General Staff Act
General Staff Act (1903).The General Staff Act of 1903 culminated the reforms initiated by Secretary of War Elihu Root and provided the U.S. Army with a central planning body. The immediate impetus for creating such an agency was the chaotic mobilization for the Spanish‐American War (1898). Since the Franco‐Prussian War of 1870–71, 11 major powers had been creating some variant of the German General Staff. Root shepherded the legislation through Congress, but ran into opposition from congressional antimilitarists and Lieut. Gen. Nelson Miles, the commanding general of the army.
Miles helped to kill an ambitious general staff bill in 1902. A narrower law in 1903 provided for a small General Staff Corps, limited to forty‐five officers and assigned to the War Department. It also sanctioned the Army War College, a planning entity that Root had created in 1900. The...
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