alone among the services, require basic recruits and officers candidates to study their history as soon as they enter training. They all learn the important milestones that have defined the character of the Marine Corps and its ethos.
There is much to study in the Marines' twenty-two decades of existence, but a few defining moments stand out. These milestones — some predate the creation of the United States itself — are the historical structure which holds that ethos together. Let's take a look at them.
The Beginning: Tun Tavern, 1775
If you want to understand the Marine Corps ethos, it helps to start at the beginning. Created on November 10th, 1775, by the Second Continental Congress, the Corps served the new Continental Navy in the role Royal Marines had traditionally filled on board ships of the Royal Navy. Royal Marines were (and are) tough soldiers who suppressed mutiny and enforced discipline among the 'press-ganged' (in effect, kidnapped) ships' crews, manned heavy cannons, and gave the ship's captain a unit of professional soldiers for boarding enemy vessels or landing on an enemy shore. These missions were rooted in the history of the Royal Navy, and the leaders of the Continental Congress felt their new Navy should also have Marines.
Four weeks after their legislative creation, the first Marine unit was formed in Philadelphia, at an inn called the Tun Tavern. The beginnings were modest: just one hundred Rhode Island recruits commanded by a young captain named Samuel Nicholas, a Philadelphia Quaker and innkeeper. These early recruits were all volunteers (beginning a tradition that continues in today's Corps). They fought their first action in March of 1775. Embarked on eight small ships, they sailed to the Bahamas and captured a British fort near Nassau, seizing gunpowder and supplies. Later, during the Revolutionary War, Marines fought several engagements in their distinctive green coats, such as helping George Washington to cross the Delaware River, and assisting John Paul Jones on the
From these humble beginnings came the start of the traditions that make up the Marine Corps that we know today. Its ranks are filled primarily with volunteers, and its missions are joint (i.e., in concert with other services like the Navy) and expeditionary in character. But perhaps most important is that when duty first called, Marines were among the first organized forces of the new nation to be committed to combat. This tradition of being 'first to fight' is the first characteristic that their history brings to the ethos of the Corps.
The Halls of Montezuma…and the Shores of Tripoli
For a time following the Revolutionary War, the Marines were disestablished. But they were reborn with the revival of the United States Navy and its 'big frigates' like the USS
During this period the Marine Corps conducted a series of operations, known as the War against the Barbary Pirates, that defined its role for the next two centuries. Four outlaw states along the coast of North Africa (the 'Barbary Coast') — Algeria, Tunis, Morocco, and Tripoli — drew their primary source of income from capturing and ransoming merchant ships and their crews transiting the Mediterranean. For a time, the U.S. Government paid the ransoms, as other nations had done for years. But by 1803, the American and British governments had tired of this, and sent squadrons of combat vessels to suppress these maritime outlaws. Over four hundred Marines and other soldiers were committed to the effort, which inspired the line 'to
By the 1840s, the young United States of America had started to flex its muscles, coveting the tempting, sparsely populated, and vast Mexican territories of the Southwest. President James Polk, deciding to make this dream real, organized the conquest of Texas and California. Following the annexation of Texas in July of 1845, he dispatched Marine First Lieutenant Archibald Gillespie on a covert mission to the U.S. consul at Monterey, California, with special instructions for the takeover of that Mexican territory. Gillespie joined the famous explorer John C. Fremont, who led the California rebellion a year later.[2]
Meanwhile, the United States had declared war on Mexico. General Winfield Scott's invasion force included a battalion of about three hundred Marines led by Brevet Captain Alvin Edson. Landing at the Mexican port of Vera Cruz in March, 1847 aboard specially designed landing boats (the first purpose-built landing craft), they helped take the port in a matter of just two weeks. They also undertook a series of coastal raids to pin down other Mexican forces along the coast. Later, reinforced by additional Marines, the combined Army/Marine force marched on the Mexican capital, taking part in the final assault of the Battle of Chapultepec (September 13th, 1847).[3] The victory at the fortress of Chapultepec, the famous
While Marines took part in other actions, from quelling labor unrest to fighting in the War of 1812 and the American Civil War, it was these two conflicts just mentioned that defined the roles and missions of the Corps in its first century. Most notably, Marines fought alongside their Army and Navy brothers-in-arms, a precursor of the joint warfare so typical of today's military operations. The ethos had been born and was taking form.
Martial Tradition: The Music of John Philip Sousa
You do not need to be in the military to know that every organization has its own character or culture; for human groups spontaneously create culture. At IBM, it was conservative suits, John D. Watson's motto 'THINK' on every desk, and a silly company song. Within other organizations, like the Jesuits or the Baltimore Orioles, those who belong to them are empowered by their culture, which is articulated in their traditions, rituals, and collective memories. Employees or members of an organization use the symbols of their culture to identify their roles and missions in the world.
Music forms an important part of Marine tradition. Though the Corps formed a band in the 1800s to play at ceremonial functions around Washington, D.C., it was pretty much like other military bands of the period (i.e., loud and probably out of tune) until 1880, when Colonel Charles McCawley (the 8th Commandant) appointed composer and musician John Philip Sousa to lead the Marine Corps Band. Sousa created and popularized the Corps' martial music tradition. And in so doing, he revolutionized marching music and the bands that played it. He also composed a body of music that is at the core of Marine Corps tradition today. His compositions included 'Semper Fidelis' (1888), 'Washington Post March' (1889), 'King Cotton' (1897), and the most popular of all, 'The Stars and Stripes Forever' (1897). For a dozen years he led the Marine Band, taking it on tours all over the country and the world. The effects were both deep and lasting.
Since Sousa and his music were as popular in his time as Glenn Miller or the Beatles have been in ours, his band's performances were the 19th century equivalent of a recruiting commercial for young men of the period. More than that, in the age of global imperialism, the band's bright uniforms, the precision of their drills, and the inspiring qualities of their music left a positive impression of the Marine Corps in the public mind. Perhaps Sousa's most lasting contribution to the Corps, however, was forging the Marines' relationship with the President of the United
