Combat· West Africa Anti-Slavery Patrol
USS Marion landing at Kisembo, Angola
The last operation of the African Squadron before the Civil War.
At Kisembo on the Angolan coast, Commander Thomas W. Brent of the sloop USS Marion put ashore a landing party of about forty Marines and seamen to protect American and other foreign commercial property during a spell of local unrest. The mission was protective rather than anti-slavery, guarding lives and trade goods, and it was carried out without casualties. It marked the end of an era: within a year the squadron was recalled as the United States slid toward civil war, and the long American effort against the Atlantic slave trade off Africa came to a close. The Kisembo landing is a fitting coda, the same kind of small protective shore operation that had run through the whole history of the Marines in the age of sail, performed by the squadron's Marines in its final hour on the coast.
Record no. 369