On a rough average of once every eleven years since 1829, the U. S. Marine Corps has found itself compelled to fight for existence—not against enemies of the United States, but against enemies of the Marine Corps.
These attacks have come equally from all quarters, from War Department, Navy Department, White House; from efficiency experts, budgeteers, brass-hats, and Presidents. Habitually, every attack has been justified as a move to get rid of “needless duplication.” No attempt has ever succeeded, and several have touched off legislative action which further strengthened the Marine Corps. The rock on which all but one of these proposals foundered has been Congress— in other words, the will of the people.
If ever an organization has thrived on attempts to abolish it, it is this small Corps with one foot in the sea, one foot on land, and its head perpetually under the sword of Damocles. The battlefield and beachhead victories of the Marine Corps need no advertisement. Not so well known, on the other hand, is the Corps’ durability in the face of ten successive attempts (all launched from within the U. S. Government) to legislate, administer, or remodel the U. S. Marine Corps out of existence.
Like a cat with more than nine lives, however, the Marine Corps has emerged safe and sound from each ordeal, and, if anything, it has prospered on opposition.
Andrew Jackson’s Waterloo
On December 8, 1829, President Andrew Jackson, himself a fighting general of no mean standing, struck consternation throughout the Marine Corps by a passage in his first annual message to Congress:
“I would also recommend that the Marine Corps be merged in the artillery or infantry, as the best mode of curing the many defects in its organization. But little exceeding in number any of the regiments of infantry, that corps has, besides its Lieutenant-Colonel Commandant, five brevet lieutenant-colonels, who receive the full pay and emoluments of their brevet rank, without rendering proportionate service. Details for Marine service could well be made from the artillery or infantry, there being no peculiar training requisite for it.”
The Marine Corps had been in existence 54 years. Its Commandant, Lieutenant Colonel Archibald Henderson (who was destined, before retirement, to outlast ten Presidential administrations), had already had his worries in keeping the tiny Corps (1800 strong) a going concern. In 1821, less than a year after he had taken office on the heels of a ne’er-do-well predecessor deposed by general court martial, the Secretary of the Navy had tried to abolish the offices of Commandant and Quartermaster of the Corps and to replace the two key Marine officers by civil servants. In 1824, things were still far from rosy, as witness Henderson’s prophetic plaint to the Secretary of the Navy:
“Our isolated Corps, with the Army on one side and the Navy on the other (neither friendly), has been struggling ever since its establishment for its very existence. We have deserved hostility from neither, especially the Navy.”
To make matters worse, real doubt existed as to the legal and administrative status of the Corps. Some believed the Marines to be part of the Army; others, part of the Naval Establishment; and still a third faction held the Corps to be autonomous. These administrative headaches had begun to throb in the late 1820’s, and it is hardly a surprise to find the incumbent Secretary of the Navy, John Branch, firmly aligned with the President on the Marine Corps problem. Said Branch, in effect, to Congress, “Either settle the status of the Corps or get rid of it.”
So, in early 1830, the survival of the Marine Corps was squarely up to Congress. “On this point,” to quote Secretary Branch,
“the opinions of many of the superior officers of the Navy were called for, and presented to the honorable Chairman of the Committee on Naval Affairs by the Senate, during the last session of Congress. These, it appeared, were by no means in accordance with each other; and this diversity of sentiment amongst persons best qualified to determine the question has induced the Department to withhold any recommendation on the subject.”
Andrew Jackson, Army man by long experience and predilection with his conviction that the Marines needlessly duplicated the Infantry and Artillery of the Army, had also, however, steered his recommendation into the House Committee on Military Affairs. That committee, turgidly reported the Honorable William Drayton, its chairman, “took cognizance of the Marine Corps, in consequence of the expediency of merging it in the Army,” (Whatever that meant), and finally did not “think proper to interfere with” the status of the Marine Corps, but rather to pass the buck back to the Committee on Naval Affairs, where the President’s proposals were put to sleep and died.
Meanwhile, Colonel Henderson, quick and prompt in legislative matters as he was in combat, had laid down an aggressive defense with both the Naval and Military Affairs Committees, whom he bombarded with statistics and arguments regarding continuation of the Marine Corps. Equally to the point, when a new Secretary of the Navy, Levi Woodbury, succeeded Branch, Henderson undertook his education as well, in a characteristic letter:
“Sir—
“The Corps of Marines is one of the oldest in the service. As the exigencies of the Country required, it has served in time of War both the Navy and Army. No want of military efficiency nor of honorable performance of duty was then heard of. In peace no dereliction of duty has ever been more than once charged upon it, at least as far as I have heard. The propriety of any change in the organization of such a Corps is at the least questionable. As the Commandant of the Corps, if I thought such change necessary for the public interests, I should be among the first to recommend it. It is my fixed opinion that no such change will eventuate in the promotion of either economy or utility.”
Further Congressional action was definitely aborted, confessed Congressman Drayton to Henderson—President Jackson or no Jackson. The public, setting a pattern which still holds, had jumped into the foray with both feet, and the press (notably in New England) rallied to support the Marines.
The time now seemed ripe for counteroffensive, and Colonel Henderson pressed for Congressional action to protect the Corps and to remedy the organizational weaknesses which the controversy had uncovered. The result was that, on June 30, 1834, Congress passed “An Act for the better Organization of the Marine Corps.” This statute (spurred by Henderson and even by petitions from all the Marine officers on duty at Headquarters) firmly constituted the Marine Corps as a part of the Naval Establishment (although not a part of the U. S. Navy), directly under the Secretary of the Navy, and gave Archibald Henderson a substantially increased Corps to lead toward new laurels.
