Commander of All Lincoln’s Armies : : A Life of General Henry W. Halleck / / John F. Marszalek.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter HUP eBook Package Archive 1893-1999
• VerfasserIn: Marszalek, John F.,
• Place / Publishing House: Cambridge, MA : : Harvard University Press, , [2009]; ©2004
• Year of Publication: 2009
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (352 p.)

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

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Illustrations -- Prologue -- 1 Born to Gentility, Educated to Elitism -- 2 Army Engineer at Home and Abroad -- 3 War and Peace in California -- 4 From Soldier to Businessman -- 5 From Peace to War -- 6 Commander of the Western Theater -- 7 Supreme Commander -- 8 War by Washington Telegraph -- 9 The Western Generals Bring Success -- 10 Chief of Staff under Grant -- 11 From War to Peace -- Bibliographical Essay -- Abbreviations Used in the Notes -- Notes -- Acknowledgments -- Illustration Credits -- Index