Elizabeth Halleck

Wife of Union General Henry Wager Halleck

Elizabeth Hamilton was born (February 9, 1831) 1835 in Westernville, New York. She was the daughter of Colonel John Church Hamilton, and granddaughter of Alexander Hamilton. While the death of Alexander Hamilton, in the historic duel with Aaron Burr, left the family in dire financial circumstances, Elizabeth's father was, nevertheless, able to graduate from Columbia College in 1809.

Henry Wager Halleck was born on January 16, 1815, in Westernville, New York, to Joseph Halleck and Catherine Wager Halleck, the third child of 14. At the age of 17, he ran away from hometo avoid working on the family farm under his strict father, and to pursue a formal education. He initially lived with his maternal grandfather, Henry Wager, and later with his uncle David Wager in Utica, New York, and those two men supported Halleck financially. He attended Hudson Academy and then Fairfield Academy. Accepted into the junior class at Union College in Schenectady, New York, he enrolled for the fall 1834 term and listed himself as the ward of his uncle.

Elizabeth Hamilton Halleck
She was a natural subject for Brady's camera and for E. & H. T. Anthony's series of cartes de visite devoted to the new celebrities created by the early years of the war.

By the end of the academic year in the summer of 1835, Halleck had completed three semesters of classes, left Union College (although he was awarded a bachelor’s degree in 1837), and was appointed to the United States Military Academy at West Point for the fall 1835 term. Because of his extensive knowledge, he taught classes while still a cadet. In 1839, he graduated third in a class of 31, was brevetted a second lieutenant, and was hired as a French instructor at the Academy for the next academic year.

In June 1840, Halleck was assigned to the Army Corps of Engineers to construct fortifications in New York City. In 1843, he turned down a position as professor of engineering at Harvard. In the early 1840s, Halleck wrote a modern guide to warfare based on French military theory. Halleck's book became a text at West Point, and led General Winfield Scott (among others) to view him as one of the military's leading strategists.

When the Mexican-American War began in 1846, Halleck was ordered to California, where he served in various engineering and administrative positions during the war. He was made a captain on May 1, 1847, and participated in the capture of Mazatlán, Mexico, that November, serving afterward as the city's lieutenant governor. As secretary of state in the military government of California, he played a key role in drafting the new state's constitution. While in California, he collected 4000 pages of state historical documents.

In the early 1850s, Halleck worked along the Pacific Coast as an army engineer and lighthouse inspector, and became director–general of a quicksilver (mercury) mining operation, the Almaden Quicksilver Company in San Jose, a builder in Monterey, and owner of the 30,000 acre Rancho Nicasio in Marin County. In 1855, he became president of the Pacific & Atlantic Railroad Company. But he remained involved in military affairs, and by 1860 he was a major general in the California Militia.

Having studied law in his spare time, Halleck joined two other attorneys and became the head of the most prominent law firm in San Francisco, with large interests and much valuable property in the state, with whose development and prosperity his name was identified. Halleck became a wealthy man as a lawyer and land speculator.

When Henry Halleck married Elizabeth Hamilton on April 10, 1855, he was a wealthy and respected California lawyer, director of a bank and two railroads, and part owner of one of the richest mercury mines in the world. The Hallecks lived in an unpretentious home in the exclusive South Park district on Rincon Hill at the corner of Second and Folsom Streets. Their only child, Henry Wager Halleck Jr. was born the next year.

General Henry Wager Halleck

At the outbreak of the Civil War, Halleck tendered his services to the government, and General–in–Chief Winfield Scott summoned Halleck and his family to Washington in 1861, and Elizabeth Halleck attracted the interest and curiosity of the public.

On the recommendation of General Scott, Halleck was appointed to the rank of major general, his commission dating August 19, 1861, making him the fourth most senior general in the Army – after Scott, George B. McClellan, and John C. Fremont. Halleck was a large man, somewhat heavy, with scant light curly hair, a heavy chin, and pale blue steady eyes - the image of composure and dignity.

Three months later, Halleck took the place of General John C. Fremont as commander of the Department of Missouri (comprising Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, and western Kentucky) with his headquarters in St. Louis.

Dismayed by the "complete chaos" he found, Halleck cracked down on corruption, enhanced training and supplies, and set to work on the "twin goals of expanding his command and making sure that no blame of any sort fell on him." Halleck was a great administrator, very organized and efficient, but he also had a large ego, and would constantly push to have complete command, of all forces west of the Alleghenies. He expanded the number of garrisons in Missouri to combat Confederate guerrillas.

Halleck ordered simultaneous Union campaigns in southwest Missouri and along the Mississippi and Tennessee Rivers, and first came into contact with Brigadier General Ulysses S. Grant. After initially restraining Grant, Halleck finally turn him loose against Forts Henry and Donelson on the Tennessee River in February 1862.

