ABSTRACT – A Course Irresolute: The United States Marines Advanced Base Force in the Age of Theodore Roosevelt 1898-1909 The Marine Corps is enmired in an existential crisis. Forces beyond its control are pushing it to adopt new and novel missions, leading to a deep schism between those championing the status quo, and those interested in adopting innovation. The progressive side of the argument is that the Marines must change in order to support the Navy, and U.S. foreign policy, in keeping with national naval strategy. Conservatives charge that the changes that have already been enacted will result in an irrelevance of the Corps, and an eventual dissolution — their appeal to lawmakers to prevent the changes from going forward has found its way through the press and hallways of Congress. Hearings before the Committee on Naval Affairs, Subcommittee on Naval Academy and Marine Corps, begin today, Thursday, January 7, 1909. A conventional reading of Marine Corps history pai
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ENTERING THE GILDED AGE: U.S. NAVY AND MARINES 1867 - 1876
The decade following the Civil War witnessed a rudderless Navy. Bereft of appropriations, subject to the vagaries of partisan politics, lacking in public support, and itself myopic regarding technological advancement, the service suffered atrophy both in practice, and in innovations lost. But amidst this drift and atrophy, a kernel of resilience and innovation grew. The Marine Corps suffered no less than the Navy did. A much smaller service, with a simple mission to support the Navy, Marine leadership lacked in the imagination it had exercised openly only a decade earlier. Both in its Civil War leadership, and in the leadership of the following decade, the service failed to impress individuals in the Navy Department and in the Congress. The failure to make itself essential to the Union, and the Navy, meant the Marine Corps periodically had to fight for its very existence. In this essay we’ll examine the decline of the Navy and Marine Corps during the decade following