Andrew Jackson, having been afforded a good look at the back of Archibald Henderson’s hand, let go of the Marines in favor of more digestible game and signed the bill. The Marines, able at length to abandon the foxholes of Capitol Hill, returned with a single mind to normality—which then consisted of swamp and jungle fighting against insurgent Indians in the Creek and Seminole Wars.
Because the Jackson foray was the first of many to come and because it foreshadowed, crudely perhaps and in miniature, basic elements to be found in subsequent anti-Marine proposals, it might be well to examine it on the post-mortem slab.
Woven through the 1829 controversy ran threads of thinking which were destined to become deadly familiar to Marines during the next 120 years. Those propositions ran as follows:
a. The Marine Corps must be eliminated as a unit because it duplicated someone else (the Army, said General Jackson), and because it was administratively troublesome.
b. On the other hand, there never arose any question but that the functions or duties being performed by Marines had to be done by someone (the Army again, said General Jackson).
c. The proponents of the measure could never show that, even if someone else took over essential Marine functions, the latter would be any better performed.
d. Perceiving the closed-circle character of the foregoing propositions and realizing that this was manifestly an attack on the entity of the Marine Corps and not on its functions, Congress acted with logic and soundness on the side of the Marines.
This was a pattern destined to appear and reappear whenever opponents of the Marine Corps plotted its downfall.
Saved by the Admirals
It never took a house to fall on Archibald Henderson where matters concerning the security or improvement of the Marine Corps were concerned, and, by 1852 (six Presidents after Andrew Jackson), the venerable but vigorous Colonel-Commandant had amassed a special file of testimonials from the flag officers of the Navy regarding the usefulness and need of Marines in any well-run Naval Establishment: “All urge in the strongest terms,” it was stated,
“an increase in the Marine Corps, basing their view on the specific necessity of Marines for duty on board ship, owing to their usefulness and efficiency.”
In 1859 (as if this were not enough) in his Annual Report of December 2, the current Secretary of the Navy brought a reminiscent smile to brave old Colonel Henderson, by his comment:
“The Marine Corps is an indispensable branch of the naval service. ... It is a gallant little band upon which rests the most widely extended duties at home and in every sea and clime, without sufficient numbers to perform them.”
Only six years later, incredibly, after Archibald Henderson had finally sheathed his sword, the Marine Corps found itself at low ebb.
Most Marine fighting in the Civil War had taken place on shore, under the Army, and only one successful amphibious assault— that by Major Reynolds’s battalion against the Hilton Head forts—marked the Leathernecks’ record. True, Marines had fought and died on Henry House Hill at the first Bull Run (where, as a later Commandant, Major General Ben H. Fuller, observed, “Surely they were among the last to run”); they had soldiered at Island No. 10 and with Grant at Vicksburg. It was not surprising, therefore, in 1864, to see a Congressional resolution introduced with the aim of transferring the Corps intact to the Army.
Colonel Commandant Jacob Zeilin, newly appointed, heavily bearded, much shot-at since entering the Corps in 1831, and already famous as the first Marine officer to land on Japanese soil, moved aggressively in this crisis. Having learned his techniques as Henderson’s aide and protege, Zeilin without hesitation canvassed the senior flag officers of the Navy for their ideas on the status of Marines. The Admirals’ response was unanimous. With David G. Farragut, David D. Porter, and Samuel DuPont heading the list, the naval hierarchy opposed any such change, and Congress, wisely respectful of such authority, tabled the resolution.
Encore for the Admirals
On February 21, 1867, Colonel Zeilin— now, it might be said, a veteran of such affairs—was notified that a resolution had just been introduced in the House of Representatives, not merely to transfer the Marine Corps to the Army, but to abolish it entirely, after detaching its members to the latter service. The resolution, he noted, was being referred to the House Naval Affairs Committee, then headed by the Hon. Alexander Rice, a salty and conservative member from Massachusetts. In the course of hearings on the proposal, Zeilin again produced the sheaf of testimonials which he had employed with such success in 1864, together with new ones as well, and the Committee elected to concur with the views of Farragut, Porter, DuPont, Wilkes, Stribling & Co. The resolution was reported out adversely and died still-born, on the floor of the House of Representatives.
The Sailors Object
The early 1890’s marked the end of the doldrums in which the Naval Establishment had drifted since the Civil War. The Marine Corps, under efficient command of its 8th Commandant, Charles Grymes McCawley, seemed never safer. In 1890, the Admiral of the Navy, David D. Porter, had written:
“I have had the Marines under my observation since the year 1824, since I first joined an American man-of-war, a period of 66 years, and during that time I have never known a case where the Marines could not be depended on for any service. Without that well drilled force on shipboard, an American man-of-war could not be depended on to maintain discipline and perform the arduous duties assigned her. There is not an intelligent officer of the Navy who can speak anything but praise of the Marine Corps, or, if there are any, I cannot conceive upon what they can ground their opposition.”
If Admiral Porter had only known it, his closing sentence, quoted above, had a prophetic ring.
Within four years, in 1894, a determined minority group of younger Navy officers, spark-plugged by Lieutenant William F. Fullam, U. S. Navy, had launched a full- fledged attempt to force Marines off the ships of the Navy and, ultimately, into the Army.
Fullam’s initial test case (there were destined to be several during the succeeding fifteen years) had to do with U.S.S. Raleigh, whose Marine detachment, it was proposed, should be radically pared in strength and duties. This the Navy Department, after weighing pro’s and con’s, disapproved in favor of the Marines. What followed can be described in a subsequent letter from Major General George F. Elliott, 10th Commandant, to the Secretary of the Navy:
“The wishes of the movers of this proposition being thus frustrated by the Department, petitions were circulated for signature among the crews of the vessels of the Navy addressed to the Congress of the United States, asking for withdrawal of Marines on board ship. The attention of the Department being called to said petitions, the Secretary deemed it his duty to issue a Special Order reprobating this procedure on the part of the enlisted men, which was nurtured by the few officers previously referred to.”1
Although the sailors’ complaint undoubtedly had sub-structure in the occasional bad feeling which arose in those days between bluejackets and Marines (who were unaffectionately termed “policemen”), such an agitation could not have lasted five minutes without countenance by ships’ commanding officers.
