Security· Civil Aid and Humanitarian Operations
Pullman Railroad Strike response
Marine duty during the largest labor upheaval of the nineteenth century.
When the Pullman Strike spread into a national railroad shutdown in the summer of 1894, paralyzing rail traffic and igniting violence across the country, federal forces were brought in to keep the trains and the mails moving. On the Pacific coast, Marine detachments from the Mare Island Navy Yard, together with men from the warships Independence, Charleston, Monterey, and Thetis, assisted Army troops in guarding the mails during the railroad strikes in California. The Marines' role was protective, securing trains and property rather than confronting strikers directly. No casualties resulted. The strike was eventually broken by federal injunction and the use of federal troops, and its leader Eugene Debs was imprisoned. The Mare Island deployment was a routine instance of the yard's Marines being lent to civil authority to keep essential services running through a national crisis.
Record no. 482