Prologue
There are few completely spontaneous events in human history. There are usually several causes of events, and potentially a wide range of consequences. There can even be consequences to inaction —such as in realizing that something bad is about to happen, and then doing nothing to avoid it. It saddens me to say that for well over two-hundred years, the American people have proven time and again that they are incapable of learning history’s lessons, or worse, lack the ability to predict the likely consequences of their behavior.
The outbreak of the American Civil War was not a spontaneous event. The discord and virulent hatred that evolved into civil war began at a much earlier time — even, perhaps, in the formative years of the nation, during and after the Constitutional Convention (5 May – 17 September 1787) when Americans began organizing themselves into political parties. This conflict continues to exist today.
Regional Radicalization
Owen Brown and Ruth Mills, of Torrington, Connecticut, sired eight children. They named one of these children John, who was born on 9 May 1800. John was named after his grandfather, Captain John Brown [Note 1]. Owen Brown was a tanner who later moved to Hudson, Ohio, which over time became an important center of anti-slavery activity and debate [Note 2]. Thinking of it as his Christian duty, Owen offered safe housing and passage to fugitive slaves. It is likely that Owen brought his children up to abhor human slavery. Owen Brown was also one of the founders of the so-called Hudson School, a preparatory school consumed with the issue of slavery.
From early age, John Brown believed that his calling in life was to serve God as a minister of Christian gospel. Following prep-school in Massachusetts, Brown enrolled the Morris Academy (Litchfield, Connecticut) in preparation for becoming a Congregational Minister [Note 3]. Illness and lack of money, however, forced him to give up this ambition and he returned to Ohio where, like his father, he became a tanner. When Owen moved his family to Pennsylvania in 1825, John (with wife and children) accompanied him. The family settled in New Richmond where they operated a tannery and secretly provided aid to runaway slaves. It was part of a network called the Underground Railroad. Historians estimate that the number of runaway slaves that passed through Brown’s Pennsylvania farm was around 2,500.
Life was hard in the 1830s. In the Brown family, John lost his wife and an infant son to disease. In fact, of John’s six remaining children, only three survived to adulthood, but life goes on and John remarried a young woman from New York. They produced thirteen children, and of these, only three survived to adulthood. Due to economic depression in the late 1820s and early 1830s, John (as nearly everyone else in the country) suffered financially from a lack of business and increasing debt.
Economic depression caused thousands of people to uproot and relocate to new areas for a “fresh start.” Some people “skipped out” owing other folks money; some of these ended up migrating to Texas. John Brown moved his family to Franklin Mills (present-day Kent), Ohio. To achieve his “new start,” John borrowed money to begin a business partnership with Zanas Kent. Another economic crisis developed in 1839 and John Brown lost his farm. When the farm was sold to another family, John Brown refused to vacate the property and he ended up in prison. By then, John Brown had become a radical abolitionist.
In 1846, Brown moved again to Springfield, Massachusetts where he discovered people of means who emotionally and financially supported the abolition movement. At about the same time John Brown left Massachusetts in 1850, the United States Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act [Note 4]. Brown responded by organizing armed resistance to “slavers.” He called his group the League of Gileadites [Note 5]; they were men and women who sought to protect runaways and prevent the law from returning them to bondage. Brown was successful in doing this over several years.
In 1855, John Brown moved to Kansas, where his adult children and their families lived, and where they were experiencing threats of violence from local pro-slavery radicals. John apparently believed that it was his duty to protect his family from the effects of popular sovereignty, which after 1854, took on an increasingly violent tone [Note 6]. In 1856, pro-slavery activists began a campaign to seize Kansas on their own terms, which led to the term “Bloody Kansas.” By this time, John Brown was receiving substantial financial support from wealthy abolitionists in Massachusetts and New York, among whom, John Brown had become a hero.
