Security· Civil Aid and Humanitarian Operations
Empire Brigade Riot suppression
A wartime disorder in the rear, not at the front.
As the Union raised its mass volunteer armies, the camps where raw recruits were assembled were often turbulent, and in 1862 a riot broke out among the recruits of General Spinola's "Empire Brigade," a New York volunteer formation. Marines under Captain David M. Cohen, from the Brooklyn Navy Yard, were called out and quelled the disturbance in a brief operation. The episode is documented in the commanding officer's report from the Brooklyn yard to the Marine Commandant. It was characteristic of the Civil War years on the home front, when the Navy yards' Marine detachments were repeatedly used to put down draft troubles, recruit riots, and other domestic disorders behind the lines. No casualties resulted. The action was a small but typical instance of Marines maintaining order among the Union's own restless soldiery rather than fighting the Confederacy.
Record no. 460