They carried their muskets while out of camp and made every man they
found take the oath of allegiance to the government. I at once
published orders prohibiting the soldiers from going into private houses
unless invited by the inhabitants, and from appropriating private
property to their own or to government uses. The people were no longer
molested or made afraid. I received the most marked courtesy from the
citizens of Mexico as long as I remained there.
Up to this time my regiment had not been carried in the school of the
soldier beyond the company drill, except that it had received some
training on the march from Springfield to the Illinois River. There was
now a good opportunity of exercising it in the battalion drill. While I
was at West Point the tactics used in the army had been Scott's and the
musket the flint lock. I had never looked at a copy of tactics from the
time of my graduation. My standing in that branch of studies had been
near the foot of the class. In the Mexican war in the summer of 1846, I
had been appointed regimental quartermaster and commissary and had not
been at a battalion drill since. The arms had been changed since then
and Hardee's tactics had been adopted.
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