Security· Civil Aid and Humanitarian Operations
Great Railroad Strike of 1877 response
The first nationwide labor upheaval in American history, which drew Marines into civil-disorder duty across the eastern rail corridors.
As strikes and riots spread along the Baltimore & Ohio and Reading lines in the summer of 1877, with mobs halting trains and battling police and militia, federal Marines under Colonel Heywood were called out to help restore order and keep the railroads running. The Marines dispersed crowds around the rail stations, guarded property, and rode the trains themselves, men posted in the locomotive cabs with orders to deal with any attempt to obstruct the line, deploying as skirmishers to clear the tracks when crowds blocked the way. A force was sent up the Schuylkill valley to Reading, one of the worst trouble spots. The Marines carried out the duty steadily through weeks of violence that cost about a hundred lives nationwide, without recorded fatal loss to themselves.
Record no. 481