During the U.S. Civil War, the Marine Corps played a secondary role, trapped by size, mission, and outlook into the backwaters of the war. This use of the Corps, at such a variance with its later employment, certainly did not have to happen as it did. In fact, the Corps had an early opportunity to play a major role in the war. During the Bull Run campaign, the first test of green armies in the summer of 1861, the Marine Corps furnished a battalion to Brigadier General Irvin McDowell’s Army of Northeastern Virginia.
This battalion, a formation of 348 officers and men, was only a small part of an army of 35,000. Despite this, the outcome of the Battle of Bull Run turned on the performance of the Marine battalion and other volunteer regiments on hot, dusty, shell-torn Henry Hill during the attack on the Confederate left on 21 July 1861.
In December 1860, the only regular troops stationed in the District of Columbia were the 300 Marines of the Marine Barracks. Three “volunteer” infantry companies were drilling, but their loyalty was suspect. Not until the following spring would the Marine force be significantly augmented in the District by more regular troops.1 As spring turned to summer, the vast armies of volunteers swamped the capital. The presence of Marines at the barracks, so important to public order, now became trivial.
From the inauguration of President Abraham Lincoln, there had been increasing pressures on the administration to move against the Confederacy. In April, and again in early May, calls for short-service volunteers had gone out. Additional calls for “three-year men” and an increase in the naval establishment had been accomplished. This included the Marine Corps, whose authorized strength was increased by 1,152 enlisted men on 3 May. By 30 June, the actual strength of the Corps was 2,386 officers and men.2
On 27 May, McDowell was appointed commander of Union forces operating south of the Potomac. He organized his army into five divisions, each containing between two and five brigades. Artillery was organized under the brigade structures, but the general commanding had an artillery officer on his staff who could position the batteries as McDowell desired. This dual chain of command for artillery faithfully reflected the Napoleonic influence on U.S. war making. What this doctrine did not yet comprehend was the dramatically improved killing power inherent in infantry formations armed increasingly with rifled muskets. This insidious effect of emerging technological change would impact directly on the Marines at Bull Run.
Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles saw an opportunity to involve the Marine Corps in support of what many were certain would be a short, sharp suppression of the South’s revolt. After conferring with Secretary of War Simon Cameron, on 15 July Welles directed the commandant “to detail from the barracks four companies of eighty men each, under the whole command of Major Reynolds ... for temporary field service under Brigadier General McDowell.”3
There was ample precedent for employing the Marines in the defense of Washington; they had performed in that role in the War of 1812. The tenure of Commandant Archibald Henderson had seen the Marines employed in a succession of sustained land campaigns, notably in Indian fighting in Florida and in the Mexican War. Henderson’s successor, Commandant Colonel John Harris, did not view the enterprise with favor.
There is evidence the commandant opposed the use of a Marine battalion in support of the Army.4 To Harris, anything that separated the Marine Corps from the ships of the Navy was to be avoided. There were other reasons, equally compelling in his eyes, to resist forming a Marine battalion. Most of the troops available at the Marine Barracks were raw recruits, having joined as a result of the 3 May increase in the Corps’ organization; there hardly had been time to train them properly. Most of the available a training time had been used for ceremonial drill, rather than open-order tactical drill. And not only were the troops s new, many of the new lieutenants still were learning their responsibilities. The officer corps also was reeling from the departure of so many young and promising junior officers who had chosen to cast their lots with the Confederacy.
No written record exists of what passed between Harris and Welles beyond the official Navy Department order directing the deployment of the battalion. Later, Welles was circumspect about what compelled him to send the Marine battalion to the Army. An examination of Welles’s diaries indicates the Marine Corps and its problems never were at the forefront of the secretary’s mind. In fact, the majority of his diary entries about the Marine Corps were concerned with the scheduling of the Marine band. Given Harris’s beliefs and Welles’s activist approach, it seems likely that Welles drove the action and was the reason the battalion was formed.