Be that as it may, on July 31, 1894, Vice President Adlai E. Stevenson, presiding over the Senate, read into the Record the sailors’ petition, and, less than a month later on August 24, Senator Charles F. Manderson of Nebraska (a land-locked state in which almost half the counties are named for Army generals) introduced on behalf of Senator John Sherman (brother of Army General William T. Sherman) Senate Bill 2324, designed to consolidate five artillery regiments of the Army with the Marine Corps; to redesignate this body as a Corps of Marine Artillery; and then to transfer the whole Corps to the Army. This approach, novel to American ideas on the subject of Marines, followed closely the prevailing European fad which considered Marines primarily as coast-defense and fortress-artillery troops.
At this juncture, the sailors’ petition went to the Senate Naval Affairs Committee, which pigeonholed it promptly, on the very same day that Secretary of the Navy Hilary A. Herbert issued official reprimands to certain officers whom he believed responsible for instigating the petition and went further by promulgating Navy Department Special Order 16 (previously mentioned by General Elliott), in which the Department stated:
“Advantage is taken of this opportunity to state that the Department, after maturely considering the subject, and particularly in view of the honorable record made by the Marine Corps . . . is convinced of the usefulness of the Corps, both ashore and afloat, and of the propriety of continuing it in service on shipboard.”
Senator Manderson’s bill was referred to the Senate Military Affairs Committee, where it collided head-on, as in 1864 and 1867, with the disapproval not only of the Secretary of the Navy just expressed, but that of senior admirals of the Service. Following precedent, the Senators concurred in expert opinion and decided in favor of the Marine Corps as it was.
Fighting Bob Fights the Leathernecks
Captain Robley D. Evans, U.S. Navy, carried throughout his Service career the well-deserved nickname of “Fighting Bob.” He had begun earning it on the fire-swept beaches short of Fort Fisher, North Carolina, on January 15, 1864, by holding a pistol to the head of a surgeon who had announced intention of amputating his wounded leg. On this occasion—“about as bloody a place as a lot of men ever got into,” Admiral Evans later mused—he had observed the relative inefficiency of ships’ landing forces (including Marines) in the assault of a defended beach.
Almost thirty years later, still fighting and quite evidently undaunted by the Secretary of the Navy’s expressed views on Marines afloat, Captain Evans, now prospective commanding officer of the new huge (10,288-ton) battleship Indiana, asked that the customary Marine detachment be left off the complement of the ship, inasmuch as her demands in the way of a working crew left neither accommodations for Marines, nor billets, he felt, in which they could economically be employed.
On November 1, 1895, Secretary Herbert replied to “Fighting Bob.” First, to make matters clear, the basic request was disapproved. Second, for the record, it was prescribed that Indiana's Marine detachment would be composed of “One Captain, one subaltern and 60 noncommissioned officers, privates and musics.” These Marines were to be considered part of the working force of the ship; they would man certain guns of her battery, wherever possible under command of their own officers; and they would assist in all-hands evolutions such as provisioning, coaling, ammunitioning, and the like. To the present day, in fact, this letter sets a pattern of duties and responsibilities for Marines on board ship.
As if to set the seal on the matter and to follow up his repeated expressions during the past two years, the Secretary embodied in his Annual Report for 1895 a rationale of his views on Marines afloat. The modern ships of the “New Navy,” he pointed out, were complicated pieces of machinery, in which the crews had of necessity to be much more concerned with precise evolutions, drills, and weapons than in the days of sail. Following this generalization on the modern warship came his clinching particularization about Marines:
“It is precisely in infantry and gun drills that the Marine is, or may be, an expert. It would therefore seem that there is far more propriety in having the ship’s crew composed in part of Marines now than could have been in the days of the sailing ship. The having on board of two organizations, if a proper spirit of rivalry between the two is encouraged, ought to be considered another advantage.”
As far as Secretary Herbert was concerned, therefore, Marines were here to stay.
“The Marine Has no Place . . .”
Stubborn and combative as Marines themselves, the Navy opponents of the Corps were still bound to have their way. Evidence of their determination, and of the headway which their views had gained, may be found in the first 1896 issue of the U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings. This issue contained the Institute’s annual Prize Essays; the Honorable Mention paper, submitted by Lieutenant Fullam, was entitled, “Organization, Training, and Discipline of Navy Personnel as Viewed from the Ship.” Under this full- rigged title, Fullam moved swiftly to his ancient quarry, the Marine Corps. His essay contains such gems as, “The Marine officer has no raison d’etre . . . It is followed by a printed “Discussion” which is extraordinarily revealing, not only because of the intense anti-Marine feeling made manifest, but because it identifies many officers, destined for naval renown, who overtly espoused Fullam’s views. Extracts from this discussion follow:
Captain Robley D. Evans: “That I am opposed to Marines on board ship is pretty well known. . . . The more Marines we have, the lower the intelligence of the crew.” Lieutenant H. S. Knapp: “As regards the Marines, every day’s experience strengthens my conviction that they detract from rather than add to the discipline of ship life, and that they are room-takers and ‘idlers’.
Lieutenant Harry P. Huse: “The Marine has no place. ...”
Lieutenant Bradley A. Fiske: “I am strongly in favor of withdrawal of Marines from our modern ships. My reasons are exactly those stated by Lieutenant Fullam.”
