Well-balanced and thoughtful review and analysis of the American Civil War career of Henry Halleck. Ambrose, one of the leading military historians of the 20th century, is generally sympathetic to Halleck, though that does not mean he is uncritical, as a number of Halleck's flaws are pointed out. However, Ambrose all points out a number of Halleck's strengths, which contemporaries ignored. Well worth reading. ( )

I used this book a couple of decades ago when researching Maj-Gen. Henry Wager Halleck for a paper for the local historical society. Halleck was born in the small village in upstate New York where we reside. The paper was titled "A Cold and Calculating Owl -- A Reputation Revisited". Its thesis (and the book's) is that the criticism of Halleck's service during the Civil War fails to properly examine and credit his quite significant contributions to ultimate Union victory. Halleck was mostly criticized by his contemporaries and historians and this book and my paper takes a fuller and more balanced look at his career.

At the war's onset Halleck was arguably the most prominent military figure in the North. He was recommended to Lincoln by the aging Winfield Scott to be commanding general of all Union armies. Because he was in California at the time, the lengthy voyage to the East mitigated against this, but when he arrived he was given command of the Department of the Missouri. That theater was in a chaotic state after the inept generalship of Fremont and to it Halleck soon brought order and efficiency. There were several incidents during Halleck's command that have brought criticism from historians -- his handling of Grant after Forts Henry and Donalson and Shiloh, the Corinth campaign and his disputes with Buell regarding consolidating the two adjacent commands -- that seemed to deserve reappraisal. In fact, when you look at the overall success of the Western campaign during Halleck's time in command and after when he directed Grant and Sherman you can fairly conclude that credit to Halleck is deserved. Two aspects of Halleck's approach to military leadership emerged during this time that would influence his later commands and his reputation: his practice of not micro managing his field generals and his impressive skills as an administrator of a complex military organization.

Partly due to Halleck's successes in the West and also to Lincoln's frustration with McClellan, Halleck was summoned to Washington to become commanding general of all Union armies. This proved to be an exceedingly nettlesome assignment for several reasons: the generals in the East were overtly resistant to the directions of the administration for action and Halleck was charged with delivering orders and admonitions to generals who often refused to act; and, perhaps more difficult, the intense political infighting that swirled in the capital over all matters military. Although constantly urging them to act, Halleck still forswore giving detailed orders to his field generals and hence was held responsible for their failures. As is often the role of the principal deputy to a chief executive, Halleck was tasked with conveying bad news to under performing subordinates and hence took the brunt of the anger that ensued. Politicians were interfering with every conceivable aspect of war operations and it fell to Halleck to attempt to counter this, thus buffering Lincoln from these pressures but becoming the scapegoat for all dissatisfaction with the administration. Halleck to his credit, I think, never defended himself publicly and never attempted to point to the real sources of the problems besetting the war efforts; if for nothing else his loyalty to Lincoln should be admired.

Halleck's handling of Grant during the Vicksburg campaign revealed how his approach to oversight worked well when he had a fighting general under his supervision. The surrender of Vicksburg and the control of the Mississippi was, as most Civil War historians will agree, the key to ultimate Union victory (Halleck said Vicksburg "was worth forty Richmonds"). Grant's battle plan violated every principle of military strategy, but Halleck supported him in every way, even re-framing orders from Lincoln whose was nervous about Grant's movements. Halleck likewise gave Sherman enormous discretion in the conduct of his movements in Georgia and the Carolina's.

When Grant's successes brought him to Washington to assume the commanding general's role, Lincoln (and Grant) opted to retain Halleck as chief-of-staff to Lincoln and Grant. (Grant, as is known, chose to lead from the field with the Army of the Potomac.) It was in this assignment that Halleck's contributions to the war effort shined. His administrative acumen provided the necessary organizational coordination of the huge war machine that had emerged by 1864. One could say with accuracy that the modern military command and control structure was born under Halleck's leadership. Halleck professionalized the army through integrating regular army with the state militias and through weeding out the influence of politically appointed generals. He brought great efficiency to the marshaling of war materials and their delivery to field armies. While still the subject of incessant criticism it is revealing to remember that Lincoln chose to retain Halleck after Grant's appointment and that Grant and Sherman strongly relied on Halleck til war's end (though it is true that Halleck's and Sherman's relationship suffered because of an incident at the close of the war and that Grant, in his memoirs, downplayed Halleck's contributions -- I think unfairly so).