Welles appointed Major John G. Reynolds commander of the unit. Reynolds was a Marine of the old school. He had fought valiantly at Chapultepec in the Mexican War and was brevetted as a result. The secretary’s choice of Reynolds to command the battalion may be indicative of the disagreement between Welles and Harris: Reynolds and the commandant were not on good terms, and Reynolds was actively involved in campaigning for Harris’s job.
Reynolds had been drilling troops at the barracks for several weeks and was ready to deploy a provisional battalion in mid-July. It was to be formed into four companies. The company commanders were Brevet Major Jacob Zeilin (see page 24 of this issue) of Company A, Captain James H. Jones of Company B, First Lieutenant Alan Ramsay of Company C, and Lieutenant W. H. Carter of Company D. The battalion’s officers, 12 in number, would as a group do remarkably well in the Marine Corps during the war. Zeilin would succeed Harris as commandant in 1864. Reynolds would retire that same year, an embittered old man, a casualty of headquarters politics. The other majors both would survive the war and flourish in the postwar Corps. Of the company officers, one would die at Bull Run, one would die of illness later in the war, and the remainder would serve in workmanlike, if not spectacular, fashion until the end, and then remain on active duty after the war.
The Army provided provisions and other support for the battalion, but the Marines were armed and equipped with their unique weapons and personal accoutrements. The Marines carried the Model 1855 rifled musket. They wore white buff leather cross belts, carrying a black leather cartridge box on one side and a bayonet scabbard on the other. Marines did not look appreciably different at a distance from the regular Army infantry battalion that was marching with them, and they did not attain the sartorial standards of the multitude of volunteer units in the line of march, notably the Fire Zouaves and the New York Highlanders, resplendent in kepis and kilts, respectively.
The four-company force left the Marine barracks in the early afternoon of 16 July, marching to the Virginia end of the “Long Bridge” across the Potomac. The Marine battalion was assigned to the brigade of Colonel Andrew Porter, one of two brigades in Brigadier General David Hunter’s 2nd Division. In addition to the Marines, Porter’s brigade had the 8th, 14th, and 27th New York, a battalion of regular Army infantry, a battalion of cavalry, and Battery D, 5th U.S. Artillery. The brigade’s strength was some 2,648 officers and men. Porter liked what he saw of the Marines; the efforts of drillmasters with the raw recruits had given them, at least superficially, something of the confident air of veterans.5 Porter attached them as battery support for his artillery, also known as Griffin’s Battery (for its commander, Captain Charles Griffin).
From 16 to 19 July, the Marines followed in the trace of Griffin’s Battery, as the 2nd Division moved west, away from Washington. McDowell had a good plan: using a holding force at Harpers Ferry under Brigadier General Robert Patterson, he would prevent Confederate forces under Brigadier General Joseph Johnston from reinforcing McDowell’s old classmate, Brigadier General P. G. T. Beauregard. This accomplished, the Army of Northeastern Virginia would move forward and slip around the Confederates’ right, cutting their communications. The frictions of war, however, unraveled the plan completely.
Several things went awry. Not only did Patterson allow Johnston to escape and join Beauregard, he refused to recognize this movement for several critical days, thus robbing McDowell of vital intelligence. The Confederates fell back in good order from Fairfax to the soundly defensible position of Bull Run, a languid, muddy creek with high ground on both sides. There, on the 18th, McDowell’s advance guard, the 1st Division under Brigadier General Daniel Tyler, fought a sharp action at Blackburn’s Ford, receiving a bloody nose and a crisp repulse from Confederate defenders.
As McDowell himself came forward on the 19th, it became apparent the terrain would not support a move around the Confederate right.6 He ordered his engineer, Major J. G. Barnard, to scout the Confederate left. His report was encouraging: by moving a force across Bull Run at Sudley Springs, well north of the Confederate left, it seemed possible to envelop their position. McDowell planned his attack for the morning of the 21st. Hunter’s division would lead the envelopment and Tyler would “demonstrate” at the lower crossings. On the other side, Beauregard planned to attack from his right against the Union left. He did not seriously consider the possibility of a Union flanking attack on his left.
