U.S. Marine Corps Barracks

Today's 236th birthday of the  U.S. Marine Corps is an auspicious time to examine the role that the detachment at the U.S. Marine Corps Barracks in Washington played during the Civil War.  Ironically, the Marines' most famous action during the "recent unpleasantries," actually occurred two years before the war's outbreak  when Marines summoned from Washington put down John Brown's Harpers Ferry insurrection.

Harper's Weekly June 1861 engraving of "The United States Marines and Marine Barracks at Washington."