Grant's independent command, along with help from the navy gunboats, captured both forts, leaving the way open into the interior of the Confederacy. While a tremendous coup for the North, the victories caused Halleck a significant amount of angst – concern that he may be overshadowed by his own subordinate. Grant, keeping in telegraphic contact with Halleck, would continue to push his advantage.

General Halleck seemed to have made good. Out on the western front, he had taken over what was left of Fremont's soldiers, reorganized and drilled them Into armies which produced good results for Generals Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman.

Halleck advised President Abraham Lincoln to correct a military error by having three independent commands in the West. Lincoln saw the point and placed General Halleck in overall command of the newly created Department of the Mississippi on March 11, 1862. This would place him in command of Grant's army and General Don Carlos Buell's Army of the Ohio.

By the spring of 1862, Halleck's three campaigns had brought Union victories at Pea Ridge (northwest Arkansas), Island No. 10 (Mississippi River), and Forts Donelson and Henry (Tennessee), giving Halleck the reputation of a master military administrator.

But Halleck delayed General Grant's attack at Shiloh, Tennessee, until April 6, 1862, which gave the Confederates time to amass a larger army. The resulting high number of casualties and near defeat of Union troops prodded Halleck to assume command of his massive army in the field for the first time. Grant was under public attack over the slaughter at Shiloh, and Halleck placed Grant as second in command of the 100,000 man force, a job which Grant complained was a censure and akin to an arrest.

On May 4, Halleck began a drive toward the important railroad center of Corinth, Mississippi, to conduct operations against CSA General P.G.T. Beauregard's army there. Halleck's forces, almost twice the size of Beauregard's, could have beaten the Confederates decisively with the possible outcome of a significantly abbreviated campaign on the Western front. Instead, Halleck ordered Generals Pope, Grant, and Buell to amass the Union forces in a slow, deliberate advance to Corinth.

Rather than march through the evening, he ordered the troops to stop every evening to erect elaborate field fortifications. Beauregard abandoned Corinth on May 29 without a fight, and the press criticized Halleck for not pursuing the escaping Confederates aggressively. Assessments of Halleck's subsequent reputation diminished rapidly.

Among the many complaints against him was his insistence that troops in the field slow their advances against the enemy by repairing railroads, building roads, and fixing bridges. He is blamed also for hampering his generals - particularly Grant – with bureaucratic requests, paperwork, and unnecessary military advice.

On July 11, 1862, President Lincoln issued an order appointing Major General Halleck General-in-Chief of all Union armies and ordered him to report for duty in Washington. Halleck finally arrived reluctantly on July 23; he wanted to stay in the West, and he was sure he would hate Washington and all its politicians.

Halleck understood his position well – despite the president's pledge to give the general-in-chief full control, he was essentially a conduit for the civilian leadership (Lincoln and Secretary of War Edwin Stanton) to issue commands to the armies in the field. Yet Halleck was unsuccessful as a commander or as a grand strategist. His cold, abrasive personality alienated his subordinates.

Halleck wrote to Sherman, "I am simply a military advisor of the Secretary of War and the President, and must obey and carry out what they decide upon, whether I concur in their decisions or not. As a good soldier I obey the orders of my superiors. If I disagree with them I say so, but when they decide, is my duty faithfully to carry out their decision."

In Washington, Halleck continued to excel at administrative issues and facilitated the training, equipping, and deployment of thousands of Union soldiers over vast areas, but Lincoln had hoped that Halleck could prod his subordinate generals into taking more coordinated, aggressive actions across all theaters of war. Lincoln was quickly disappointed, and was quoted as regarding Halleck as "little more than a first rate clerk."

The Union defeat at the Second Battle of Bull Run (August 28–30, 1862) disheartened Halleck. Lincoln's secretary, John Hay, reported that Halleck "broke down – nerve and pluck all gone and has ever since evaded all possible responsibility." Halleck had the reputation of being the most unpopular man in Washington. Surly and gruff in manner, he had no restraints about insulting people, even important governmental officials. He detested politicians and let them know it.

Halleck would continue to dispatch his administrative duties well, but there were several instances where he failed the armies in the field. The most conspicuous was his handling of the pontoon bridges that USA Major General Ambrose Burnside needed to cross the Rappahannock River into Fredericksburg, Virginia, in December 1862. The delays in getting this materiel to Burnside sealed the fate of the entire campaign.

Halleck offered his resignation in January 1863 rather than carry out Lincoln's directive to intervene in the field to sustain or veto the plans of General Ambrose Burnside. The president rescinded his order, and Halleck remained general–in–chief.

In June 1863, Halleck declined General Joseph Hooker's proposal to capture Richmond and ordered him to mirror Confederate General Robert E. Lee's northward movement, having concluded that the Union's long–sought goal of taking the Confederate capital was less important than defeating Lee.

