An employee in various New York City banks, including that of John Jacob Astor, Halleck wrote only as an avocation. In collaboration with Joseph Rodman Drake (Drake, Joseph Rodman) he contributed the satirical “Croaker Papers” to the New York Evening Post in 1819, and on the death of Drake he wrote the moving tribute beginning “Green be the turf above thee.” Other popular favourites were the feudal romance “Alnwick Castle” (1822), “Burns” (written 1822, published 1827), the often recited “Marco Bozzaris” (written 1823, published 1825), “Red Jacket” (1828), and “Young America” (1865). Strongly influenced by the Scottish and English Romantic poets and Byron, he was a poet of slight but genuine gift.