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The Decade Of The 1850s

In the decade of the 1850s Marines took part in more than twenty landings abroad and one at home. The latter occurred in January 1856 when the sloop-of-war Decatur sent her Marine guard and some seamen ashore to drive off a band of Indians that was threatening the little settlement at Seattle, Washington. This action turned out to be the Leathernecks' last experience of Indian fighting.

Seven of the foreign landings occurred in Central and South America. Six were made to protect American lives and property during revolutions or riots at Buenos Aires, Argentina (twice in 1852); Greytown (now San Juan del Sur), Nicaragua (1853); Montevideo, Uruguay (1855 and 1858); and Panama City, in what was then New Granada (1856). Aside from a skirmish with a mob of looters in Buenos Aires in February 1852, the only deployment that involved the use of force was the bombardment and destruction of Greytown by the sloop-of-war Cyane on 13 July 1854 in retaliation for the municipal authorities' refusal to make amends for having forcibly detained the U.S. ambassador overnight.

All the other landings occurred in or across the Pacific. Six officers and two hundred men served in the East India Squadron during Commodore Matthew C. Perry's momentous expedition to establish relations with Japan. Aware that his reception would depend in part on the show he put on, Perry used his Marines to help create a scene of martial pageantry in his meetings with Japanese officials at Uraga in July 1853 and Yokohama Bay in March 1854. At the latter the entire squadron's guard detachments were organized into a battalion under Perry's senior Marine officer, Bvt. Maj. Jacob Zeilin. The Japanese were highly impressed by the Leathernecks' precision drill.

The following year, reports of the mistreatment of American traders in the Fiji Islands prompted Cdr. E. B. Boutwell to proceed there in the sloop-of-war John Adams. Lt. John L. Broome's Marine guard took part in each of the four landings Boutwell ordered in September and October 1855. The first three eventuated in peaceful palavers or demonstrations intended to induce the islanders to mend their ways. The fourth was a return visit to Vita Levu, where King Tui Viti had reneged on the engagements into which he had been dragooned. It eventuated in a brisk little battle and the burning of three villages.

Marines made four landings in China, then in the throes of the great Taiping Rebellion. When in April 1854 government troops began to encroach on the International Settlements at Shanghai, the sloop-of-war Plymouth landed sixty seamen and Marines, who together with 150 of their British counterparts and thirty-seven American and British volunteers dispersed the interlopers at the cost of a dozen casualties. A recurrence of the threat to the Settlements led to the landing of the frigate Powhatan's Leathernecks in May 1855, but on that occasion there was no fighting. That August, the Powhatan collaborated with HMS Rattler in a boat attack on a Chinese pirate fleet in Ty-Ho Bay, near Hong Kong. Seventeen junks were captured in a day's combat. By a grim coincidence, the allied forces each lost two Marines and two seamen killed in action. They were jointly commemorated by a granite monument in Hong Kong's Happy Valley.

The final action in Chinese waters involved the heaviest fighting in which Marines had engaged since the Mexican War. On 15 November 1856 the Barrier Forts on the Pearl River below Canton—four modern, granite-faced works designed by European engineers began firing on ships and boats of the East India Squadron, apparently in an outburst of xenophobia inspired by difficulties with the British. The next day, the twenty-gun Plymouth returned the compliment. Neither shot nor an attempt to open negotiations produced any effect, and on 19 November the Plymouth's captain, Cdr. Andrew Hull Foote, the senior officer present, resolved to storm the forts. A landing party had already been organized from the seamen and Marines of the Plymouth, the twenty-two-gun sloop-of-war Levant, and the frigate San Jacinto, which remained downstream at Whampoa. Early the following morning, while the Plymouth and Levant laid down covering fire, Foote led 287 men ashore. The Marine contingent numbered two officers and 50 men under Bvt. Capt. John D. Simms.

