Resource Center
Carolina Museum of the Marine Resource Center
Historical Documents
Traits & Principles of USMC Leadership
Leadership is intangible, hard to measure, & difficult to describe. Its quality would seem to stem from many factors. But certainly they must include a measure of inherent ability to control & direct, self-confidence based on expert knowledge, initiative, loyalty, pride, & sense of responsibility. Inherent ability cannot be instilled, but that which is latent or dormant can be developed. Other ingredients can be acquired. They are not easily learned. But leaders can be & are made.
MCDP 1 Warfighting
Since Fleet Marine Force Manual 1, Warfighting, was first published in 1989, it has had a significant impact both inside and outside the Marine Corps. That manual has changed the way Marines think about warfare. It has caused energetic debate and has been translated into several foreign languages, issued by foreign militaries, and published commercially. It has strongly influenced the development of doctrine by our sister Services.
Grayisms
Grayisms and other thoughts on leadership from General Al Gray, USMC (Retired), 29th Commandant of the Marine Corps. Compiled by PAUL OTTE “I don’t run a democracy. I train troops to defend democracy and I happen to be their surrogate father and mother as well as their commanding general.” Table of Contents From the very…
Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union
ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION—1777 1 To all to whom these Presents shall come, we the undersigned Delegates of the States affixed to our Names send greeting. Whereas the Delegates of the United States of America in Congress assembled did on the fifteenth day of November in the Year of our Lord One Thousand Seven Hundred and…
Declaration of Independence
In Congress, July 4, 1776 The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the…
The Bill of Rights
On September 25, 1789, the First Congress of the United States proposed 12 amendments to the Constitution. The 1789 Joint Resolution of Congress proposing the amendments is on display in the Rotunda in the National Archives Museum. Ten of the proposed 12 amendments were ratified by three-fourths of the state legislatures on December 15, 1791….
General Al Gray’s 95th Birthday Celebration
2023 – Interviews
Thinking & Leadership Training
Marine Corps Principles and Traits of Leadership, Part 1
The Marine Corps recognizes eleven principles of leadership and fourteen traits of leaders. In this and coming editions of “Front and Center,”…
Marine Corps Principles and Traits of Leadership, Part 2
Last month, we considered the first principle of leadership recognized by the Marine Corps: Know yourself and seek self-improvement. We considered also the first trait of…
Principles and Traits of Marine Corps Leadership, Part 3
In an essay titled “On Remembering Who We Are,” the late Melvin Bradford observed the following: “Yet as [Michael] Oakeshott insists, moral…
Valor and Virtue – Video Interviews with Marines and Leaders
Historians’ Corner
Navy Corpsmen at Iwo Jima
At the website of the Navy’s Bureau of Medicine and Surgery, one finds an article titled “Beyond Heroism: Hospital Corpsmen and the…
Col Peter Ortiz
A recent issue of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture contains an article by historian and Marine Corps veteran Roger McGrath titled “The Marine…
Wilbur Bestwick: First Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps
The first Marine to be appointed Sergeant Major is Archibald Sommers, who enlisted in the Corps in June of 1799. He was…