Halleck

“ Young European Spain here is remarkably discreet, as in the times of a Philip II., of an Alba.
Corinth evacuated under the nose of Halleck, as Manassas and Yorktown have been evacuated under the nose of McClellan. Nay, Halleck, equally strong as was the enemy, the first day of the evacuation ignores what became of Beauregard with between sixty and eighty thousand men. Oh generalship! Gen. Halleck is a gift from Gen. Scott. If Halleck (p. 217) makes not something better, it will turn out to be a very poor gift. ”

“ Halleck is not one of the firm; and Halleck is a true poet. But his writings first came out anonymously; and it is the blaze of his genius which has betrayed him to the public eye. The darkness in which it shrouds itself, distinguishes it from all that shines only by reflected light. Men hunt for diamonds in the night.
Even in England, where the trade of literature embraces writers of a very high order, I am not sure that the very best minds are devoted to it. Some of the finest poetry in the language was found among the manuscripts of Judge Blackstone. ”

“ Hackett to invite Mr. Halleck, Mr. Verplanck, and one or two other old friends to meet together, and have a good old-fashioned dinner. Halleck used to say, “Pretty much all my old friends are gone—except Bryant, Verplanck, and myself,—we are the last of the cocked hats.” But the projected dinner was unhappily interrupted by the decease of the poet, in whose honor it was intended to be given. I met Mr. Hackett and Mr. Verplanck, and agreed upon the day when I was to notify Halleck—and an hour after that meeting, I heard the sad news of his death. ”

“ To show how delightful these joint labors were, to both these illustrious men, Halleck told me that, upon one occasion, Drake, after writing some stanzas and getting the proof from the printer, laid his cheek down upon the lines he had written, and looking at his fellow-poet, with beaming eyes, said, “O, Halleck, isn’t this happiness!”
Mr. Halleck rarely spoke of his own productions indeed, he seemed to think very lightly of them. Yet he had an unbounded admiration for Drake. Drake, on the other hand, did not think his own poems worth publishing or acknowledging. ”

“ The tone employed in the concluding portions of Alnwick Castle, is, we sincerely think, reprehensible, and unworthy of Halleck. No true poet can unite in any manner the low burlesque with the ideal, and not be conscious of incongruity and of a profanation. Such verses as
may lay claim to oddity—but no more. ”

“ This was before he had received the handsome sum of five hundred dollars from Mr. Bonner, of the “Ledger,” for Young America. “My first publisher failed,” said he, “and this deterred me from venturing upon a literary life, and placed me in a counting-room.”
He had a quasi admiration for lecturers. “I was in New Haven the other day,” Halleck said, lifting his hat with that deferential air which always made a point in his discourses, “I was in New Haven, and you know that New Haven is to Connecticut, what Boston is to Massachusetts—the intellectual centre of the State. ”

“ I believe you and the brave officers and men with you can and will get the victory at Corinth.
Halleck replied disingenuously on the next day:
I have asked for no reinforcements, but only whether any were to be sent to me. If any were to be sent, I would wait for them; if not, I would venture an attack. We are now in immediate presence of the enemy, and the battle may occur at any moment. I have every confidence that we shall succeed, but dislike to run any risk, and therefore have waited to ascertain if any more troops can be hoped for. ”

“ In 1864 he published in the New York Ledger a poem of 300 lines entitled “Young America.” He died at Guilford, on the 19th of November 1867. The poems of Halleck are written with great care and finish, and manifest the possession of a fine sense of harmony and of genial and elevated sentiments. ”

“ On June 11, General Halleck telegraphed from Washington to General Rosecrans: “I deem it my duty to repeat to you the great dissatisfaction that is felt here at your inactivity. There seems to be no doubt that a part of Bragg's force has gone to Johnston.” It appears that no answer to this was deigned by Rosecrans, whereupon Halleck wired him again on June 16: “Is it your intention to make an immediate movement forward? A definite answer, ‘Yes’ or ‘No’, is required.” ”