Lieutenant A. P. Niblack: “It would seem the part of real wisdom to draw on the artillery of the Army for marine duty on board ship, if we are to have the present system.”
Lieutenant C. E. Colahan: “They have no place on board ship.”
Commander J. N. Hemphill: “Regarding the Marines, I think they should be turned over bodily to the Army.”
The foregoing statements have little significance unless we realize that those who made them (together with many others not quoted here) were largely destined to hold flag rank in subsequent years and would represent a definite hurdle for the Marine Corps to cross in the future. It must have heartened the Marine of 1896, however, to find such Navy men as Luce, Wainwright, and Ellicott supporting him and to read the spirited, closely reasoned papers submitted for the defense by Lieutenants Laucheimer and Doyen, two young Marine officers destined to go far.
The spatter of this bitter eruption was not long in coming to earth. A new presidential administration was in office, and with it a new Assistant Secretary of the Navy; the impetuous New York gentleman-politician and naval historian, Mr. Theodore Roosevelt, a “mover and shaker.” Under his chairmanship, in the all-powerful Bureau of Navigation, a Departmental board was soon convened in 1897 with the mission of studying and recommending measures for reorganization of the personnel of the Navy (Fullam’s project). Before the board had been long underway, one of its members arose with the resolution, “It is desirable that Marines be not embarked as a part of the complement of sea-going ships.” After heated discussion, a majority of the board disapproved, and the motion, like the sailors’ petitions, died on the table.
For the time being, the status of Marines afloat was safe if shaky. The Fullam wing was still a minority, though an increasingly influential one. Their cause, originally baldly aimed at getting rid of the Marine Corps, was now much strengthened by a refinement in tactics; the Marines made available by disbandment and withdrawal of ships’ detachments, urged Fullam, should be formed into shore-based battalions for employment with the Fleet. Had this proposal been wholly candid, rather than a stalking-horse to get the Marines ashore, and thence out of the Naval Establishment, it might have anticipated by a third of a century the formation of the Fleet Marine Force.
Nor should the involvement of Assistant Secretary Theodore Roosevelt be overlooked. A radical reorganizer by temperament and intellectual bias, Roosevelt had, at the outset of his naval association, fallen in with a keenly ambitious, articulate group-of “radicals,” so pro-Navy (as they would have described themselves) that they were apparently eager to maim the Naval Service by amputation of a trusted member.
“ . . . the Marines Should be Incorporated in the Army”
On November 10, 1906 (the 131st Birthday of the Marine Corps), Rear Admiral G. A. Converse, Chief of the Bureau of Navigation, testified before the House Naval Affairs Committee that Marines should be taken off sea duty and should be grouped ashore for expeditionary service and to safeguard Navy property. Less than four months later, Fullam, now a commander, was back in the ring, breaking his (official) silence of ten years by a letter to the Secretary of the Navy, Victor H. Metcalf, in which he reiterated his own and Admiral Converse’s proposals, now emphasizing the expeditionary battalions which might result. As endorsed by the Major General Commandant, Elliott, the Marine Corps views indicate a sense of weariness after more than a decade of nagging by Full- am & Co.:
“In view of the fact that this is simply a suggestion of Commander Fullam, and as it is not believed that the Department will consider such suggestion seriously, it is not deemed necessary on the part of the undersigned to enter into a lengthy argument to show that neither the Navy nor the Marine Corps will be benefited by said suggestion, but that on the contrary the efficiency of both services would be impaired.
“The continued desultory agitation of this subject simply tends to injure the efficiency of both the Navy and Marine Corps, and causes dissension amongst its various officers, which cannot but be injurious to the service as a whole.”2
If General Elliott really believed that Fullam’s proposal was unworthy of comment or concern, he was whistling in the dark, for he had already received intimations in early 1907 from Secretary Metcalf and from the Attorney General that trouble was brewing for the Marines.
Although Metcalf inclined toward the Corps as an essential part of the Naval Establishment, he in turn was well aware of the President’s feeling, which has been summed up by an eminent Roosevelt scholar in these words:
“Roosevelt considered that the Marine Corps major function was to act as an overseas garrison and police force. He believed that it could carry out this function more effectively as part of the Army...”3
While Metcalf remained in office, however, the line held, despite a proposal advanced in 1908 by the Army Chief of Staff that the Marine Corps be absorbed into the Coast Artillery. Fullam’s letter was consigned to the waste-basket, and his idea was shelved—for the time being.
On October 16, 1908, Rear Admiral J. E. Pillsbury, still another Chief of the Bureau of Navigation, as a final act prior to retirement from the Navy, addressed to a new Secretary of the Navy, Truman H. Newberry, an old suggestion:
“SIR: The Bureau is of the opinion that the time has arrived when all Marine detachments should be removed from United States naval vessels, substituting bluejackets instead. ...”
The Bureau of Navigation, long a center of anti-Marine feeling (and perhaps somewhat nettled by the Corps’ traditional autonomy directly under the Secretary), was now in the position of urging a proposal very near to President Theodore Roosevelt’s heart. He too, it seemed, wished not only to get the Marines on shore, but, moreover, to transfer the Corps, as he possessed Executive authority to do, to service under the Army.
“They have augmented to themselves.” (wrote Roosevelt) “such importance, and their influence has given them such an abnormal position for the size of their Corps that they have simply invited their own destruction. . . . They cannot get along with the Navy.”4
On October 23, 1908, therefore, over the vehement protest of General Elliott, the Secretary, acting on Presidential mandate, approved Admiral Pillsbury’s suggestion, and directed progressive withdrawal of the Marine detachments serving afloat.