Radical Politics to Terrorism
John Brown’s notoriety among northeastern abolitionists prompted him to shift his tactics from that of defending and protecting runaways to planning and implementing raids against “slavers.” To achieve his more militaristic strategies, Brown used the money donated to him by abolitionists to purchase firearms and ammunition. In 1858, Brown initiated the Battle of the Spurs [Note 7]. After Brown met with Frederick Douglass and George de Baptiste in Detroit, Brown’s activities became even more aggressive. De Baptiste came up with the idea of getting everyone’s attention by blowing up southern churches.
Brown’s new strategy included actively recruiting abolitionist raiders to assault southern slave owners. Joining Brown were such notables as Harriet Tubman. Frederick Douglass understood and sympathized with Brown’s overall goal of establishing a new state for freed slaves, but while Brown insisted on the use of force of arms, Douglass disapproved of any resort to violent action.
Brown’s radical aggressiveness led to his plan for the raid on Harper’s Ferry (then in Virginia). Brown reasoned that if he could free slaves in Virginia, arm them, and train them, then he could instigate armed rebellion against their oppressors. He imagined that a slave uprising would engulf the southern states. Why Harper’s Ferry? It was the location of a federal arsenal [Note 8].
John Brown rented a farm house with adjacent smaller cabins near the community of Dargan in Washington County, Maryland, four miles north of Harper’s Ferry. Along with 18 men (13 white, 5 black), he took up residence there under the name Issac Smith. Abolitionist groups shipped him 198 breech-loading .52 caliber Sharps Carbines and 950 pikes. Brown told curious neighbors that these shipments were mining tools, which aroused no suspicion among them. Brown would launch his raid from this property, known as the Kennedy Farm.
The armory at Harper’s Ferry was a large complex of buildings that manufactured small arms for the United States Army (1801-1861), with an arsenal (storehouse for weapons) thought to contain 100,000 muskets and rifles. Brown imagined he needed these weapons to arm southern slaves.
Initially, Brown’s raid at Harper’s Ferry was successful. His men cut telegraph wires, captured he armory (defended by a single watchman), and rounded up hostages from nearby farms. One of these hostages was Colonel Lewis Washington, a great grandnephew of President Washington. Although Brown controlled the railroad line that passed through Harper’s Ferry, he allowed an early morning train to pass through the town. When the train arrived at the next station, telegrams were dispatched alerting authorities about Brown’s seizure of Harper’s Ferry. Brown was not a stupid man; he wanted a confrontation with the federal government — but this is what Frederick Douglass warned him about. Attacking the federal government would bring down the wrath of the government upon him.
At the moment Brown commenced his raid, Lieutenant Colonel Robert E. Lee, U. S. Army, was on leave at his plantation home in Arlington, Virginia. After Secretary of War John Floyd learned of the raid, he summoned Lee to Washington and placed him in charge of recapturing Harper’s Ferry and bringing John Brown to justice. Colonel Lee would command all militia forces available in the area of northwest Virginia and all “available” regular forces.
The only regular force readily available at the time was a detachment of Marines from the Washington Navy Yard, and the only line officer available to command them was First Lieutenant Israel Greene, U. S. Marine Corps [Note 9]. At 23:00 on 17 October 1859, Lee ordered all militia forces gathered at Harper’s Ferry to withdraw. The next morning, he sent First Lieutenant J. E. B. Stuart to John Brown under a white flag with his order to surrender. Brown promptly refused. A few moments later, Lee ordered Lieutenant Greene to attack the engine house held by Brown.
Within three minutes of Lieutenant Greene’s order to advance, Marines captured John Brown and seven of his men; ten of Brown’s men lay dead, including his sons Watson and Oliver. Five other men managed to escape (including Brown’s son Owen). Of Brown’s captives, four men died (including Colonel Lewis) and nine received serious wounds.
