Henry Halleck and the Second Bull Run Campaign

HENRY HALLECK AND THE SECOND BULL RUN CAMPAIGN Stephen E. Ambrose on July 23, 1862, a bold, confident, almost arrogant-looking major general arrived by train in Washington; obviously this was a man prepared to solve the problems that had called him to the capital. Henry Wager Halleck relished his new position as General-in-Chief of the armies of the United States. He was the top-ranking officer in the country, and the country was engaged in the greatest war in her history . He had already reached a post as high as any Winfield Scott ever attained and he had every reason to expect higher achievements. Halleck had been a success all his life. At West Point he was an honor student; after graduation he published volumes on international law, military art, and science. During and after the Mexican War he served as Secretary of State for the military government of California. In 1849 he instituted the movement for a constitutional convention and was a major force in drawing up the document. In the 1850's he resigned from the army, lived in San Francisco and amassed a fortune as a businessman, lawyer, and mine owner. He was quick to answer Abraham Lincoln's call to service after the Civil War began and he easily brought order to the chaos he found in his new headquarters at St. Louis. He directed, or convinced himself that he had, the victories at Forts Henry, Donelson, and Island No. 10; he cleared Missouri, Kentucky, and half of Tennessee of Confederate troops. Following Shiloh, in April, 1862, he personally took the field for the first time. He led the advance on Corinth, and, despite the howls which arose because he did not fight, he was content with his peaceful occupation of the Mississippi city in early June.1 Stephen E. Ambrose, a native of central Illinois, is a graduate of Wisconsin and Louisiana State Universities. This month he joins the history staff at Louisiana State University in New Orleans. 1FOr a discussion of Halleck's early career, see William A. Ganoe's sketch in Dumas Malone, ed., Dictionary of American Biography (New York, 1932), VIII, 150-152; Milton H. Shutes, "Henry Wager Halleck, Lincoln's Chief-ofStaff ," California Historical Society Quarterly (San Francisco, 1927), XVH, 238 Halleck looked more like a theorist than a great fighter. Standing about five feet, nine inches tall, and weighing 190 pounds, he had a double chin and bald forehead. One observer commented disparagingly on his "bulging eyes, flabby cheeks . . . slack-twisted figure and . . . slow and deliberate movements." Visitors noticed that when he spoke his words were "few, pithy, and to the point." Halleck's eyes, like the man himself, impressed different observers in various ways. A fellow Californian thought he was a "close student of human nature" because his "large dark penetrating eyes looked through one with searching thoroughness." A friendly newspaper reporter thought his eyes were "of a hazel color, clear as a morning star, and of intense brilliancy."2 Halleck's ideas and principles on war were conservative. His successes in the West had strengthened his faith in the strategical doctrines he had learned at West Point. His teacher had been Dennis Hart Mahan, who in turn took his lesson from the Swiss theorist, Baron Henri Jomini. Jomini had witnessed Napoleon's battles, but unlike his contemporary, Karl von Clausewitz, he taught that Napoleon's success stemmed from the general's use of principles established by Frederick the Great rather than from the radical innovations which Clausewitz emphasized. Mahan lectured that the art of war began with the choice of a base of operations; the ideal was an interior line of communications which emanated from a strong base and lay between the two wings of the enemy. From an interior line a soldier could strike first one wing and then another before the enemy could join forces. Interior lines simplified supply and mobilization problems while facilitating concentration on the battlefield. And concentration, both strategically and tactically, was the basic element in the Jomini system.3 In 1846 Halleck had written Elements of Military Art and Science, which was later used as a text at West...