The breaking in of the men was upon the regular-army system; first each man was “set up” by himself, then the drill was in squads, in increasing numbers, and afterward in company and battalion. When the weather was such as absolutely to forbid out-of-door drill, the men were taught in the school of artillery, and practiced on the great guns in the casemate battery.
The most exact discipline was necessarily maintained, and as soldierly discipline is only to be obtained by close attention to minutiæ--not even things apparently trifling were neglected. The fact that one button of a soldier’s overcoat was not fastened, was noted and the parade was stopped until the defect was remedied. No soldier was allowed to sit in the presence of an officer. The regulation salutes proper to each rank were required and paid by officers and men, sentinels and the guard. Adhering to the letter of the regulations, our manual was that of Scott, because we were armed with muskets, not rifles. Every nook and corner of every barrack and bunk, and every portion of the dress of every officer and man, must at all times be satisfactory to the keen and critical eye of an “old army” Colonel.
All of this was needed to make perfect soldiers, and all of it was readily accepted and observed by the men, more than nine-tenths of whom were American born, in order that they might become good soldiers. Singularly enough it was more difficult to bring the officers to exact the honors due to rank, than the soldiers to yield them.
Army officers often expressed their surprise at the rapidity with which a command so essentially native, was brought to the extreme of army discipline, and almost without punishment. This result was a complete proof that intelligent Americans can be brought into a state of thorough and exact discipline more readily, by reason of their intelligence, than the uneducated immigrants who were once thought to make better soldiers because of their comparative ignorance. Of course there were occasional extra hours of guard duty for men returning from leave on shore--people on the mainland were so very hospitable--but rarely was any more serious correction requisite.
There was one case, a second offence perhaps, where the sinner was put on special log duty, and he has since declared that it was sufficiently severe to keep him dry for six months. Two or three sticks of four-foot firewood, not excessively large, but good fair size, were placed in the bastion near the officers’ quarters, and as many more at the extreme end of the parade, near the postern. The offender was ordered to shoulder a billet from one bastion, and to carry it in “common time” to the other; there to lay it down, and taking up another, to return over his beat and deposit it at the place of departure--and so on for several hours. The punishment consisted, not in the laborious character of his occupation, but in the fact that he knew it was useless labor, and that everybody else knew it also. The occasional inquiries or remarks of comrades about the profits of the carrying trade in fuel, may very likely have aggravated the penalty.