The Nation Goes to War
The Raid at Harpers Ferry was the first pre-Civil War conflict involving federal troops, but one that involved US Marines in a significant role. In 1861, the entire Marine Corps numbered 63 officers and 1,712 enlisted men [Note 10]. It was the smallest of all services (and still is). As the smallest armed force, the Marines had an understandably limited involvement in civil war battles. None of America’s armed forces were prepared for war in 1861. When war broke out, the Secretary of War and Secretary of the Navy scrambled to organize a fighting force. Secretary of War Simon Cameron asked Secretary of the Navy Gideon Wells for a battalion of Marines for service in the field.
Secretary Wells subsequently ordered Colonel Commandant John Harris to form a battalion of “disposable” Marines for field duty. Harris, in turn, ordered Major John G. Reynolds to assume command of a battalion consisting of four companies, each containing eighty men. Reynolds was instructed to report to Brigadier General Irvin McDowell, U. S. Army [Note 11]. At the same time, Secretary Cameron ordered McDowell to provision the Marine battalion, which had no field service equipment.
Not every Marine was happy about the prospect of service in the field. Second Lieutenant Robert E. Hitchcock [Note 12], who served as post Adjutant in the Washington Navy Yard, wrote a letter to his parents on 14 July 1861 informing them, “Tomorrow morning will see me and five other lieutenants and 300 Marines on our way to the Fairfax Courthouse to take part in a great battle. This is unexpected to us because the Marines are not fit to go to the field …”
Major Reynolds was a good choice to command the battalion. A veteran of the Mexican American War with 35 years of military service, Reynolds knew what to expect from the upcoming battle. His troops, however, were untrained, inexperienced, and had no idea what awaited them. All four of Reynold’s companies were commanded by noncommissioned officers. More than a few of these 328 Marines had been in the Marine Corps for less than a week. On average, the average length of service for the Marines of this battalion was two months. Of the total number, only seven privates had ever smelled the stench of gunpowder.
Reynold’s executive officer was Major Jacob Zeilin and his few officers were young lieutenants assigned as staff officers, none of whom were available for line assignments. As the battalion made its way through Washington DC, excited citizens clapped and cheered. Once in Virginia, however, Reynold’s Marines became just another group in a long line of march behind the West Point Battery of Artillery. Eventually, the Marines linked up with the Army of Northeast Virginia — the largest field army ever gathered in North America.
General McDowell intended to move westward in three columns. Two of these would make a diversionary attack on the Confederate line at Bull Run; his third column would maneuver around the Confederate right flank to the South. He believed this strategy would serve to deny reinforcements from Richmond and threaten the Confederate rear. His assumption was that when faced with an attack from the rear, the rebels would abandon Manassas and fall back to the Rappahannock River, thus reducing the likelihood of a Confederate march on the US capital. That was the plan [Note 13].
McDowell attached Major Reynold’s battalion to the 16th US Infantry, which was part of the brigade of Colonel Andrew Porter. Of the Marines, Porter observed, “The Marines were recruits, but through the constant exertions of their officers had been brought to present a fine military appearance, but without being able to render much active service.” As the Marines were not, at the time, US infantry (their duties and training being more focused on naval service), Reynold’s battalion was attached to Porter’s artillery where they could be utilized as its permanent support (ammo carriers). With this decision, Porter seemed to have reduced the possibility that the Marines would see much fighting.
McDowell led his unseasoned army across Bull run against Brigadier General P. G. T. Beauregard. His plan depended on speed and surprise, but his southward march took twice as long as expected, there were problems with issuing supplies, his columns became disorganized, and several regiments lost their way after darkness set in. According to a diary kept by Major Reynolds, the artillery unit to which he was assigned contained six horse-drawn cannons. These elements kept racing ahead of the Marines at every opportunity. “The battery’s accelerated march was such as to keep my command more or less in double-quick time; consequently, the men became fatigued or exhausted in strength.” Northern Virginia’s July temperature added to the Marine’s fatigue.
