two o'clock
So , in spite of the high hopes and feverish unrest for the forward movement , there was a good deal of sober foreboding among the men , who held to the American right to criticise as the Briton maintains his right to grumble . For the soldier in camp or on the march is as garrulous as a tea gossip , and no problem in war or statecraft is too complex or sacred for him to attempt the solution . Of the thirty thousand men leaving the banks of the Potomac that 16th of July there were , at a low estimate , ten thousand who believed themselves as fitted to command as the chieftains who led them . By two o'clock the Caribees were in the line that had been passing city-ward since daylight . The sun had baked the sticky clay into brick-like hardness , and the hours of trampling , the tread of heavy teams , and the still heavier artillery , had filled the air with an opaque atmosphere of reddish powder , through which the masses passed in almost spectral vagueness . The city crowds , usually alert , when great masses of men moved , were discouraged by heat and dust , and the streets were quite given over to the military . Eager as Jack and his friends were to note the impression the march made upon the civilians , most of whom were thought to be secretly in sympathy with the rebellion , it was impossible to even catch sight of any but soldiers .