Why Marines of the Gilded Age?

 1APR21 Blog Post


Gilded Age Marines – Why am I doing this?


If you pick up a book on Marine Corps history, you’ll probably find a few paragraphs on the landing and battle at Guantanamo, Cuba, in June of 1898, during the Spanish American war.


If you pick up a book on Naval history of the era between 1897 and 1917, you may see a note that a forward base was established at Guantanamo before the Battle of Santiago, with or without a mention of a landing and battle fought by Marines.  


If you pick up a book on Army history of the era, or a more popular history of the war, you may not see any mention at all of Guantanamo, or the Marine action during the war.  


Yet, conventional wisdom regards the taking of Guantanamo as a pivotal point in the development of the USMC’s amphibious mission.  Marines embarked aboard ship, landed on a foreign shore, fought, and defeated an enemy holding that terrain. This is what Marines do, no?


Conventional wisdom also regards the ten-fold growth in the Marine Corps over the two ensuing decades as natural, organic process, as the US became a colonial power and prepared for World War I.  In 1897 fewer than 2600 men wore the uniform of a United States Marine ; in 1917 Congress authorized the Corps 1200 officers and 30,000 enlisted   Now that number wasn’t realized, the war ended before that many could be enlisted and trained, but evidently a lot of military leaders and elected officials realized the worth of a dedicated Marine Corps.  


But the growth wasn’t necessarily natural, nor preordained.  Forces within the services and Washington, DC,  were often times at odds over the path the Marine Corps would take between 1897 and 1917.  And the Marine Corps of 1917 looked little like the Corps of 1897.  


So what happened?  


Over time, the Marines finally adopted the role that the Navy had determined for it a decade before the growth began.  The history of these three decades, the last of the 19th century and the first two of the 20th, are fraught in regards to the continued relevance and survival of the Corps.  Periodically Navy leaders, some politicians and some Army leaders, called for the dissolution of the Corps. Progressive and conservative leaders within the Corps butted heads with each other on the mission, composition of the force, and how best to respond to the political threat to their survival.  


Despite consistent ambivalence towards the Corps, many Naval leaders understood the need for a force that could work with the fleet to secure advanced bases, where the Navy could refuel and refit, was intrinsic to the mission of the New Navy, but it wasn’t always evident that force was the United States Marine Corps.  Understanding the barriers the Marine Corps overcame, both external and self-imposed, in cementing their role going forward helps to explain the transformation made in these two decades.  


The purpose of this blog is to examine the conditions that made the Marine Corps necessary to the Navy, and the events that proved that need out.  We’ll examine the politics of the development of the Marine Corps, running in parallel to those affecting the Navy.  Available reports from the period, as well as biographies and narrative histories of Navy and Marine leaders will be broad in nature.  In many ways the history of the Marine Corps of the era is a sub segment of the history of the Navy.  


And, because the era is largely difficult to relate to, we’ll touch on topics easier to relate to.  We’ll look at the equipment, uniforms, duties, weapons, duty stations, tactics and staff of the Marine Corps, and how it became increasingly sophisticated and muscular as it adapted to newer missions. These details are essential to developing much of the context surrounding the actions, and provide color to the sepia tones of the era.  


Feedback will be appreciated.





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