Union Brigadier General Ambrose Burnside’s brigade fell upon the Confederate left, which was held by Colonel Nathan Evans’ under-strength brigade. Captain Charles Griffin’s battery, followed closely by Marines, crossed the creek and opened fire from a range of about 1,000 yards. Their rifles had an effective range of 500 yards. Evans was initially at a disadvantage, but the inexperienced union troops soon buckled under intense Confederate fire and began to fall back. Porter’s brigade held firm, but the arrival by train of Confederate reinforcements under Brigadier General Joseph E. Johnson changed the dynamic of the battle. A brigade of Virginians under a recently promoted Brigadier General by the name of Thomas J. Jackson rallied at Henry House Hill.
Griffin’s artillery was augmented by the artillery battery of Captain J. B. Ricketts. With this artillery support, the US infantry was ordered to take Henry House Hill. Major Reynold’s battalion lined up with the 16th US Infantry. The fighting was intense, but indecisive until the unexpected arrival of an unknown regiment. Griffin wanted to fire on the dark-clad soldiers, but McDowell’s artillery chief, Major William F. Barry, ordered Griffin to withhold his fire. Barry thought the mysterious regiment was Union reinforcements. They weren’t. Colonel Arthur Cummings’ 33rd Virginia Regiment unleashed murderous fire on Griffin’s gunners and the Marines. Brigadier General Bernard Bee, CSA was so impressed by Jackson and his men that he shouted, “There is Jackson, standing like a stone wall. Let us determine to die here, and we will conquer. Let us rally behind the Virginians!” This is how Brigadier General Jackson became known as “Stonewall Jackson.”
The overwhelming fire delivered upon the Union force caused them to break and run. It was the sensible thing to do, but their rapid withdrawal permitted the Virginians to overrun Griffin’s artillery. “That was the last of us,” Griffin reported. “We were all cut down.” [Note 14].
Major Reynolds feverishly attempted to rally his Marines, but another confederate charge drove Reynolds from Henry House Hill. In his after-action report, Brigadier General Porter commended the Marines: “Major Reynolds’ Marines, whose zealous efforts were well sustained by his subordinates, two of whom, Brevet Major Zeilin and Lieutenant Hale, were wounded, and one officer, Lieutenant Hitchcock, lost his life.” In addition to Lieutenant Hitchcock, nine enlisted Marines were killed in action, sixteen received serious wounds, and twenty Marines were taken prisoner. Nevertheless, the Commandant of the Marine Corps was not pleased. “The first instance recorded in its history where any portion of the Corps turned their backs to the enemy,” he said.
The Commandant was unnecessarily harsh on these men. They were untrained recruits and therefore unqualified for duty in the field. They were the least trained troops in McDowell’s army, and yet … they gave a good account of themselves at the First Battle of Manassas. Their 13% casualty rate was equal to every other regular army battalion, including the most experienced unit in the Union army at Bull Run. The only people pleased with the result of the Battle of Bull Run were the Confederates — and their spy in Washington, Rose O’Neale Greenhow, of course.
With the Union army receiving priority for funding, Congress only slightly enlarged the Marine Corps … and only then because in doubling the size of the Navy, the Navy demanded an increase in the number of ships detachments. After staffing ship’s detachments, the Marines could only man a single polyglot battalion at any given time. Because the Marines of shipboard detachments performed most of the amphibious assaults in capturing enemy bases, there was scant need for a standing Marine battalion. Still, capturing enemy bases was no easy task as it required more manpower that was available within a small Marine Detachment aboard ship. More to the point, throwing Marines together under officers and NCOs they did not know hardly made them into a lethal landing force. Fort Sumter at Charleston, S. C. in 1863 is a case in point.
