"Surrounded by Dangers of All Kinds": The Mexican War Letters of Lieutenant Theodore Laidley Page: xiv

                                
Early Life of T. T. S. Laidley

ing also all the money at interest, at the same time discounting
for all outstanding debts.... To make your sketch more com-
plete, I wish you to draw also a vertical projection of your grand-
father as he appeared on receiving the intelligence of the Battle
of New Orleans."8
Finally, near the end of August 1838, the second classmen
returned from their furloughs, and Laidley and all of his new
classmates packed up their tents and returned to the barracks
for the beginning of their first academic year at the Academy.
Typically, two cadets shared a room about thirteen feet square.
It had two mattresses on the floor, two small tables, two small
wooden chairs, a wooden water bucket with tin dipper, a small
shaving mirror, and a crockery wash bowl. No curtains were
permitted on the windows, and illumination for night time study
was furnished by two small fish oil lamps, "the smell of which,"
recalled one former student, "was similar to, if not worse than,
that which Jonah must have experienced during his sojourn in
the whale's belly."'
The officers on duty at the Military Academy rigorously en-
forced discipline on their charges. Cadets might earn conduct
demerits for such offenses as having liquor or playing cards in
their possession, being out of their rooms after taps at night, or
using profane language. In one case of rather extreme nitpick-
ing, a cadet picked up some demerits for sitting in his room
with his feet up on his desk. The crime-"defacing public prop-
erty." Different transgressions carried different penalties, but if
a cadet's total number of demerits reached 200 in any given
year he faced expulsion. At the end of each spring term, Acad-
emy administrators posted the students' conduct rankings along
with their academic ranks.10
Regulations required all cadets to attend Sunday church
services en masse. They occupied the center section of the chapel
where they sat on backless benches in their snug-fitting uni-

xiv