Sunday, September 29, 2019

Major-General Henry Wager Halleck to Elizabeth Hamilton Halleck, December 14, 1861

St. Louis, Dec. 14, 1861.

MY DEAR WIFE: It is Saturday night and pretty late at that. My week’s work is ended and a hard one it has been. To-morrow I shall rest, at least a part of the time. Schuyler (Hamilton), Cullum and the other members of the staff, are pretty well worked out, but I feel in better working order than when I first came here. I have often felt that my powers of labor had never been fully tested, but now I have as much as I can possibly do. The task before me is immense, but I feel that I can accomplish it. I believe I can say it without vanity that I have talent for command and administration. At least I have seen no one here who can accomplish half so much in twenty-four hours as I do. I never go to bed leaving anything of the day's business undone. Nearly all back business is cleaned up, and everything is getting straightened out and put in its place. This is very encouraging and I begin to see my way through the chaos and corruption which Fremont left behind him. Of course all his satellites abuse me in the newspapers, but this does not annoy me in the least.

I enclose a letter just received from Mrs. Sherman. How do you suppose I answered it? I could not say her husband was not crazy, for certainly he has acted insane. Not wishing to hurt her feelings by telling her what I thought, and being unwilling to say what I did not believe, I treated the whole matter as a joke, and wrote her that I would willingly take all the newspapers said against General Sherman, if he would take all they said against me, for I was certain to gain by the exchange!

SOURCE: T. F. Rodenbough, Editor, Journal of the Military Service Institution of the United States, Volume 36, Issue 135: May-June 1905, p. 554

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