four o'clock
`` Only a few hours after Mumford and his mates had pulled down the flag , Butler arrived , joined Farragut on the _ Hartford _ , and presently made to the Secretary of War the report of which I have already spoken . `` He hurried back to his troops and made arrangements for their immediate advance up the river . On the first of May he appeared before New Orleans with his transports bearing two thousand men ; the general with his wife , his staff , and one thousand four hundred troops , was on the _ Mississippi _ , the vessel in which he had sailed from Hampton Roads sixty-five days before . `` At four o'clock on the afternoon of that day the troops began to land : first , a company of the Thirty-first Massachusetts , presently followed by the rest of the regiment , the Fourth Wisconsin , and Everett 's battery of heavy field guns . `` They formed in procession , acting as an escort to General Butler and General Williams and his staff , and marched through several streets to the Custom House , their band playing the ` Star-Spangled Banner . ' They had been given strict directions not to resent any insults that might be offered by the vast crowd gathered in the streets , unless ordered so to do ; if a shot should be fired from any house , they were to halt , arrest the inmates , and destroy the building . `` Their patience was greatly tried during that short march , the crowd constantly growing greater and more boisterous and pouring out upon them volleys of abusive epithets , both vulgar and profane , applying them to the general as well as his troops . ''