Thus the premise of Ambrose's work and my paper is that Halleck's contributions during the war have not been thoroughly and fairly assessed by historians. While not the towering figure of a Grant or Sherman, Halleck certainly made a considerable impact on the Union victory in the Civil War.

I was proud that this Fall our historical society was able to unveil a roadside plaque noting the Town of Western, NY as the birth place of Henry Wager Halleck. ( )

Stephen Ambose is my favorite author and he has done a wonderful account of Halleck. He potrayes this historic figure in a new light. It is not a revisionist account. It does show the administrative genius that Halleck performed during the Civil War. ( )

Henry Halleck, who rose to the rank of general-in-chief of the Union armies during the American Civil War, is a frustrating figure. Most often, he is judged for his poor assessment of Ulysses Grant's abilities, only grudgingly giving the aggressive general freedom to act in the war's early years. In his days as the army's top general, he is usually considered a bureaucrat, a paper-pusher more interested in office procedure than battlefield success.

In the first book of his long career, historian Stephen Ambrose attempted a more sophisticated assessment in a biography of “Halleck: Lincoln's Chief of Staff.” Though most famous as a writer of the World War II era, Ambrose was always a keen student of military leadership. With the much-maligned Halleck, Ambrose considers how important the office general was to the Union victory and the creation of the modern American army, with his emphasis on trained leadership and the coordinated movement of men and materiel.

Though a sympathetic biography, it is not a complete vindication of the general who was more known for his book on military theory than for his battlefield leadership. Heavily influenced by Baron Henri Jomini, a Swiss military historian, Halleck consistently advocated a limited war with tactics based more on maneuver than battle, relying on the principles of maintaining short interior lines and the ability the concentrate in point. While the principles were sound, the Civil War – like most modern wars – was not a limited war, but a total war requiring more than tactical maneuvers, a reality that Halleck only haltingly acknowledged. Worse, as a department commander, then general-in-chief, then chief of staff (after Grant became general-in-chief in 1864), Halleck had the rational, but frustrating, belief that he could only dictate so much to a general in the field, which made coordinating the various Union armies a hefty challenge. Then again, Halleck's seeming disdain for the telegraph also heightened the problem of coordination.

Still, Halleck was a master of procedure, who helped to modernize the American army, overseeing the development of an overarching code of war, instituting a procedure for officer advancement, and working out the considerable challenges of properly supplying a large and far-flung army. At times, if grudgingly, he served as the necessary heavy for Lincoln (and even Grant) in sharing hard messages with sensitive generals, though Ambrose presents Halleck's political skills as rather limited.

This, I think, creates an implicit comparison with a general much more to Ambrose's liking, Dwight Eisenhower. While Ambrose had not yet written his two-volume biography of Eisenhower, while reading about Halleck I could not help but consider how the World War II commander and subsequent president Eisenhower seemed to have all of Halleck's strengths and none of his weaknesses, especially given Eisenhower's political sensibilities, which allowed him to work smoothly with other military and political leaders, and the capable way that Eisenhower dealt with subordinates.

Unlike his clear admiration for Eisenhower, Ambrose is more ambivalent toward Halleck. Ambrose sympathizes with the changing conception of war that Halleck faced and concedes that the general handled a tough situation fairly well – in fact, he clearly believes that the Union would not have won the war without Halleck – the appreciation is mostly intellectual, which makes this biography a little dry, especially compared to subjects that attracted Ambrose's heart, like Eisenhower and the soldiers of World War II. ( )