Antebellum Military Science and the American Civil War

While faith in the Enlightenment was waning elsewhere by 1860, at the United States Military Academy at West Point and in the minds of academy graduates serving throughout the country Enlightenment thinking persisted, asserting that war was governable by a grand theory accessible through the study of ‘military science.’ Officers of the regular army and instructors at the military academy and their political superiors all believed strongly in the possibility of acquiring a perfect knowledge of war through the proper curriculum.

Dr Ian Hope’s talk will examine how the doctrine of military science evolved from teaching specific Napoleonic applications to embracing subjects that were useful for war in North America. He refutes traditional assertions of a lack of professionalization in the antebellum American army and an overreliance on the teachings of Swiss military theorist Antoine de Jomini. Instead, Dr Hope will show that inculcation in West Point’s American military curriculum…