1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910778181403321

Autore

Marszalek John F. <1939->

Titolo

Commander of all Lincoln's armies [[electronic resource] ] : a life of General Henry W. Halleck / / John F. Marszalek

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Cambridge, MA, : Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2004

ISBN

0-674-04064-3

Descrizione fisica

ix, 324 p., [18] p. : ill., ports

Disciplina

973.7/41/092

Soggetti

Generals - United States

United States History Civil War, 1861-1865 Biography

United States History Civil War, 1861-1865 Campaigns

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references (p. [261]-307) and index.

Nota di contenuto

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

Sommario/riassunto

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.