When Halleck revoked Hooker's order that the Harper's Ferry garrison join his army, Hooker resigned, and President Lincoln agreed with Halleck to appoint General George Meade to the command. When Lee's troops began to withdraw from Gettysburg on July 4, Meade failed to heed Halleck's advice to pursue the Confederates aggressively.

On March 9, 1864, President Lincoln promoted Ulysses S. Grant to the rank of lieutenant general, and three days later the position of general–in–chief passed from Halleck to Grant. Halleck was relegated to army chief of staff, responsible for the administration of the vast U.S. armies. Grant and the War Department took special care to let Halleck down gently. Their orders stated that Halleck had been relieved as general in chief "at his own request." Halleck would serve the remainder of the war, as Grant's conduit to the administration.

Now that there was an aggressive general in the field, Halleck's administrative capabilities complemented Grant nicely, and they worked well together. Throughout the arduous Overland Campaign and the Richmond-Petersburg Campaign of 1864, Halleck saw to it that Grant was properly supplied, equipped, and reinforced on a scale that wore down the Confederates. Halleck agreed with Grant and Sherman on the implementation of total war toward the Southern economy and endorsed both General Sherman's March to the Sea and General Philip Sheridan's destruction of the Shenandoah Valley.

After Grant forced Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox Court House, Halleck was assigned to command the Military Division of the James, headquartered at Richmond. He was a pallbearer at President Lincoln's funeral. Halleck lost his friendship with General Sherman when he quarreled with him over Sherman's tendency to be lenient toward former Confederates.

During the war, Halleck was known as the most unpopular man in Washington. He even lost favor with Ulysses S. Grant, who went to his grave detesting him: "So far as my experience with General Halleck went," he wrote tartly in his memoirs, "it was very much easier for him to refuse a favor than to grant one." Gideon Welles, the Secretary of the Navy, found him absolutely maddening, was so repelled by his personality that he ascribed to him physical characteristics – "his bulging eyes, his flabby cheeks, his slack-twisted figure."

On April 19, 1865, ten days after Lee's surrender at Appomattox, Halleck was placed in charge of the Military Division of the James (Virginia and parts of North Carolina), headquartered in Richmond. While there, he saved a large number of official Confederate documents, which were later published in the reference book, The War of the Rebellion (1880–1901).

On August 30, 1865, Halleck was reassigned to command the Military Division of the Pacific, headquartered in San Francisco, essentially in military exile until March 1869, when he was assigned to command the Division of the South, headquartered in Louisville, Kentucky. This was his last assignment.

General Henry Wager Halleck died at Louisville on January 9, 1872, in the arms of his brother-in-law, Schuyler Hamilton. He was buried in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York. He left no memoirs for posterity and apparently destroyed his private correspondence and memoranda. His estate at his death showed a net value of $474,773.16.

Elizabeth Hamilton Halleck married George Washington Cullum on September 23, 1875, (Cullum's first marriage). Cullum had served as General Halleck's Chief of Staff In the war In the West and on his staff In Washington, DC. The couple spent their last years in New York City.

On April 12, 1880, Elizabeth Hamilton Cullum, the 49-year-old granddaughter of Alexander Hamilton, invited 50 of her prominent women friends to lunch in the spacious drawing room of her home on Fifth Avenue near 30th Street. The meeting's purpose was to form a club, "to develop latent talent where it might exist, in women looked upon as mere society women," in the words of an early member.

New York Cancer Hospital
The wide circular towers were the New York Cancer Hospital in the late 19th century.

New York Cancer Hospital was a cancer treatment and research institution founded in 1884 by Elizabeth Halleck Cullum and her cousin and co-founder, Charlotte, wife of John Jacob Astor III, who had donated $225,000 toward a cancer hospital in 1882. In 1884, Elizabeth Cullum laid the cornerstone of the hospital's first building at 106th Street and Central Park West – the first hospital in the United States dedicated specifically for the treatment of cancer. The first building would be completed in 1887, and Elizabeth would die before the structure was finished.

New York Cancer Hospital was built in three stages, between 1884 through 1890, and the Astor money paid for the first third of the new facility, which was appropriately named the "Astor Pavilion." The first wing was to treat women only, but by the time it opened, plans were under way for a companion facility for the treatment of men, also funded by Astor. At the same time, a chapel was added near the 105th Street corner.

Elizabeth Cullum and Charlotte Astor had founded the institution as a protest against those who considered cancer a vile, shameful disease. At the dedication, Dr. Fordyce Barker said that cancer was "not due to misery, to poverty, or bad sanitary surroundings, or to ignorance or to bad habits, but a disease afflicting the cultured, the wealthy and the inhabitants of salubrious localities."

Elizabeth Hamilton Halleck Cullum died of uterine cancer on September 15, 1884, at the age of 49. Charlotte Astor also died of cancer, just a week before the hospital's grand opening in December 1887.