ten
in the morning
Nor would such a class of rulers put a man in the White House whose hand could be forced . 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 .