The loud mirth and the singing
attracted the attention of news-hunters for the Press--item gatherers
in the rooms below. Unfortunately one of these gentlemen looked
into the banquet-hall just as Price had predicted the fate of
the reconstruction measures at the hands of the Supreme Court. He
instantly smelt news, and enquired of one of the waiters the name of
the gentleman who had thus proclaimed the action of the Court. The
waiter quietly approached the seat of the Governor, and, whilst he was
looking in another direction, abstracted the card near his plate
which bore my name. Here was, indeed, a grand item for a sensational
paragraph. Straight way the newsgatherer communicated it to a
newspaper in Washington, and it appeared under an editorial notice. It
was also telegraphed to a paper in Baltimore. But it was too good
to be lost in the columns of a newspaper. Mr. Scofield, a member of
Congress from Pennsylvania, on the 30th of January, 1868, asked and
obtained unanimous consent of the House to present the following
preamble and resolution:
"Whereas it is editorially stated in the _Evening Express_,
a newspaper published in this city, on the afternoon of
Wednesday, January 29, as follows: 'At a private gathering of
gentlemen of both political parties, one of the Justices
of the Supreme Court spoke very freely concerning the
reconstruction measures of Congress, and declared in the most
positive terms that all those laws were unconstitutional, and
that the Court would be sure to pronounce them so.
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