For the Marines, the night of the 20th brought a welcome respite from the endless marching of the previous days. The brigade turned wearily off the Warrenton Turnpike into a field adjacent to the road, one mile east of Centreville.7 They had been eating the dust of the artillery for three days and were ready for a rest. By all accounts, it was a beautiful summer’s evening, with little cloud cover. Cooking fires dotted the rolling Virginia landscape, and Marines wrapped their new blankets around them and considered the possibilities of the next morning.8 Hunter did not return from a meeting with McDowell until the late evening, and only then did the subordinate commanders learn of the planned envelopment. Porter was to form his brigade at 0200, in column of regiments, in the order of Griffin’s Battery, the Marine battalion, 27th New York, 14th New York, 8th New York, the regular infantry battalion, and a cavalry detachment.9 The brigade stepped out in light marching order, with rations for three days.10 Porter’s brigade formed part of the enveloping column, sweeping the Confederate left.
There had not been much sleep for the troops, and even less for the officers of the Marine battalion. Reynolds could not have received his orders before midnight, which left him very little time to assemble his own subordinates and pass instructions. The earliness of the hour was more than compensated by the post of honor that had been accorded the Marines, positioned as the lead infantry unit in the column. The 2nd Brigade, commanded by Brigadier General Ambrose Burnside, was the lead element of the division. Almost as soon as they started, however, traffic jams appeared in the route of march. For the Marines, marching in the dark along unfamiliar roads, the fits and starts of the column were infinitely preferable to the sprinting and standing of the previous days. The 1st Brigade did not reach Centreville until 0430, and could not begin the flanking movement until almost 0700, an hour after sunrise.11
At this point, other difficulties appeared. Burnside, leading the column, was in mortal fear of being surprised by a “masked battery,” and threw skirmishers out in front, slowing his advance. The roads were little more than forest tracks and had to be improved by axemen to allow artillery and their caissons to pass. As the sun rose, the heat of the day began to take its toll on soldiers and Marines.
The battalion halted at about 1100, just short of Bull Run. The flanking column was some three hours behind schedule. To the front, the mutter of the battlefield was clearly audible. Burnside was engaged on the high ground across the stream. The Marines did not know what was transpiring to their front, but McDowell had a golden opportunity: he had succeeded in turning the enemy’s left. Beauregard had been fixed on his own turning movement and was not aware of the Union troops until they already had crossed the stream. Ahead of the 1st Brigade, Burnside was fighting on Matthews Hill, pushing the Confederates steadily off the high ground.
Suddenly, the order came back for the 1st Brigade to advance. Marines scrambled to their feet, muskets and bayonets were checked, and the column began to move. Up from the depression of the stream the Marines advanced and began to see the signs of Civil War combat: dead Union soldiers, gouges in the earth from artillery, and the ever-increasing whinny and crack of cannon and small arms fire, still passing safely overhead. Porter deployed to the right of Burnside, on the extreme right of the Union line.
Griffin selected an excellent position for his battery of six guns. As the Marines deployed from column to line immediately behind the artillery, Griffin opened fire at 1130. The Confederates soon broke and fell back from Matthews Hill, pursued by the now intermingled infantry of Burnside and Porter. Griffin soon moved forward some 200 yards to a better position, with the Marines in tow.
At about this time, Hunter was shot and left the field, and command fell on Porter. His first act was to detach his regular infantry battalion to Burnside, whose fight, although victorious, was becoming increasingly disorganized. By 1230, the heavy fighting subsided, and Griffin’s guns fell silent. The Marines watched the gunners swab and prepare their pieces to move.
This ended the first phase of the fighting at Bull Run. The Marines had done well so far, but an unusually astute young engineer officer attached to the to the staff of the 2d Division had seen some things in their bearing under fire that boded ill for the future. To Captain Daniel Woodbury, the troops of the 2d Division appeared intimidated by the environment of battle they entered as they camped on Matthews Hill.12
The Confederates were streaming to the rear. It appeared to McDowell the time was opportune to press his advantage by continuing the attack from Matthews Hill to seize Henry Hill, upon which the Rebels were reforming. It took him almost two hours to decide exactly how to prosecute his attack. This indecision, and the accumulation of errors that had plagued the Union effort from the beginning, now began to be felt. In particular, the time given to the Confederates to regroup proved fatal.
