the demoralizing influences even of our own militia drills has long been notorious to a proverb. it has been a source of general corruptions to the community, and formed habits of idleness, dissipation and profligacy ... musterfields have generally been scenes or occasions of gambling, licentiousness, and almost every vice. ... an eye-witness of a new england training, so late as 1845, says, "beastly drunkenness, and other immoralities, were enough to make good men shudder at the very name of a muster".