Henry Wager Halleck

Henry Wager Halleck 1815-72, Union general in the American Civil War, b. Oneida co., N.Y., grad. West Point, 1839. He entered the Corps of Engineers and became an expert on fortifications; his Elements of Military Art and Science (1846) was influential in the Civil War. In the Mexican War he served in California, holding various positions in the military government there. Halleck resigned from the army in 1853 and entered the leading law firm of the state. In the Civil War he was made a major general in the regular army (Aug., 1861) and was sent to succeed John C. Frémont in command of the Dept. of the Missouri. In Mar., 1862, the departments of the Ohio and Kansas were added to his jurisdiction. Although he was an able organizer, the prestige that he gained was due to the successes of Ulysses S. Grant , Don Carlos Buell , Samuel R. Curtis , and John Pope —all under his command. After Shiloh (Apr., 1862) Halleck took the field himself and advanced on Corinth, which General Beauregard abandoned to him in May. In July, 1862, he was appointed general in chief with the understanding that he was to remain in Washington as military adviser to the President and the Secretary of War. His failure to act decisively made him ineffective as general in chief, however, and he was grateful when, upon Grant's being given supreme command in Mar., 1864, he was demoted to chief of staff. He remained in the army after the war and held command of the Division of the South at the time of his death.

Bibliography: See study by S. E. Ambrose (1962).

Halleck, Henry Wager (1815–1872) U.S. army officer and military intellectual; Commanding General of the Army, 1862–64. Born in Westernville, New York, Halleck attended Union College before leaving to attend West Point from which he was graduated and commissioned in the Army Corps of Engineers in 1839. After a short assignment on the West Point faculty, he became assistant to the Board of Engineers for Atlantic Coast Defenses in New York City and worked on the city's harbor defenses (1840–46). In 1845, he toured fortifications in France, and upon his return gave a series of lectures at the Lowell Institute in Boston. His lectures on military policy, strategy, and tactics were subsequently published in 1846 as Elements of Military Art and Science, the first comprehensive study of the military art by an American, and it confirmed Halleck's reputation as a leading Army intellectual as well as his Army sobriquet of “Old Brains.” Ordered to the West coast in 1846, Halleck served in California during the Mexican War (1846–48), acted as secretary of state for the military government of California, and worked on coastal fortifications. In the summer of 1861, Halleck was appointed major general in the Regular Army by President Abraham Lincoln, and in November 1861 he replaced John C. Frémont as commander of the Department of the Missouri with headquarters in St. Louis, Missouri. After the battle of Shiloh (1862), he took personal command of the Union forces around Corinth, Mississippi, which fell in June 1862. The success of Union forces in the Western theater led to his appointment as Commanding General of the Army on July 11, 1862. In that position, he ably administered the Army and acted as military advisor to the President and the Secretary of War until March 1864, when he was replaced by Ulysses S. Grant. Halleck remained in Washington as Grant's chief of staff until the end of the Civil War. For a short time after Appomattox (1865), he served as commander of the Division of the James before being transferred to command the Division of the Pacific (1865–69) and later the Division of the South (1869–72).