General Scott reorganized the army for the march inland. The general orders changed the assignment of the regiments very little, and left them as follows:
First Regular Division, Brevet Major-General William J. Worth commanding: Light Battery A, Second Artillery; Second Artillery, eight companies, as infantry; Third Artillery, four companies, as infantry; Fourth Infantry, six companies; Fifth Infantry, six companies; Sixth Infantry, five companies; Eighth Infantry, seven companies.
Second Regular Division, Brigadier-General David E. Twiggs commanding: Light Battery K, First Artillery; howitzer and rocket company; Mounted Rifles, nine companies; First Artillery as infantry; Fourth Artillery, six companies, as infantry; Second Infantry, nine companies; Third Infantry, six companies; Seventh Infantry, six companies.
Third or Volunteer Division, Major-General Robert Patterson commanding: Third Illinois, Fourth Illinois; Second New York, ten companies; First Tennessee, Second Tennessee; First Pennsylvania, ten companies; Second Pennsylvania, ten companies; South Carolina, eleven companies; Kentucky, and a detachment of Tennessee cavalry.
The enlistment term of the Georgians and Alabamans had almost expired, so they were not included.
The company of engineers, which contained Captain Lee and Lieutenant McClellan and Lieutenant Beauregard and other smart young officers, was independent; and so were the ordnance or heavy artillery company and the dragoons.
Each division had been broken into brigades as before; and although Jerry’s Fourth Infantry and 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.