In reply to Elliott’s agonized reclama, Secretary Newberry merely quoted President Roosevelt: “I know all about it—take them off!”
On November 9, 1908, eve of a Corps birthday which many Marines feared might be its last, General Elliott made his final plea, in person, to the President. “T. R.” was obdurate in his reply: “I believe in their removal.”
As Elliott subsequently testified before the Senate Naval Affairs Committee, this interview coincided closely with a proposal in The Washington Post (never a friend of the Marine Corps) that a force of infantry, artillery and cavalry forthwith replace the Marines stationed at Pearl Harbor Navy Yard. In Elliott’s subsequent words.
“Indeed, the Marines had reached the vanishing point. There was not a duty left. About three days after the President’s order, a general officer of the Army expressed a strong desire to embrace the Corps into the Army as infantry. While we had been quietly following our duties, elimination and absorption were casting, unknown to us, their shadows at our heels.”5
“The vanishing point” seemed at hand indeed when, on November 12,1908, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 969. This order restated the roles and missions of the Marine Corps, omitting conspicuously the time-honored function of service at sea.
To intimates, the President added that this was the first step toward transferring the Corps to the Army. In this inner circle, which included T.R.’s great and good friend, General Leonard Wood, Chief of Staff of the Army, Roosevelt’s views were not exactly secret, but Wood, nonetheless, sought a green light before openly proceeding for all- out annexation of the Marines. On November 28, 1908, the President wrote Wood:
“Dear Leonard:
“I have your letter of the 26th. You are quite welcome to quote me publicly in the matter. I think the marines should be incorporated in the Army. It is an excellent corps and it would be of great benefit to both services that the incorporation should take place.”6
During the winter of 1908-09, Marines were removed, by orders of Secretary Newberry, from thirteen major combatant ships, namely, the U.S.S. California, Idaho, Montana, South Dakota, Washington, Tennessee, New Hampshire, Mississippi, Connecticut, Maine, North Carolina, Vermont, and Charleston.
Congress, traditional preserver of the Marine Corps, was not so ready to swallow all this. On January 7, 1909, the House Naval Affairs Committee summoned before it Newberry, the Secretary of the Navy; Pillsbury, the offending Chief of the Bureau of Navigation; the Major General Commandant, Elliott; and a full panel of lesser advocates on both sides, including Fullam and Evans. For the next week, the fur flew. As the testimony unfolded, it became clear that Congress, in its own fashion, was conducting not merely an inquiry into a matter of ships’ detachments, but into the justification for the Marine Corps; and that Congress was using the hearings as a means of driving home to the Executive Branch (just as it would on many future occasions) the legislature’s conception of what the Marine Corps should be and do.
Foremost among those who testified in support of the Executive Order were: Fullam, Pillsbury, Helm, Winslow, Sims, Rodgers, Ingersoll, Evans, and Taussig. On the other hand, the Marines, outside their own ranks, could claim generous support from such naval officers as Schley, Goodrich, Brown- son, and Badger. Within the Corps, the witnesses in support of General Elliott read like a Marine Corps roll of fame: Littleton Waller Tazewell Waller; Lauchheimer, father of Marine Corps marksmanship; Feland and Dunlap, already marked as leaders and thinkers; “Whispering Buck” Neville, destined to serve as Commandant; Mahoney, Doyen, Denny, and Murphy.
The Naval Appropriations Act of 1910 returned the verdict. Passed by Congress on March 3, 1909, hours before the sands of T.R.’s administration ran out, that act included the following unequivocal proviso:
“Provided that no part of the appropriations herein made for the Marine Corps shall be expended for the purposes for which said appropriations are made unless officers and enlisted men shall serve as heretofore on board all battleships and armored cruisers and also upon such other vessels of the Navy as the President may direct, in detachments of not less than eight per centum of the strength of the enlisted men of the Navy on said vessels.”
And with that Congressional thunderclap, the issue of the ships’ detachments closed forevermore.
The affair of 1909 brought to a rousing finish the fifteen year cycle of opposition to the Marine Corps within the Navy. To students of these matters, these attempts to do away with the Marine Corps brought in real innovations in technique. Item one was the device not of attacking the entity of the Corps by all-out demand for its abolition, but of urging curtailment of the roles and missions which gave it vitality and raison d'etre. By depriving the Marine Corps of its then primary shipboard role, its ill-wishers reasoned that they would soon see the Corps withering on the vine, just as, under similar enforced constriction of roles and missions, the Royal Marines of Britain were shortly destined to fade into desuetude. The device was subtle and destined to reappear less than half a century later.
Item two in the innovations of 1909 was the bold use of Presidential executive powers to constrict the Marine Corps. Prior to the day of Theodore Roosevelt, executive steamroller par excellence, none had questioned the prerogative of Congress to arrive at all major decisions regarding the status of the Marine Corps. From that time on, however, the possibility of unexpected executive action, without recourse to Congress, remained a threat to the Corps.
Then as later, however, Congress possessed the insight to protect its Marines, and neither the attempted surgical removal of Marine Corps missions nor the danger of conference- table knifing by executive fiat met with any more success than the frontal attacks of years gone by.
Quiet Interlude, 1909-1932
The Corps was now destined for an interlude of quiet—one of the longest in the history of the Corps, at least as far as its domestic tranquility was concerned.
Even during this period, however, two attempted incursions deserve mention, although neither could be fairly described as endangering the existence of the Marine Corps as a whole.