Through the summer of 1863, the city of Charleston had withstood every Union offensive. After Rear Admiral John A. Dahlgren replaced Admiral Samuel DuPont as commander of the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron, he proposed a joint Navy-Army assault to seize outlying Morris Island and then move on Fort Sumter itself. He asked Secretary Welles for an extra battalion of Marines to be combined with another battalion assembled from several ship’s detachments. Colonel Commandant Harris assembled a disparate group of Marines — from recruiters to walking wounded — designated them a Marine battalion, and placed them under the command of Major Zeilin, who was still recovering from his wounds.
Admiral Dahlgren and Brigadier General Quincy A. Gillmore, U. S. Army (an engineer) agreed to begin their campaign with the seizure of Fort Wagner on Morris Island. Gillmore made good use of a new artillery piece called the Billinghurst Requa Battery Gun; it consisted of 25 rifled barrels mounted on a field carriage and was capable of rapid fire.
On 10 July 1863, Gillmore’s troops landed safely on the far side of the island, but the next day encountered stiff resistance and were repulsed. The following week, Colonel Robert G. Shaw led a doomed assault on Fort Wagner, spearheaded by the 54th Massachusetts Infantry, a black regiment. Shaw and 54 of his men were killed, and another 48 men were never accounted for. Other regiments from New York, Connecticut, and New Hampshire were equally decimated by unwavering defenders. After these overwhelming failures, Gillmore called off his planned-for all-out attack and instead ordered his engineer to dig a number of snaking approach trenches. As the engineers dug, Gillmore directed calcium floodlights at the defenders (another innovation), which blinded the defenders enough to disrupt accurate rifle fire. The soil on Morris Island had a sandy top layer with a muddy base, so the engineers began uncovering the decomposing remains of soldiers killed in earlier attempts to seize Fort Wagner. Disease, bad water, and decomposing bodies demoralized the Union engineers.
Admiral Dahlgren planned for Zeilin’s Marines to make a landing and support Army troops already ashore, but Zeilin objected. He argued that his force was “ … incompetent to the duty assigned, that sufficient sacrifice of life had already been made during this war in unsuccessful storming parties.” Major Zeilin also complained that too many of his Marines were raw recruits and that the climate was unsuitable to properly train them. Admiral Dahlgren was not at all pleased by Zeilin’s objections, but he cancelled the landing.
When Major Zeilin fell ill, Captain Edward M. Reynolds (son of then Lieutenant Colonel George Reynolds) assumed command of the battalion. After the surprising Confederate withdrawal of Fort Wagner, Admiral Dahlgren moved swiftly to attack Fort Sumter. On the evening of 8 September, five-hundred Marines and sailors in 25 small boats, under the direction of Commander Thomas H. Stevens, prepared to assault the fort. That very night, Dahlgren learned that Gillmore was planning a separate boat attack. Attempts to coordinate the attack faltered over the question of whether the Army or Navy would exercise overall command.
Meanwhile, the Confederates, having captured a Union code book, deciphered Dahlgren’s signals and knew when and where to expect the attack. Confederate fort and batteries surrounding Fort Sumter trained their guns on Sumter’s seaward approaches. CSS Chicora (an ironclad) waited in the shadows behind the fort. Captain Charles G. McCawley (future Commandant) was the senior Marine officer in the night assault. He later recalled a lengthy delay before the landing boats were launched, great confusion within the landing force once they boarded the landing craft, and a strong tide that separated the landing craft once ordered ashore.
When the landing force came within range, Confederate sentries fired a signal rocket to alert harbor batteries to commence firing. Of the 25 boats assigned to Marines and sailors of the assault force, only eleven made it to shore. The amphibious assault collapsed within twenty minutes. Only 105 Marines survived the assault, and they surrendered to Confederate forces because they had no other choice. Twenty to thirty captured Marines died at the Andersonville Prison in Georgia.
