Henry Wager Halleck (January 16, 1815 – January 9, 1872) is a United States Army officer, scholar, and lawyer.
A noted expert in military studies, he is known by a nickname that becomes derogatory, "Old Brains."
He is an important participant in the admission of California as a state and becomes a successful lawyer and land developer.
Early in the American Civil War, he is a senior Union Army commander in the Western Theater and then serves for almost two years as general-in-chief of all U.S. armies.
He is "kicked upstairs" to be chief of staff of the Army when Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, Halleck's former subordinate in the West, whose battlefield victories do much to advance Halleck's career, replaces him in 1864 as general-in-chief for the remainder of the war.
Halleck is a cautious general who believes strongly in thorough preparations for battle and in the value of defensive fortifications over quick, aggressive action.
He is a master of administration, logistics, and the politics necessary at the top of the military hierarchy, but exerts little effective control over field operations from his post in Washington, D.C. President Abraham Lincoln once described him as "little more than a first rate clerk."
(Warner, Ezra J.
Generals in Blue: Lives of the Union Commanders.
Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1964. )
