Impact of Napoleonic Wars on US Military Thinking

The scale of war was dramatically different during the Napoleonic wars, large armies
of many conscripts compared to costly, highly trained regular armies in previous
times. Often these national armies would be augmented by mercenaries as was the
British Army in the Revolutionary War by Hessians. One of the problems that limited
army size was command, control, and coordination (C3) as well as logistics.
Napoleon mastered C3 earlier than his opponents and was able to use that skill to
his advantage. Maneuver was also one of the tactics Napoleon mastered. The large
scale of war also meant that the whole nation became involved in it somehow,
manufacturing weapons, uniforms and gathering supplies. Another skill Napoleon
had was to develop a staff that could manage the communications and battlefield of
a campaign. Napoleon also changed the supply strategy by foraging off the land
occupied thus simplifying logistics, but that meant an army must move.
Napoleon followed a merit based promotion strategy than the previous politically or
nobility connected method. This led to a more professional army for Napoleon
leading to greater success for him. This merit system also seems to have led to
greater intellectual inquiry and several books written by Antoine Jomini, staff officer
for Napoleon, and Karl von Clausewitz. Jomini promoted initiative or offensive
tactics, strategic maneuver and finding the decisive point or area of a battle. These
ideas became part of the coursework at West Point expanding the use and
acceptance of the principles in the US Army.
Von Clausewitz dealt with factors that complicate warfare, the fog of war and
friction during warfare (the difference between the ideal versus the real
performance of units in battle). The fog of war referred to the unknown or faulty,
incorrect and false intelligence that military and political organizations had.
Both Jomini and von Clausewitz were discussed at West Point prior to the Civil War
and many of the professional officers would have understood the concepts.
However Jomini was the leading of the two scholars. Two superintendents of West
Point, Thayer and Mahan, led the move toward Jominian thinking by West Point
graduates. Except for the Mexican-American war, many of the West Point grads
participated in exploratory activities that led to greater intellectualization of the
cadre. Mahan wrote books as well as some of his students on military topics. Other
officers traveled, mostly to European military training centers, to further their
professional knowledge and obtain knowledge of the best technologies to use in the
US. All of these activities indicated that the US Army was becoming a professional
officer corps.