Commander of All Lincoln s Armies

by Marszalek, John F.

• ISBN13: 9780674014930
• ISBN10: 0674014936
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-12-17
• Publisher: Belknap Pr

Summary

In the summer of 1862, President Lincoln called General Henry W. Halleck to Washington, D.C., to take command of all Union armies in the death struggle against the Confederacy. For the next two turbulent years, Halleck was Lincoln's chief war advisor, the man the President deferred to in all military matters. Yet, despite the fact that he was commanding general far longer than his successor, Ulysses S. Grant, he is remembered only as a failed man, ignored by posterity. In the first comprehensive biography of Halleck, the prize-winning historian John F. Marszalek recreates the life of a man of enormous achievement who bungled his most important mission. When Lincoln summoned him to the nation's capital, Halleck boasted outstanding qualifications as a military theorist, a legal scholar, a brave soldier, and a California entrepreneur. Yet in the thick of battle, he couldn't make essential decisions. Unable to produce victory for the Union forces, he saw his power become subsumed by Grant's emergent leadership, a loss that paved the way for Halleck's path to obscurity. Harnessing previously unused research, as well as the insights of modern medicine and psychology, Marszalek unearths the seeds of Halleck's fatal wartime indecisiveness in personality traits and health problems. In this brilliant dissection of a rich and disappointed life, we gain new understanding of how the key decisions of the Civil War were taken, as well as insight into the making of effective military leadership.

Table of Contents

Prologue	1	(199)
1. Born to Gentility, Educated to Elitism	4	(26)
2. Army Engineer at Home and Abroad	30	(18)
3. War and Peace in California	48	(19)
4. From Soldier to Businessman	67	(19)
5. From Peace to War	86	(19)
6. Commander of the Western Theater	105	(24)
7. Supreme Commander	129	(26)
8. War by Washington Telegraph	155	(26)
9. The Western Generals Bring Success	181	(19)
10. Chief of Staff under Grant	200	(27)
11. From War to Peace	227	(28)
Bibliographical Essay	255	(4)
Abbreviations Used in the Notes	259	(2)
Notes	261	(48)
Acknowledgments	309	(4)
Illustration Credits	313	(2)
Index	315