one o'clock in the morning of the nineteenth of April
Although Betty knew North would disregard the sneers of the press and of ambitious orators who would declaim while cannon thundered , she also knew that his impassive exterior hid a sense of humiliating defeat , and that the moment in which he was obliged to utter his aye for war would be the bitterest of his life . She fancied that he forgot her in these days , but she was willing to have it so . The intense breathless excitement of that time , when scarcely a Senator left his seat from ten in the morning till some late hour of the night , except to snatch a meal ; the psychological effect of the silent excited crowds in the galleries and corridors of the Capitol and on its lawns and the immensity of its steps ; the solemnity and incalculable significance of the approaching crisis , and the complete gravity of the man who possessed her mind , carried her out of herself and merged her personality for a brief while into the great personality of the nation . It was half-past one o'clock in the morning of the nineteenth of April . A thousand people , weary and breathless but intensely silent , were crowded together in the galleries of the Senate . They had been there all night , some of them since early afternoon , a few since twelve o'clock . Outside , the corridors were so packed with humanity that it was a wonder the six acres of building did not sway .