If ordered, the Marines would go forward with their artillery against what was becoming a formidable position. It was made even more formidable by the arrival of a small, scruffy Confederate officer wearing a gray cadet’s cap. Brigadier General Thomas J. Jackson saw warfare as a clash of absolutes; any position he defended would be a tough nut to crack. It would take more than well-directed artillery fire to force his retreat.
Reynolds sent his chief of artillery, young Major William F. Barry, to Griffin at about 1400 and directed him to move his battery and the adjacent battery of Captain J. B. Ricketts forward some 2,000 yards, across the Warrenton Turnpike, to very near the topographic crest of Henry Hill. This position was only some 200 yards from the Rebel lines. Griffin and Ricketts both saw the danger of such a move and protested, but Barry could not change the order, and was only promised infantry support. McDowell apparently did not coordinate this move with his division and brigade commanders. Instead, at the heated urging of the two battery commanders, Barry gathered an ad hoc assortment of regiments to go forward with the guns. In addition to the Marines, Barry scratched together the 1st Minnesota of Brigadier General W. B. Franklin’s Brigade, the 14th New York of Porter’s, and the 11th New York (the Fire Zouaves) of Brigadier General O. B. Wilcox’s Brigade.
Finally, the guns rumbled forward. The speed of their advance, down Matthews Hill, across the Warrenton Turnpike, and up Henry Hill, separated them from the Marines. This was the beginning of the end. Griffin saw it, for as he went forward he told Barry, with the bitterness of a commander foreseeing the destruction of his command, that he “had no [infantry] support.”13 Even as the guns were un- limbered they began to receive heavy small-arms fire from the Virginians of Jackson’s Brigade. The Marines, now running to find their battery, were left far to the rear. The 11th New York passed the Marines and reached the guns first. Reynolds’s Marines, more a ragged mass of men than a coherent unit, arrived shortly afterward and went to earth to the left of the Zouaves, sitting down in column.
The two batteries opened fire, and for some 30 minutes shot at near point-blank range into the Confederate position. Most of the shells went high but had the effect of keeping the Rebel infantrymen face down. This was the supreme crisis of the battle, with the Marines squarely in the middle of it. Unfortunately, there was no infantry to follow up the Union’s successes. Because McDowell had not coordinated the movement of the artillery batteries with his brigade and division commanders, no one had positioned infantry to exploit the momentary successes gained by the guns.
This was the culminating point of the Union attack. By default, and particularly because of McDowell’s inability to synchronize his fires and maneuver, the initiative passed to the Confederates. At the extreme right of the Union position, the 33d Virginia of Jackson’s Brigade began the counterattack by striking the right flank of the 1st Minnesota and the 14th New York. It was an unexpected attack, compounded by misidentification of the foe. After a violent but one-sided exchange at extremely close range, both Union regiments broke. This exposed the Marines, the Zouaves, and the artillery batteries to direct fire from their right flank, in addition to the considerable fire already being received from their front. Henry Hill quickly became a frightening, dangerous, exposed position.
Confederate cavalry, commanded by Colonel J. E. B. Stuart, now appeared on the right, charged through the broken, milling Minnesotans and New Yorkers, and penetrated into the Zouaves, who wavered and began to lose their order. The crest of the hill was a maelstrom of fire; Marines were being hit and going down, while others began to creep to the rear. The column they had maintained on reaching the batteries was a fairly sound formation when they received fire and the cavalry charge from their right flank. Captain William Averell, the assistant adjutant general of the 1st Brigade, was impressed by the sight of the Marine officers desperately trying to keep their men in check, moving back and forth behind the line of battle.14 He went to help them, suggesting their efforts were not completely successful.
The Marines were receiving a lesson in warfare as practiced by Thomas Jackson, and it was a hard school to learn. The 11th New York suddenly broke. The regiment was positioned to the right of the Marines, and their fire had been sporadic after the initial clash on the right. But now it ceased altogether. At about this time, the Marine battalion broke for the first time. One, then two, then dozens of men streamed to the rear, dropping their muskets and equipment. The company and battalion officers shouted themselves hoarse above the roar of battle. Three times they were able to restore some semblance of a battalion line, but eventually the Marines joined the Union rout.