“ The picturesque, to be sure, is equally deficient in his chirography and in his poetical productions.
Mr. Halleck’s hand is strikingly indicative of his genius. We see in it some force, more grace, and little of the picturesque. There is a great deal of freedom about it, and his MSS. seem to be written currente calamo, but without hurry. His flourishes, which are not many, look as if thoughtfully planned, and deliberately, yet firmly executed. His paper is very good, and of a blueish tint—his seal of red wax. ”

“ From Slidell, for whom the Spectator is for taking up the cudgels, we have yesterday heard in a similar strain and with a similar promise. From Prof. Anthon, ditto. Mrs. Sigourney, also lately reviewed, has just forwarded us her compliments and a communication. Halleck, since our abuse of his book, writes us thus: “There is no place where I shall be more desirous of seeing my humble writings than in the publication you so ably support and conduct. It is full of sound, good literature, and its frank, open, independent manliness of spirit, is characteristic of the land it hails from.” ”

“ To have equally pleased Halleck, the theoretical, and Grant, the practical soldier—Halleck, the wily and polite lawyer, and Grant, the simple-minded, straightforward soldier—Halleck, who attempted to rise by arts, and Grant, who trusted solely to action for promotion, required very great qualities in a mind as young as Sheridan's. ”

“ When we reflect that, at this time, Halleck was the most popular poet in the country,—for Drake was dead and Bryant scarcely known,—and that no other American poet could be called his rival, we may well admire that unpretending modesty which always formed the chief charm in his character. Upon one occasion, in after-years, when he was invited to a brilliant party in New York, he declined the invitation, and said, quietly, to a friend, “I always avoided notoriety in my earlier days,—and I am too old a lion now to shake my mane in a lady’s drawing-room.” ”

“ Beauregard had, indeed, halted at Baldwin with most of his army, but decided to fall back twenty miles further to Tupelo. Under Halleck's order, no further pursuit was attempted.
Before closing this chapter, I must refer to what was perhaps the strangest incident of the Corinth campaign. On June 4, Halleck telegraphed to Secretary Stanton:
General Pope with 40,000 is thirty miles south of Corinth, pushing the enemy hard. He already reports 10,000 prisoners and deserters from the enemy and 15,000 stands of arms captured. Thousands of the enemy are throwing away their arms. ”

“ Earlier on the same day General Grant also telegraphed to General Halleck: "The main force of the enemy is at Corinth, with troops at different points east. Small garrisons are also at Bethel, Jackson, and Humboldt. The number at these places seems constantly to change. The number of the enemy at Corinth, and within supporting distance of it, cannot be far from eighty thousand men." General Halleck was preparing to leave St. Louis and come to the front to take immediate command of the combined army for the march on to Corinth. ”

“ The poems of Halleck are not only good in themselves, but they give an impression of greater powers than they embody. They seem to indicate a large, broad, vigorous mind, of which poetry has been the recreation rather than the vocation. A brilliant mischievousness, in which the serious and the ludicrous, the tender and the comic, the practical and the ideal, are brought rapidly together, is the leading characteristic of his muse. ”

“ Halleck followed the coffin to that beautiful spot beyond the Harlem-122- that they both loved so well, and there by the side of the Bronx streamlet the poet Drake was buried. In the depth of his grief Halleck wrote the lines:
And now after more than three quarters of a century the words still murmur their message of friendship and sorrow above Drake's grave. The city has sped on far beyond the little graveyard, and harsh sounds throb where once was only the singing of birds; but the consecrated spot remains, cared for year by year as well as may be in despite of relic-hunting vandals. ”

“ General Halleck issued an order an hour or two after midnight to Buell and Thomas as follows: “There is every indication that the enemy will attack our left this morning, as troops have been moving in that direction for some time. It may be well to make preparations to send as many of the reserves as can be spared in that direction.” This order may or may not have been the reflex of the following report from Pope to Halleck, dated May 30, 1:20 A.M.: “The enemy is reënforcing heavily, by trains, in my front and on my left. ”