In the fall of 1864, General William T. Sherman had taken Atlanta and headed east toward the sea. Sherman requested that Major General John Foster seize the Charleston-Savannah Railroad line at Pocotaligo by 1 December. Doing so would protect Sherman’s flank as he approached Savannah. Foster failed to win the fight at Honey Hill (Boyd’s Neck) and the rail line remained in Confederate hands. Sherman then turned to the Navy, who assembled 157 Marines under First Lieutenant George G. Stoddard. According to Stoddard, “Soon after dark on the 5th, I received orders from the Admiral to form my battalion and proceed on board the Flag Steamer Philadelphia for an expedition up the Tulifinny River. Embarked about midnight under orders to land the next morning, cover the land of artillery, and advance on the enemy.”
At dawn the next day, a combined force of Marines, sailors, and soldiers landed at Gregorie Point, South Carolina, advanced on the right of the naval battery, and came under fire at about 11:00. Stoddard deployed his battalion as skirmishers on the right and advanced into the wood beyond Tulifinny crossroads, pushing the enemy back. With the Gregorie Plantation house in Union possession, the force moved quickly toward the Charleston-Savannah line and surprised the 5th Georgia Infantry. A corps of 343 cadets from the Citadel bivouacked four miles away heard the gunfire and quick marched to Gregorie Point.
Early on the morning of 7 December, the cadets and three companies of Georgia infantry mounted a surprise attack at the center of the Union position. Marines were at the center of the line, supporting army and navy field artillery batteries. As the cadets inched toward the Marine position, they came under withering fire. Undaunted, the cadets fixed their bayonets and mounted a charge against the Marine perimeter but were repulsed and forced to withdraw. Stoddard ordered a counterattack through the dense swamp. The fog was so thick that the Marines could not see a man three feet ahead. Citadel cadets filled the air with Mini bullets and after suffering many casualties, the Union troops withdrew to their line.
Union forces made a final assault against the Confederate line on 9 December. The Marine battalion formed on the right of a 600-man skirmish line. To the Marine’s right was the Tulifinny River; just ahead was the bivouac area of the cadets. Stoddard’s men came within fifty yards of the rail line before the 127th New York volunteers, to the Marine’s left, began a retreat. The Marines continued forward, but Stoddard soon found himself in great danger of being cut off. Without a concerted effort, the Union attack failed with Marine losses numbering 23 killed, wounded, or missing.
Fort Fisher is located at the mouth of the Cape Fear River in Wilmington, North Carolina. It protected the Confederacy’s last operational Atlantic port with 39 large guns and an assortment of smaller caliber weapons. Its earthen walls were 9 feet high and around 25 feet thick. On the morning of 14 December 1864, 75 Union warships and transports under the command of Admiral David Porter steamed south from Hampton Roads, Virginia toward Fort Fisher [Note 15]. The transports contained 6,500 soldiers under Major General Benjamin Butler. Delayed in transit by a storm, Porter began his bombardment of Fort Fisher (an estimated 20,000 shells) on 24 December. A landing party of 2,500 soldiers went ashore on 25 December, but withering Confederate defensive fires denied their advance. Butler called off the attack and Porter withdrew his fleet beyond the range of the fort’s guns.
A second attempt was scheduled for 6 January, but meanwhile Butler was fired and replaced by Brigadier General Alfred Terry. Another storm delayed the Union assault until the 13th when Porter’s ships bombarded the fort for two additional days. Terry landed 8,000 soldiers. Detachments of Marines and sailors assembled for an amphibious assault, numbering around 1,600 sailors and 400 Marines armed with cutlasses and revolvers. This force was divided into four companies under Captain Lucien L. Dawson with Navy Commander Randolph Breeze appointed as landing force commander.
There is nothing simple about an amphibious assault. In this instance, the assault boats ran aground in the rough surf leaving the Marines and sailors with no other option than to abandon the landing boats for the crashing waves and endure grapeshot and shrapnel killing them in droves. A few hundred yards from the fort, the landing party occupied previously dug rifle trenches and waited for the order to mount a frontal assault —the deadliest of all engagements. The signal to attack came at around 15:00, prompting sailors and Marines to approach the fort’s palisades in single file. Observing from aboard ship, a young Navy lieutenant named George Dewey wrote of the bloody fiasco, “ … It was sheer madness.”
