ten in the morning
There was a collision , the track was obstructed , and only the 7th and 8th Georgia got through . The remainder of the infantry waited perforce at Piedmont , a portion of it for two mortal days , and that without rations . The artillery and the cavalry -- the latter having now come up -- marched by the wagon road and arrived in fair time . From ten in the morning until sunset the First Brigade and the Manassas Gap train crept like a tortoise through the July weather , by rustling cornfields , by stream and wood , by farmhouse and village . It was hot in the freight and cattle cars , hot , cinderish , and noisy . With here and there an exception the men took off their coats , loosened the shoes from their feet , made themselves easy in any way that suggested itself . The subtle _ give _ , the slip out of convention and restraint back toward a less trammelled existence , the faint return of the more purely physical , the slight withdrawal of the more purely mental , the rapid breaking down of the sheer artificial -- these and other marks of one of the many predicates of war began to show themselves in this journey .