Gilded Era Marines – 1897 : Setting the Stage 13 July, 2021

To Navy planners, as Captain Mahan observed in 1890, the Marine Corps would be the “backbone to any force landing on the enemy’s coast.” – Jack Shulimson, The Marine Corps Search for a Mission 1880 – 1898

Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan made this statement in 1890.  He was among the most influential theorists in the Navy in the last two decades of the 19th century.  One of the first instructors at the Naval War College, founded in 1884,  and author of The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 published in 1890, Mahan had delineated a mission for the Marine Corps that the organization would not be altogether prepared to shoulder for another decade.  Mahan understood that in an age before underway replenishment and nuclear power, a fleet required safe harborage in order to refit, refuel and rearm.  In foreign waters the Navy required a force that could secure said safe harborage, and the Marines seemed an decent fit.  The Marine Corps had other thoughts on where they should focus their attention. 

Since the Civil War, the United States Marine Corps had largely been intent on maintaining the status quo; Marines were primarily responsible for security aboard Navy ships with a secondary duty of manning secondary guns, and providing physical security at Navy Yards and Naval Stations.  Embarked Marine detachments periodically joined Navy bluejackets in landing parties in reaction to hostile moves against US commercial  interests threatened by civil or political instability.  

In extremis, the Corps would strip personnel from barracks and shipboard detachments to form ad hoc battalions to counter instability, such as in reaction to the Rail Strikes in the US in 1877, or Panama in 1885 when unrest threatened the rail line across the Colombian province of Panama.  The rail line, owned by Americans, was an essential means of moving people and product from the Pacific to the Caribbean and Atlantic prior to the construction of the pan isthmus canal, and was typical of the type of concern the US had in the Caribbean.  Upon orders from the Secretary of Navy, Marines were pulled from stateside billets, forming two battalions, commanded by Colonel Commandant Charles G. McCawley,  and transported to Panama. Deploying to either end of the rail line, and providing security aboard train cars crossing the isthmus. The rail line was governed by treaty with Columbia, and major factor in US expansion westward across the continent. 

Yet when the immediate threat to American interests receded, the Marine Corps would disband their ad hoc companies and battalions, returning Marines to their shipboard and Navy Yard billets.  No garrison of a permanent company, battalion or regiment existed ashore, and no unit larger than a battleship’s detachment of Marines was deployed in foreign waters.   By established mission the Marine Corps was inexorably linked to the Navy in the 1800s.  Marine barracks commanders reported to Navy Yard Commandants, much as shipboard detachment commanders reported to ships’ captains.  Yet there were leaders in both the Navy and the Marine Corps who sought a change in the Corps’ mission.  

As far back as 1831, when the Marine Corps came under the control of the Navy Department, their continued existence came under question.  Many Navy reformers followed the lead of Lieutenant William F. Fulam, USN.  An 1877 graduate of the USNA, he advocated, through the pages of the United States Naval Institute’s periodical Proceedings, for the removal of Marines from their ship board duties; on occasion he, and others such as Commander Bowman McCalla advocated for garrisons of Marines stationed ashore, or battalions on dedicated troop ships at sea, ready on quick notice to flex US muscle abroad when required.  What Navy officers weren’t interested in is the Marines as shipboard enforcers.  Fulam’s interests more broadly sought to improve conditions of sailors and officers aboard ship, through better training and discipline, better recruiting of native-born Americans, organizational improvements, and promotions.  Marines in the mix usurped power from officers and petty officers it was thought, and instances where shipboard police might be needed, such as mutiny, were extremely rare. 

His writing, along with the organizational improvement boards of 1890, including the Greer board, and the action of individual ship captains refusal to billet Marines aboard the newly built ships of the line, cast a pall over the future of the Marine Corps.  Many Marine officers, including future commandant John Archer Lejeune, saw the act of removing Marines from shipboard billets tantamount to the disestablishment of the Corps, or it’s absorption as a regiment in the Army, or repurposing as coastal artillery.  A trend that extended back as far as the 1840s, the question of the existence of the Marines would be revisited periodically for the next fifty years.  Only strong political patronage would allow the Marines the maintenance of their position in the Navy Department.  In the fall of 1897, a Navy board examining the reorganization of the Navy considered amalgamation of Marine officers into the ranks of the Navy.  

Reform had been afoot in the Marine Corps too; Commandants MCawley and Heywood both sought improvements in the fiber of officers commissioned, more professional schooling for officer and enlisted alike, and the improvement of life in the barracks aboard Navy Yards.  As Marines were permanent features of shore establishments, providing guards, fire watches and prison wardens in addition to a number of ceremonial functions, leadership focused on improving accommodations, duty schedules and entertainment.  A long term failure in the maintenance of these morale and welfare categories reflected in the high percentage of desertion in both Marines and sailors alike through the 1870s and 1880s. 

Some Marine reformers thought along similar lines to Fulam.  Colonel James Forney, who’d fought in the Civil War, and toured the European continent in 1872 proposed the formation of the Marine Corps into a Brigade, instead of a few dozen scattered detachments, in the form of three regiments in permanent formation.  Along the lines of commandants of the era he espoused infantry and artillery schools for Marine officers, and recommended the United States Military Academy be the source of Marine 2nd Lieutenants. Another reformer, Major Henry Clay Cochrane was strident in his call for the removal of officers of the old guard within the Corps, as well as the removal of Commandant Zeilin, a stance that didn’t endear him within the upper ranks.  1st Lieutenant George Barnett was among Marine officers who saw a future in the Marine Corps serving as “sea battalions,” ready to respond to the requirements of the Departments of State and Navy.  This sentiment only lagged behind Mahan’s by seven years.  

Of course, this mission would be thrust upon the Marine Corps in the Spanish War, and in turn the Philippine American War.  Yet Marines would continue to lobby for manning the secondary batteries aboard Navy dreadnoughts, and Navy leaders sought their removal from the fleet.  

So if you want to understand Marine Corps history of the late 1890s and beyond, I think you need to understand Navy history of the era too.  The Navy was underway in a long transformation from a defensive force, tasked with protecting domestic harbors, and conducting foreign policy via individual ships traveling from foreign port to foreign port, literally “showing the flag.”  Over the next several entries we’ll look at developments in the Navy since the Civil War, parallel Marine Corps developments, the Navy Yards and Naval Stations, the attendant Marine Barracks, and the ships Marines were embarked upon.  We’ll endeavor to show how the stagnation within the officer corps drove doctrine, up until the point where the Marine Corps could no longer deny the Navy “the backbone to any force landing on the enemy’s coast.” 

In exploring these developments, we’ll gain a better understanding of the position of the Marine Corps in 1897, and why that year was pivotal in Corps’ history.  1897 was in many ways the last year of the 19th century Marine Corps. As events in Cuba and the Philippines played out in 1899, and China in 1900, the old ways of ad hoc battalions mustering for an emergency and dispersing when the threat had passed would become history.  

In the next installment, we’ll examine the forces behind the modernization of the US Navy, and how they influenced Marine Corps navigation.