ABSTRACT
From the early nineteenth century up until the Civil War and arguably well beyond, the US Army officer corps was greatly imbued with Napoleonic ideas of war. The main characteristics of this style of warfare were the primacy of the offensive and the quest for decisive battle. The obvious corollary to these concepts was the belief that only by carrying the war to the enemy could officers win the glory Bonaparte and the French had taught them to covet. US Army officers imbibed these Napoleonic ideas of war at West Point, where Professor Dennis Hart Mahan, for example, taught the principles of military strategy from his own translation of a French text.
