What happened
The sequence in the Corps's own chronology for that year is worth reading in order, because the order of the entries is the whole lesson.
On 22 May, legislation was introduced in the House of Representatives to raise "a battalion, to be called the Marine Corps."
Six days later, on 28 May, the naval war with France, also called the Quasi-War, began when the commanders of public armed vessels of the United States were instructed by the President to make reprisals upon the commerce of France.
The bill was still a bill. The war was not.
Nothing in the record links the two, and neither does this entry. A bill was introduced on the 22nd; the Act was approved on 11 July, fifty days later.
Congress was doing what legislatures do, at the speed they do it, while the thing the legislation was about had already started.
On 30 June the chronology records the active duty strength of the Marine Corps: eighty-three, made up of twenty-five officers and fifty-eight enlisted men.
That number needs holding for a second. A month into an undeclared naval war against France, the entire Marine Corps of the United States numbered eighty-three people, and three in ten of them were officers.
Those eighty-three existed at all because marines had already been enlisted, or authorized to be raised, for the naval armament, which is how the statute itself describes them. They were a shipboard adjunct to a Navy, not a corps.
The statute that would fix that says so directly. The corps it raises is to include "the marines who have been enlisted, or are authorized to be raised for the naval armament," which is Congress acknowledging that the people were already there and the institution was not.
Then, on 7 July, Marines participated in the first capture of a French ship, the armed schooner La Croyable, by the U.S. sloop Delaware off the Jersey coast.
That is four days before the law establishing the Marine Corps was approved.
The chronology does not describe the capture as remarkable. It records it as the first capture of a French ship, made off the Jersey coast, with Marines participating.
Marines took part in that capture while belonging to an institution that did not yet formally exist. They had been enlisted under an act providing for a naval armament, and the Corps they are recorded as serving in would not be created by statute until 11 July.
On 11 July the Act establishing and organizing a Marine Corps was approved by President John Adams, and the Marine Corps of the United States existed in law.
The order of events is: bill introduced, war begins, force counted at eighty-three, first enemy ship taken, law passed.
Whether any of that sequence was intended the record does not say. What it shows is a country needing something faster than a legislature moves, after letting it dwindle away.
Thirteen years earlier Congress had authorized the sale of the last vessel of the Continental Navy. The bill for that decision arrived in May 1798, and it was paid by eighty-three people.
What is less known
The Quasi-War did not start with a declaration, and that matters for what the eighty-three had to work with.
The chronology's own wording is precise about the mechanism. It began when commanders "were instructed by the President to make reprisals upon the commerce of France." No declaration of war, no vote naming an enemy. An instruction to commanders about what they could now do to shipping.
Neither source records how the commanders receiving that instruction construed it, or what limits they read into it.
The other detail worth pulling out is the ratio in that strength report. Twenty-five officers and fifty-eight enlisted Marines is not the shape of a fighting force. It is the shape of a cadre, an institution keeping enough people commissioned to expand around later.
Whether that was deliberate the record does not say. What the record does show is the shape the Act of 11 July authorized: one major, four captains, sixteen first lieutenants and twelve second lieutenants, above forty-eight sergeants, forty-eight corporals, thirty-two drums and fifes and seven hundred and twenty privates. That is a structure built to be filled rather than a description of what existed.
The reading
The fight starts on the schedule of the enemy and the law arrives afterward.
The cost of taking that seriously is that it removes the most comfortable sentence available to any leader, which is that we are not resourced for this yet. That sentence is frequently true, and it was true in the summer of 1798 by any measure anyone would use.
It did not move the date the French started taking American ships.
What existed in June 1798 was a set of Marines already enlisted, already aboard ship, and already answerable to a chain of command that functioned, which is not nothing and is a great deal less than a corps. That was enough to put Marines aboard the Delaware for the first capture of a French ship, before the Corps legally existed.
The Reserve reads this differently than the active side does, and more accurately. We are permanently in the condition of the eighty-three. The manning document and the reality are two different documents, the fight does not wait for the difference to close, and everybody in the section knows it.
What I owe my Marines in that condition is not optimism about the gap. It is a clear statement of which tasks we can actually take on at current strength, and which ones I will refuse in their name if asked.
That refusal is the part that costs. Saying no to a tasking on behalf of people who would have tried to do it anyway makes you look less capable than the section next to you, and it is the only thing standing between an undermanned unit and a preventable failure.
The Marines in that section will not thank you for it either, at least not at the time. Being told your unit is not taking something on sounds a great deal like being told you were not trusted with it.
The eighty-three did not get to refuse anything, which is why this reads as admiration rather than as a model. They went with what was on the books because there was nothing else, and it worked, and then the law caught up.
Most of the time the law does not catch up, and the gap is simply absorbed by whoever is closest to the work. That is worth knowing before anyone decides their section can run on eighty-three indefinitely.
The question
Before Friday, write the one tasking your section would fail at current strength, and the name of the Marine who would carry that failure. Who are you going to say that to, and by when, so it is on the record before somebody assigns it to you?
Sources
- A Chronology of the United States Marine Corps, 1775-1934, Volume I. Historical Branch, G-3 Division, Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, 1965. Entries for 22 May, 28 May, 30 June, 7 July and 11 July 1798. Read at archive.org
- An Act for the establishing and organizing a Marine Corps, 11 July 1798, 5th Congress, Sess. II, Chap. 72, 1 Stat. 594. Read at govinfo.gov
Corrections
None.