The first of these forays was a seemingly obscure piece of legislation (drafted and proposed by the still new War Department General Staff) which essayed to regularize inter-Service command relationships. When mixed forces of the Army and Navy (including Marines) served together ashore, read this War Department bill, the senior Army officer present was to exercise command, regardless of the relative seniority of Marine or Navy officers with the force. This bill was actually passed by the Senate in 1912, but was stopped dead in the House of Representatives as its implications became clear. Colonel John A. Lejeune, subsequently to become 13th Commandant of the Marine Corps, had an active part in exposing the fallacy of this proposal insofar as the capability of Marine officers to command joint forces (which was at the heart of the matter) was concerned.
The second foray against the Corps marked the valedictory effort of the tenacious Fullam, now a Captain.
By 1912, the Marine Corps Advanced Base Force (precursor of the Fleet Marine Force) had become a reality. It was to be tested in the Atlantic Fleet Maneuvers of January, 1913 by an exercise involving the seizure and defense of the island of Culebra, P.R., a spot destined to hear the tread of many a Marine field-shoe in years to come.
Without the knowledge of Marines, Captain Fullam secured audience with the Secretary of the Navy’s “Aide for Operations” (as CNO was then known) and demanded that he—Fullam, a Navy officer— be detailed by the Secretary to command the new Marine Advanced Base Force. Fullam’s argument at that crucial conference speaks volumes for the mentality of those who had worked so unceasingly against the Corps: “ . . . the Marine Corps would never successfully accomplish the very difficult task assigned to it, of its own volition, but would have to be driven to do it.” (Italics supplied.)
Fortunately for the future of the FMF, Admiral Badger was then Commander-in- Chief of the Atlantic Fleet, and was present at Fullam’s conference. Badger had been one of the few Navy witnesses to take the part of the Marines in the Naval Affairs Committee hearings of 1909. If Fullam epitomized the Navy officer in opposition to the Marine, then surely Badger spoke for the long tradition, past and future, of admirals who have resolutely defended the Corps against intrigue and vendetta. Replied Badger to Fullam, “ ... he had never known the Corps to fail in any duty which it undertook, and that it would be an uncalled-for humiliation of its officers and men to accede to Captain Fullam . . . and that he would not stand for it.”7
It was to be almost twenty years before the Marine Corps again found itself in jeopardy.
Trouble in the Thirties
In the two decades between 1909 and 1932, both the Nation and the Marine Corps had changed perceptibly. The Corps had come through World War I with a sterling combat- record, and, fully as important, it had gotten well launched in its systematic rationalization of the tremendous problem of amphibious warfare. Ships’ detachments were no longer the principal characteristic organization of the Corps, and, in the lean years of the pacifist, anti-military 1920’s, the appropriations and troop strength of the Corps, frugal though they were, attracted wishful attention from without.
At the turn of the 1930’s, the President of the United States was Herbert Hoover and the Army Chief of Staff was Douglas MacArthur. Neither had particular reason to be counted among the many friends of the Marine Corps. From where General MacArthur then sat, the Marines represented competition and diversion of funds and manpower which the attenuated Army wanted badly.
The 1931 strength of the Corps was 18,000. In 1932, the Bureau of the Budget recommended appropriations for 15,343 Marines. And for 1933, President Hoover, whose controversy with Major General Smedley Butler had made headlines in 1931, recommended a further cut in Marine Corps strength to 13,600. As a yardstick for comparison, the total proposed reductions in the armed forces strength, 1931-33, were: Army, none; Navy, 5.6% reductions; and the Marines, urged the President, were to receive a 24.4% cut.
Shortly after Mr. Hoover’s economy message hit Congress, it was widely rumored that the President had on his desk an executive order which would transfer the Marine Corps (rs the President legally could) to service under the War Department. This order, it was said, had been drafted in the War Department for or by General MacArthur.
At the same time, the War Department set on foot a project to convert the 29th Infantry, then stationed at Fort Benning, Georgia, into a sort of expeditionary regiment which might attempt to carry out the type of expeditionary-force, readiness missions traditional to the Marine Corps.
Between the known fact of the ruthless budgetary mauling and the less known information as to the projected Executive Order, a public-opinion shock wave developed. Press and public rallied to defend the Corps. Major General Harbord, U. S. Army, (now retired and Chairman of the Board, Radio Corporation of America), went on the air over a national hook-up to defend the Corps whose 4th Brigade he had so dauntlessly led at Belleau Wood. Congress, ever quick to champion the Marine Corps, was johnny-on-the-spot in the persons of two outspoken members, Representatives Fiorello H. LaGuardia and Melvin J. Maas. Very little behind were the Naval Affairs Chairmen of the two Houses of Congress, Representative Vinson (long a Marine friend) and Senator Hale.
After a heated conference at the White House, the draft Executive Order disappeared from sight. A steady fire of statements and testimony from the Navy supported the hardpressed Marines, as elder statemen of seapower, like Admirals Hugh Rodman and Pratt and Secretary Adams, rallied to the cause. In January, '1933, the House Naval Affairs Committee, piloted by Vinson, voted down the proposed cut, restored the 18,000 strength, and, once again, Congress had proved to be the Marines’ champion. It would be fourteen years, with nothing intervening more eventful than a world war, before the Marine Corps would again fight for existence.
Merged, but not Submerged
The conclusion of World War II, like the end of every other major war in American history, brought to the United States a mood of profound self-examination in military matters. True, we had just won victory in a herculean contest, unequalled in the world’s history. But was this enough? Couldn’t we have done it better? Would not “a proper organization” have achieved miracles—and achieved them sooner and more miraculously than the undoubted miracles of 1941-45?
In such a mood as this, in the spring of 1946, the Joint Chiefs of Staff began a searching enquiry and debate into the proper future roles and missions for the U. S. Armed Forces. In the course of this great debate (whose proceedings, because of their national interest and implications, were ultimately made public by Congress), it became clear that the War Department (more particularly, its General Staff), abetted by the all- but-autonomous Army Air Forces, favored reduction of the Marine Corps to military non-entity. The missions of the Marine Corps, proposed the War Department, should in future be as follows:
(1) Security forces at Navy Yards and aboard ship.
