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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 92.3 | The History Cooperative
92.3  
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December, 2005
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Book Review


Commander of All Lincoln's Armies: A Life of General Henry W. Halleck. By John F. Marszalek. (Cambridge: Belknap, 2004. x, 324 pp. $29.95, ISBN 0-674-01493-6.)
Civil War biographies do not come much better, if at all, than John F. Marszalek's account of Henry Wager Halleck. Written with scholarly precision and aplomb, it recounts the life and contributions of the Union's top soldier, 1862–1864, from his childhood on a New York farm. Confronted with a father in need of a compliant farm laborer, the future military commander, with the help of a grandfather and an uncle, was able to find his way to Union College in Schenectady. Marszalek finds in Halleck a lifelong conflict between obligations to family and duty to himself that bred no little inner conflict. Although father and son never spoke again in life, a reputation for scholarship and a Phi Beta Kappa key propelled the young Halleck in search of a secure future to a West Point cadetship. . . .
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