Combat
American Civil War
The deadliest war in American history, fought between the Union and the seceded Confederate States over secession and slavery.
The Marine Corps served through it chiefly in its traditional naval role, as the guards and gun crews of the blockading and river squadrons and as landing parties along the coasts and rivers, rather than as a body of line infantry. Its one attempt at the latter, at Bull Run, ended in rout, and the lesson was taken. Marines fought aboard ship at Hampton Roads, Mobile Bay, and against the commerce raiders, helped take the coastal forts and ports from Hatteras to Fort Fisher, and supported the river campaigns that opened the Mississippi. They also fought their Southern counterparts, the Confederate States Marine Corps. The Corps' contribution was real but comparatively small: only a few thousand Marines served, in a war that was overwhelmingly a soldiers' and sailors' struggle.
Engagements in this conflict (13) Podcast episodes on American Civil War
Record no. 391