It was supposed to be a coordinated attack, but Brigadier General Terry held back his troops on the Confederate left. Instead, sailors and Marines fought hand-to-hand engagements with Confederate defenders for the next six hours. Dawson had no time to reorganize his companies after such engagements as he was constantly on the move responding to Commander Breeze’s orders to “move up.” When the attack began to fail, Dawson rallied two companies of Marines to provide covering fires for the withdrawing sailors and Marines. Several Marines spontaneously joined the Army’s assault on the main parapet early in the evening, thus helping to overrun Fort Fisher. Confederate losses were 400 killed in action and 2,000 taken as prisoners of war. Terry’s force lost 900 men, the Sailors and Marines lost an additional 200 men killed with 46 more wounded or missing. Of the total of Marines, six were later awarded the Medal of Honor for their actions in the Battle of Fort Fisher.
Conclusion
Despite these “land battles,” which yielded mixed results, the main contribution of Marines during the Civil War was their service aboard ship on blockade duty and inland river flotillas. At Mobile Bay in August 1864, Marines blocked an attempt by Confederates to ram USS Hartford, Admiral Farragut’s flagship. Corporal Miles M. Oviatt, aboard USS Brooklyn, and seven other Marines, received the Medal of Honor for their role in that engagement. Admiral Samuel DuPont once stated, “A ship without Marines is not a ship of war at all.”
Considering the enormity of the American Civil War, the role of the United States Marine Corps was small — but then, the Marine Corps was small. Yet in the context of the missions assigned to the Marines, they excelled in every task assigned to them. They didn’t win every engagement — for all kinds of reasons, but they gave their all. Equally important, however, was the fact that the Marines, as an institution, learned important lessons that would prepare them for future conflicts.
Marines learned, for example, that there is no substitute for quality training, rehearsed landing operations, mastering the art and science of embarkation, the importance of unity of command, and meticulously coordinated landings with naval gunfire support. Within 33 years, the First Marine Battalion was the first infantry force to land during the Spanish-American War; 19 years after that, they acquitted themselves with aplomb and lethality as part of the American Expeditionary Force. In the decade following the Great War, they developed amphibious warfare doctrine, published the Landing Party Manual (which incorporated lessons learned from the failure at Fort Fisher), developed the Small Wars Manual, established the foundation of the Marine Air Wing, developed specialized equipment for advanced base defense, amphibious operations, and organized themselves for the crucible for an even greater war and dozens of unexpected crises. Our political leaders may lack foresight, but this is not a failure of Marine Corps’ leadership.
Sources:
- Alexander, H. D. The Battle History of the U. S.Marines: A Fellowship of Valor. Harper-Collins, 1999.
- Heinl, R. D. Soldiers of the Sea: The U. S. Marine Corps. Annapolis: U. S. Naval Institute Press, 1962.
- Jones, J. P. And Edward F. Keuchel. Civil War Marine: A Diary of the Red River Expeditions, 1864. Washington: Headquarters, U. S. Marine Corps, 1975.
- Krivdo, M. E. What are Marines For? The United States Marine Corps in the Civil War Era. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2011.
- Nalty, B. C. United States Marines at Harper’s Ferry and in the Civil War. Washington: Headquarters, U. S. Marine Corps, 1983.
Endnotes:
[1] Captain Brown’s ancestors were Puritans in New England.
[2] One of the people apprenticed to Owen Brown to learn the tanning trade was a man named Jesse Grant, the father of Ulysses S. Grant.
[3] Congregationalists were reformed protestant assemblies that distanced themselves from centrally proscribed traditions in order to govern themselves through democratically minded parishioners.
[4] The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 required “free states” to aid “slave states” in the return of runaway slaves and imposed severe penalties on those who aided and abetted in the escape of slaves.