Down the slope they fled, leaving one dead officer and eight privates killed. Some 19 Marines were wounded—including Company A’s commanding officer, Major Zeilin—and 16 more were unaccounted for, either missing, wounded, or dead. With the flight of the Marines, all support for the artillery was gone.
Griffin tried desperately to slew his guns around to bear, but before he could engage, Rebel fire swept across the top of the hill. Every cannoneer standing went down. Within minutes, both batteries were destroyed. Those few who could, fled. Teams of horses and caissons careened down the slope, running over Marines and soldiers trying to escape. The disaster was complete. Although fighting raged for another two hours around Henry Hill, the loss of Griffin’s and Rickett’s guns and the shattering of the supporting infantry marked the turning point of the battle.
The Marines never rallied. Reynolds was unable to establish any control, even when the stream of men reached the assembly area east of Centreville, occupied in such high hopes earlier in the day. Taking those few he could rally, Reynolds retraced the steps of the army back to the Long Bridge, where he found another 70 Marines whose flight had taken them literally as far as they could go: into the arms of the provost guard at the bridge. After some argument, Reynolds was able to convince the provost marshall to release them to his control. With no commanding officer, Reynolds returned to the Marine barracks. The Marines were a sorry, bedraggled spectacle. They had no weapons or personal equipment, their blankets still were placed neatly somewhere on the battlefield, and the peculiar fatigue that only a decisive defeat can bring to troops was evident everywhere. So ended the Marine Corps’ first great participation in the Civil War.
Later generations of Marines, when viewing the disaster at Bull Run, stressed the favorable early performance of the battalion, or believed, as Major General Ben Fuller wrote, “surely they were among the last to run.”15 The truth is something different. The Marines took relatively few casualties in the battle, almost certainly most of them before breaking. The regular infantry battalion that marched out in Porter’s Brigade took a higher percentage of casualties and never broke. Instead, it fought superbly and under consummate control throughout the day, acting as a “fire brigade” several times. At day’s end, the regulars still had all their critical field equipment and were ready for further action.
The aftermath of the battle gave the senior leadership of the Marine Corps much to ponder. Bull Run strengthened the position of the commandant and the Corps’ old guard, who did not favor extensive cooperation with the Army on sustained land campaigns. The Marine Corps would remain an organization of detachments, responsive to the immediate needs of the Navy. Never again in the war would a Marine battalion march completely away from its ties to the Navy. Little evidence exists that the Corps sought to learn any tactical lessons from the disaster. Instead, the principal lesson seems to have been that to avoid future Bull Runs, it was necessary only to refuse to participate in them.
1. Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, 4 vols. (New York: Century, 1887-8), vol. 1, pp. 7-15.
2. Annual Report of the Navy Department (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1861), p. 19; Personnel Accounting Section Data, Marine Corps Historical Division, 1952.
3. Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion, 30 vols. (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1894-1922), ser. 1, vol. 4, p. 579.
4. Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies, ser. 1, vol. 4, p. 579.
5. The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, 128 vols. (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1880-1901), ser. 1, vol. 2, p. 383.
6. The War of the Rebellion, ser. 1, vol. 2, p. 318.
7. The War of the Rebellion, ser. 1, vol. 2, p. 317.
8. The War of the Rebellion, ser. 1, vol. 2, p. 305.
9. The War of the Rebellion, ser. 1, vol. 2, p. 383.
10. The War of the Rebellion, ser. 1, vol. 2, p. 318.
11. The War of the Rebellion, ser. 1, vol. 2, p. 383.
12. The War of the Rebellion, ser. 1, vol. 2, p. 333.
13. Report of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War (Washington, DC: Government Printing Officer, 1863), vol. 1, p. 168.
14. Report of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, vol. 1, p. 168.
15. MGen. Ben H. Fuller, USMC, as quoted in Robert D. Heinl, Soldiers of the Sea (Annapolis, MD: U.S. Naval Institute, 1962), p. 73.