Hannibal's Eighth Infantry were still in separate brigades they were in the First Division, anyway.
Subtracting the General Quitman brigade of South Carolinans (the Palmettos), Alabamans and Georgia Crackers, and the Tennessee cavalry, who were to garrison Vera Cruz, the army numbered between eight and nine thousand officers and men—not many for a march into Mexico and a fight with General Santa Anna's thirty or fifty thousand.
Jerry proceeded to learn the drum, with Hannibal as instructor. The drumsticks proved tricky—there seemed to be a lot of rigmarole and Hannibal was a hard drillmaster; but who might tell what would happen in the coming battles? Young Rome, drummer boy in the Twiggs division, had been disabled already. So it behooved a fellow to be prepared to fill a vacancy.
For the army there were drills and evolutions "in masse," as they were styled, with General Scott himself commanding. And a grand spectacle that was, when the infantry wheeled, and the artillery galloped, and the dragoons spurred, all upon the plain under the walls of Vera Cruz crowded with townspeople, gathered to view the sight.
On the evening of April 7 there was a last parade by the troops together, and a speech by General Scott, in which he promised that if the men would follow him he would take them through.
In his gold-buttoned blue frock coat, and his gold-*braided blue trousers, with gold epaulets on his broad shoulders and a gold sash around his waist and a plumed cockaded chapeau upon his grizzled head, his tasseled sword in its engraved scabbard hanging at