(2) Maintenance of “lightly armed forces no larger than the regiment” for minor police actions.
(3) The “waterborne aspects of amphibious operations” (e.g., shore party, landing craft crews, amphibious communications personnel, and such-like miscellaneous jobs).
To effectuate such roles for a Corps which had lately fielded six elite divisions and spearheaded the greatest amphibious campaign in history, the Army and Air Force Chiefs proposed:
(1) That the Marine Corps be limited permanently to a ceiling of 50,000, with no expansion in wartime or on mobilization.
(2) That the Corps not be permitted to conduct combined-arms operations (with the unspoken but evident corollary that the Marine Corps should not be permitted use of the combined arms). Also that any amphibious operation requiring the combining of arms be commanded by the Army.
(3) That Marine Corps aviation be ceded to the Air Force.
Despite the candid and direct manner in which these recommendations were urged, they were anything but palatable to the 18th Commandant, General A. A. Vandegrift, victor of Guadalcanal. On May 6, 1946, General Vandegrift appeared before the Senate Naval Affairs Committee and presented the facts in a public statement which awakened Congress to the peril in which the Marine Corps stood. The following passage indicates the tenor of Vandegrift’s forthright testimony:
“In its capacity as a balance wheel, the Congress has on five (sic) occasions since 1829 reflected the voice of the people in examining and casting aside a motion which would damage or destroy the United States Marine Corps. In each instance, on the basis of its demonstrated value and usefulness alone, Congress has perpetuated the Marine Corps as a purely American investment in continued security. Now I believe that the cycle has again repeated itself, and that the fate of the Marine Corps lies solely and entirely with the Congress.”
How accurately and forcefully General Vandegrift had estimated the situation can be demonstrated by the ultimate Congressional reaction to his testimony, when, more than a year later, in passing the National Security Act of 1947, the Congress laid down in Section 206(c) what is now the charter of the modern Marine Corps:
“(c) The United States Marine Corps, within the Department of the Navy, shall include land combat and service forces and such aviation as may be organic therein. The Marine Corps shall be organized, trained, and equipped to provide fleet marine forces of combined arms, together with supporting air components, for service with the fleet in the seizure or defense of advanced naval bases and for the conduct of such land operations as may be essential to the prosecution of a naval campaign. It shall be the duty of the Marine Corps to develop, in coordination with the Army and the Air Force, those phases of amphibious operations which pertain to the tactics, technique, and equipment employed by landing forces. In addition, the Marine Corps shall provide detachments and organizations for service on armed vessels of the Navy, shall provide security detachments for the protection of naval property at naval stations and bases, and shall perform such other duties as the President may direct: Provided, that such additional duties shall not detract from or interfere with the operations for which the Marine Corps is primarily organized. The Marine Corps shall be responsible, in accordance with integrated joint mobilization plans, for the expansion of peace-time components of the Marine Corps to meet the needs of war.”
Crisis in 1949
The feeling of surcease and security which descended on the Marine Corps after passage of the National Security Act of 1947 was relatively short-lived. By 1948 it was apparent that forces hostile to the Corps still enjoyed audience. The operation of these forces was made manifest by such gestures as the point-blank refusal of Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson to allow the Marine Commandant to attend Joint Chiefs of Staff meetings, even on an informal basis, when Marine Corps matters were under discussion, and by evidence that, in lieu of the proven Marine division, some personnel planners of the Pentagon favored the Marine battalion landing team as the largest organized tactical unit which the Corps should have—a direct echo of 1946’s proposals.
Still more alarming was the Senate testimony in April, 1949, of Army Secretary Kenneth C. Royall that the President should, in the former’s picturesque verbal counterpoint, “make the Marines part of the Army, or the Army part of the Marines.” When asked by Senator Leverett Saltonstall if he were advocating that the Secretary of Defense “abolish the Marine Corps and make it part of the Army,” Royall shot back, “That is exactly what I am proposing.”
The Marine Corps had cause for further apprehension, as General C. B. Cates, 19th Commandant, testified before the House Armed Services Committee in 1949, when it was learned in the nick of time that unpublicized Defense Department plans were all but signed to transfer Marine Corps aviation to the Air Force. This transaction was aborted by Chairman Carl Vinson of the House Armed Forces Committee, who presented the entire question directly to the then Secretary of Defense, Mr. Louis Johnson, and secured the latter’s assurance that any such policy actions would be referred to the Congressional committee involved.
And here again the Congress had thrown decisive weight toward preservation of the anomalous but effective entity in which the Corps of Marines had won its great victories.
Korea would demonstrate soon enough that the Marine Corps was still fit, ready, and worthy of preservation to fight another day.
Epilogue, 1951-52
In 1951 and 1952, the 82d Congress, its members seemingly hoped, brought the 120- year Marine Corps cycle of unrest to full stop by passage of the Douglas-Mansfield Bill, sometimes called “The Marine Corps Bill.” This bill affords the Commandant place among The Joint Chiefs of Staff on Marine matters and provides the Corps with a legally stable division and air wing organization.
This notable legislation passed in final form only after lengthy hearings before the Armed Services Committees of both the Senate and the House, unanimously by the Senate and after a floor debate in the House of Representatives in which the 8-to-l pro- Marines majority swept away the few arguments which the bitter-end opposition attempted to raise.
