry and Donelson in February 1862, capturing both, along with 14,000 Confederates.Nevin, pp. 60–95.
Grant had delivered the first major Union victory of the war. Halleck obtained a promotion for him to major general of volunteers, along with some other generals in his department, and used the victory as an opportunity to request overall command in the Western Theater, which he currently shared with Maj. Gen. Don Carlos Buell, but which was not granted. He briefly relieved Grant of field command of a newly ordered expedition up the Tennessee River after Grant left his district to meet Buell in Nashville, failed to provide returns of his force, and allegedly did not immediately stop looting at the two captured forts. It was later determined that the requests from Halleck about Grant's force never made it to Grant. Halleck also cited rumors of renewed alcoholism, but then restored Grant to field command – pressure by Lincoln and the War Department may have been a factor in this about-face. Explaining the reinstatement to Grant, Halleck portrayed it as his effort to correct an injustice, not revealing to Grant that the injustice had originated with him.Many authors see presidential pressure behind Grant's reinstatement to field command. See, e.g., Gott, pp. 267–268; Nevin, p. 96. However, Smith, p. 176, states that Halleck's "reinstatement of Grant preceded by one day the bombshell that landed on his desk from the adjutant general [on behalf of the President and Secretary of War] in Washington." When Grant wrote to Halleck suggesting "I must have enemies between you and myself," Halleck replied, "You are mistaken. There is no enemy between you and me."Woodworth, p. 142.