[5] This name is biblical in origin. Mount Gilead is remembered as the place where only the bravest of Israelis gathered to confront an invading enemy.
[6] The Kansas-Nebraska Act mandated popular sovereignty, where territorial settlers decided for themselves whether to allow slavery within a new state’s borders. Following secession of eight southern states in 1861, Kansas was admitted to the Union as a free state. This was one of John Brown’s goals.
[7] The so-called Battle of the Spurs took place while John Brown and twenty-one of his followers (including women and children) escorted twelve escaped slaves from Missouri to Iowa, a free state. Near Straight Creek, Brown encountered a posse of around 45 lawmen and bounty hunters hoping to earn the $3,000 bounty placed on John Brown. Undaunted, Brown led his party ahead. Brown was an imposing figure and — to be perfectly honest, he appeared deranged. Terrorized, the posse turned their horses and fled. The term “Battle of the Spurs” euphemistically refers to the posse “giving their horses the spur” in distancing themselves from John Brown.
[8] It wasn’t as if Brown’s intended raid at Harpers Ferry was a closely held secret. Brown had recruited British mercenary Hugh Forbes to train his men in warfare, and Forbes held nothing back about what he was doing. When Brown refused to pay Forbes more money for his services, Forbes traveled to Washington to meet with senators William H. Seward and Henry Wilson, informing them that Brown was a vicious man who needed restraint. Wilson, in turn, wrote to his abolitionist friends advising them to get Brown’s weapons back. A Quaker named David Gue sent an anonymous letter to War Secretary Floyd on 20 August 1859 warning him of a pending insurrection.
[9] Although born in New York and raised in Wisconsin, Israel Green resigned his commission in the US Marine Corps and joined the Confederacy. What may have prompted this decision was the Greene had married a woman from Virginia. In 1873, Greene migrated from Clarke County, Virginia to Mitchell, Dakota Territory where he worked as a civil engineer and surveyor. He passed away in 1909, aged 85 years.
[10] Only 16 officers resigned their Marine Corps commission to join the Confederacy at the beginning of the Civil War.
[11] McDowell graduated from the USMA with initial service in the 1st Artillery. He later served as a tactics instructor before becoming aide-de-camp to General John E. Wool during the Mexican-American War. Between 1848-1861, McDowell served as a staff officer with no foundation in command of troops when he was appointed to serve as a brigadier general in May 1861, a product of the efforts of a close family friend, Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase. To McDowell’s credit, he protested his assignment to command the Army of Northeast Virginia, arguing that he was unqualified to serve as a field commander. His field of expertise was logistics. Moreover, he realized that his troops were poorly trained and not ready for combat service. Succumbing to political pressure, however, McDowell initiated a premature offensive against the Confederate forces in Northern Virginia and was soundly defeated on every occasion. It did not help matters that high ranking Union civilian and military officials funneled McDowell’s battle plan to Rose O’Neale Greenhow, who sent them to Confederate General P. G. T. Beauregard. See also, Little Known Legends. In any case, McDowell’s plan was ambitious, imaginative, and overly complex. None of McDowell’s subordinate commanders could execute them, nor their men execute them.
[12] Hitchcock also participated at Harpers Ferry; he was killed during the Battle of Bull Run.
[13] No battle plan survives the first shot fired.
[14] Civil War officers, if they were not friends, knew one another. Whether serving the Union or Confederacy, they all had the same instruction at the USMA, they fought together in the Mexican-American War, served together at various posts and stations after 1848. Field generals could, therefore, anticipate what his opponent would (or would not) do.
[15] David Dixon Porter (1813-1891) was a member of one of the most distinguished families affiliated with the United States Navy. He was the second Navy officer to achieve the rank of admiral, after his adopted brother David Farragut, and is credited with improving the Navy as a Superintendent of the U. S. Naval Academy. He was a cousin to Major General Fitz John Porter of the Union Army.
Fix Bayonets! 