By the afternoon of 22 November, the landing party had captured the four Barrier Forts and their 176 guns, plus a 6-gun battery, and repulsed three counterattacks by three thousand Chinese troops from Canton. American casualties were seven dead and twenty-two wounded, six of the latter being Marines. Foote estimated Chinese losses to be about 250 Simms's men played a conspicuous role in all three days' fighting, spearheading the advance on the forts—in two of which the Leathernecks' standard-bearer, Cpl. William McDougal, was the first man to plant the American flag—capturing the battery, and beating off two of the Chinese counterattacks. "It may be seen," Foote wrote in his after-action report, " . . . how efficient our marines are in service of this kind; and the inference is inevitable that an increase of . . . the number of officers and men attached to our ships, would tend to insure success in like expeditions."

Despite the passing of the years, Archibald Henderson's warrior spirit remained as keen as ever. He displayed it once again during the election-day riots in Washington, D.C., on 1 June 1857. The Know-Nothing Party, a violence-prone populist group, had imported a gang of Baltimore hoodlums called the Plug-Uglies to take control of the city's polling places. With them the Plug-Uglies brought a brass cannon. When the police were unable to preserve order, Mayor William Magruder asked President James Buchanan to call in the Marines from Eighth and Eye. A two-company battalion under Capt. Henry B. Tyler, the Corps's adjutant and inspector, marched to the city hall. Henderson accompanied the detachment in civilian clothes.

On their way through the city the Marines encountered a mob of Plug-Uglies. The rioters followed them, dragging along the cannon and shouting threats. From the city hall the mayor accompanied the battalion to one of the polls that had been forced to close. On reaching the scene, the Leathernecks halted and ordered arms. The Plug-Uglies responded by trundling their cannon forward and sending a party to tell Captain Tyler that they would open fire unless his force withdrew at once. At that moment, seventy-four-year-old Archibald Henderson stepped forward to block the cannon's mouth with his body. "Men," he said, "you had better think twice before you fire this piece at the Marines."

To take up the account in the next day's Washington Star: [Henderson] informed the crowd that the [Marines'] pieces were loaded with ball cartridge, and warned them repeatedly; warned the citizens to leave the spot. The general, finding that the piece would be fired unless captured immediately, crossed over to Captain Tyler, and gave the order for ten or fifteen Marines to take it. During this time a number of pistol-shots were fired at General Henderson, some of the parties standing within a few feet of him. One platoon charged the piece on the run. Those in charge of the piece instantly retreated, and a dozen or more revolvers were discharged at the platoon, which had laid hold of the gun and were taking it away. . . .

A man ran up to the general within two feet of his person, and was about to discharge his pistol, when a private with his musket struck his arm causing the weapon to fall; at the same time the general seized the villain and marched him off to the mayor, into whose hands he placed him. The pistol-shots now rattled around like hailstones, and the officers had great difficulty in restraining their men from returning the fire. General Henderson and all the officers were constantly admonishing the men not to fire until the order was given.

Nevertheless, the Marines—sixty of them green recruits—finally did fire before the order was given. The Star reported that the men reached the breaking point after several had been struck by stones and a private received "a dreadful wound" from a shot in the face. On the other hand, a Marine officer present insisted that discipline had held firm and the firing had resulted from a misunderstanding; seeing the private shot, Mayor Magruder cried out, "Why don't you fire?" and the men had taken the last word as a command.

Although the volley sent the Plug-Uglies scuttling down the street, they soon stopped to regroup. Scattered shots continued to ring out, and presently a Marine was hit in the shoulder. Tyler then ordered the battalion to prepare to fire. That was sufficient. The Plug-Uglies took to their heels.

Following the election-day riot, no Leatherneck fired another shot in anger until October 1858, when forty seamen and Marines from the sloop-of-war Vandalia landed on Waya in the Fiji Islands to avenge the murder of two American traders.

Merrill L. Bartlett & Jack Sweetman. The U.S. Marine Corps: An Illustrated History. Naval Institute Press. 2001.

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