“ Descending to the drawing-room, she found it full of sympathising neighbours, her betrothed in the midst, all debating a way out of the difficulty. Not even sharp-witted lawyers could see one. In times so out of joint law did not count.
The situation was saved by the fact that General Halleck had a namesake in Captain Sloan’s family. The Captain’s “Uncle Jerry” (otherwise General Jerry Gilmer, of South Carolina) had called a son [Pg 126] “Henry Halleck” in honour of his one-time class-mate at West Point. When the idea of the namesake as basis of appeal dawned on Captain Sloan, day was passing. ”

“ Halleck did not find his way into the Knickerbocker group at the start, but he early made acquaintance with Joseph Rodman Drake and the two became ardent friends. Drake was a young man of captivating personality; variously gifted and brilliant; a thoroughbred in his sense of honor and a certain gallant rectitude and courage; a man of charming71 fancy, who, at the age of five, was writing clever verse. ”

“ Nothing daunted by my failure, I bethought myself of the “second in chief command” — that is, of General Grant — and, making my way to his camp, readily succeeded in obtaining the desired passe-partout from his chief of staff, Lieutenant-Colonel Rawlins. I observed that a marked stillness prevailed at Grant's headquarters, contrasting greatly with the bustle perceivable about it before Halleck's advent. The fact was, that the “second in command” was confined to a very nominal part. His rôle during the “siege” was, indeed, that of a mere dummy upon a stage a show, but not a substance. ”

“ But his literary career is identified with New York. He was associated with Drake in writing the Croaker Papers, a series of humorous and satirical verses contributed in 1814 to the Evening Post. These were of a merely local and temporary interest; but Halleck's fine ode, Marco Bozzaris—though declaimed until it has become hackneyed—gives him a sure title to a remembrance; and his Alnwick Castle, a monody, half serious and half playful on the contrasts between feudal associations and modern life, has {418} much of that pensive lightness which characterizes Praed's best vers de societé. ”

“ That is a historical mistake; Dr. Johnson, by his learning, by his genius, by his intellectual birth-gift, was a gentleman; and as a gentleman, he would not dine with a publisher!”
When he was sitting to Elliott for his portrait, the latter said to him, “Mr. Halleck, when you were in England, you no doubt saw some of the eminent poets whom you admire so much,—how did you like Wordsworth?” “I did not see him,” was the reply. “Well, of course you saw your favorite Campbell?” “No, I did not see Campbell.” “Indeed! ”

“ Grant did not gratify his rival by retiring from the field — Halleck's real object, according to Grant's military household — but wisely bore the humiliation with patience.
The army was not occupied with pick, shovel, and axe alone. Simultaneously with the first advance, an expedition was sent out under General Wallace to destroy the Memphis & Charleston Railroad west of Corinth, in the neighborhood of Purdy, which did not, however, accomplish much. Nearly one-fifth of the troops always performed grand-guard and picket duties. Reconnoissances more or less in force were also regularly made. ”

“ As all Buell's advices from Halleck indicated that he (Buell) would meet Grant on the right bank of the Tennessee — that is, with the river be tween them and the enemy — he felt no apprehension as to Grant's safety before his junction with him. But, unknown to him, it had been decided to transfer Grant's command to the left bank at Pittsburg Landing, some eight miles above Savannah. This transposition, together with the knowledge of Buell's detention at Columbia, had determined A. S. Johnston and Beauregard to strike a blow at Grant before he was reinforced by Buell. ”

“ Their sentiments, too, are exalted and ennobling; eminently genial and honest, they stamp the author for a good man and true,—Nature's aristocracy.... For some unexplained reason Halleck has not written, or at least not published, anything new for several years, though continually solicited to do so; for he is a great favorite with his countrymen, especially with the New Yorkers. His time, however, has been by no means passed in idleness. Fashionable as writing is in America, it is not considered desirable or, indeed, altogether reputable, that the poet should be only a poet. ”