Happy Birthday Marine Corps

Happy 238th Birthday United States Marine Corps

Formal commemoration of the birthday of the Marine Corps was begun on November 10th, 1921. That date was chosen because it was the date that the Second Continental Congress resolved in 1775, to raise two battalions of Continental Marines. The rest is history.

The Marines performed with honor at the first war proclaimed by our new nation. In 1801, when Thomas Jefferson became president, he refused to accede to the Barbary pirates of Tripoli’s demands for an immediate payment of $225,000 and an annual payment of $25,000. This refusal brought about the first war the United States would fight as a country. The first line of the Marine hymn, “from the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli,” references the 600-mile march across the Libyan Desert of a group of Navy men and others to capture the port city of Derna, Tripoli. It took a concerted effort by England, France, Spain, and the United States to end over four hundred years of Muslim piracy on the Barbary Coast.