In the Douglas-Mansfield Bill, students of Marine Corps history could see strong similarities to the 1834 legislation with which this article opened. As in 1834, Congress had acted once again to clear up misunderstanding as to the status and organization of the Corps and to guarantee it an effective strength. The Congressional method of approaching the question was definitely reminiscent of 1909, and much of the quality and reasoning of the opposition was similar— strikingly so. Students of Marine Corps history could say truthfully that not since 1909 had the Corps been the subject of so- single-minded, detailed Congressional examination—an examination which, like that in 1909, found the Corps no whit Wanting.
Thus it may be, if history is any guide, that, just as after the 1834 and 1909 Congressional debates, the Marine Corps may look forward to a long period of tranquility, at least as far as its domestic opponents are concerned.
After 1834, it was thirty years before trouble brewed again; after 1909, it was more than twenty. Today’s Marines hope that history may, at least on this score, repeat itself.
Down through the twelve decades from 1829 to 1949, a historical pattern stands clear. Most striking in that pattern is the fact that the proposals to eliminate or hamstring the Marine Corps originated, very nearly fifty-fifty, from both sides of the State, War, and Navy Building.
Six of these jihads (1829, 1864, 1867, 1932, 1946, and 1949) took form, in greater or less degree, as attempts to amalgamate the Marine Corps with the Army (or latterly, the Air Force). Four, however (1894, 1895, 1896-97, and 1907-09), had their origin within the Navy. Thus it is a fair conclusion that the Marine Corps, in its day, has withstood storms from every quarter. Conversely, no one (except Congress) has been the Marines’ consistent protector.
A second rather striking observation is that, regardless of origin, every proposal to modify or abolish the Marine Corps has been justified at some point by its proponents as a move to eliminate duplications of one kind or another within the armed forces. In 1829, 1864, 1867, 1932, 1946, and 1949, the Corps was stated to be in duplication of the Army. In 1894, 1895, 1897 and 1909, it was maintained that Marine detachments aboard ship needlessly duplicated the functions of seamen. Curiously enough, however, it appeared that, whatever these duplicating functions were, they had to be performed by someone. For example, in 1908, when Secretary Newberry finally acceded to removing the Marines from on board ship, he was forced to direct a gradual withdrawal—for the simple reason that the departing Marines would have to train equivalent bodies of sailors to perform distinctive duties hitherto assigned to Marines. Conversely, as early as 1829, Andrew Jackson’s proposal stipulated that “details for the Marine service” would, upon abolition of the Corps, be made from the Army. Ninety-eight years later, in 1932, a necessary preliminary to disbandment of the Marine Corps was the projected conversion of the 29th Infantry into a sort of miniature Fleet Marine Force.
In other words, it may well be observed that all these proposals, each directed toward getting rid of a supposed (or claimed) duplication, have been aimed, not as might appear, at the functions of the Corps, but rather at the existence of the Corps as a separate entity. Superficial similarities between the Marine Corps and the Navy (in some respects), or between the Marine Corps and the Army (in other respects), or between the Marine Corps and the Air Force (in still other respects), have thus repeatedly bemused outsiders into accepting as real, rather than apparent, “duplications” which functionally do not exist.
What perpetually laid the Marine Corps open to attack, at least prior to the 1920’s, was its anomalous character, not a body of seamen, and yet by no means conventional shoregoing soldiers. In theology this indefinable status would be called a “mystery,” and, in the case of the Marine Corps, it was disastrously easy to oversimplify.
Commencing in the twentieth century, the Marine Corps mounted a full-dress attack upon the reputedly insoluble problems of amphibious warfare, particularly that of the opposed landing. History records how well the Corps succeeded, and how, prior to 1941, it had not only evolved the doctrines for, but had actually organized the only amphibious striking force of, the United States. This development demolished the factual groundwork of any claimed duplications of function levelled against the Marine Corps, which had, in effect, invented and then executed in the best style a new military function of crucial importance. And this unique role of the Corps has now been recognized in law.
With all said and done, why—we may still ask—have the American people (through Congress) sided unanimously with the Marines?
There are a multitude of well-reasoned, logical answers, and it is on these that Congress has so often reached conclusions in favor of the Corps. But it is not enough to say that Marines have pioneered where military orthodoxy has lagged; that the readiness of the Marine Corps is a national insurance policy; that dollar for dollar, man for man, the Marine Corps represents economy and efficiency unsurpassed.
Perhaps, on the whole, it is not too much to conclude that the Corps is just a little more than a mere “component” in our Armed Forces. The U. S. Marines have become, a unique, vital, and colorful part of the American scene. Perhaps, indeed, the Corps has matured into a national institution.
1. As to the admitted identity of the ringleaders, the following quotation from hearings before the Senate Naval Affairs Committee on 9 January 1909, is illuminating:
“Gen. ELLIOTT: Were you not aboard the Chicago when the crew of that ship circulated petitions to come to Congress to have the Marines withdrawn from ships?
“Cdr. FULLAM: Yes, sir.
“Gen. ELLIOTT: And did not the Secretary of the Navy, Mr. Herbert, get out a general order that really referred to you?
“Cdr. FULLAM: I do not know whether it referred to me or not; but I will say that if it did, I am willing to take the responsibility.”
2. Endorsement by MGC to SecNav on Fullam letter, February 26, 1907.
3. Letter from Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., Assistant Editor, The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt, December 5, 1951.
4. Letter quoted in “The Marines’ First Spy,” by John L. Zimmerman, Saturday Evening Post, November 23, 1946.
5. "Hearings Before the Committee on Naval Affairs, House of Representatives, on ‘The Status of the U. S. Marine Corps’,” Government Printing Office, 1909, pp. 216-220.
6. Letter made available through the kindness of Mr. A. D. Chandler, Jr., Theodore Roosevelt Research Project, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
7. The Reminiscences of a Marine, by Maj. Gen. John A. Lejeune, Philadelphia, 1930, p. 202.