The Impeachment of Andrew Johnson
»Impeachment, Trial, and Acquittal

back to the Andrew Johnson Home Page
back to the intro to this section


 
News Article
Harper's Weekly,
March 21, 1868, page 179

go to the previous article in this section
go to the next article in this section


THE RACE FOR THE WIRES
The excitement in regard to Impeachment in Washington appears, indeed, to be confined almost entirely to the newspaper men; and they display it only when something very important is on the tapis. On the morning on which the public printer was to deliver the impeachment articles to the House the whole force of newspaper correspondents, to the number of fifteen or twenty, assembled in the lobby to await his arrival. As soon as he entered the floor sacred to the "third house" the crowd of correspondents rushed at him, regardless alike of the warnings of the doorkeepers and policemen and the entreaties of the public printer. They pushed him and his bundles violently through an open door into a committee-room, where a House committee was discussing some weighty subject; violently dissolved the committee for the time without the slightest regard for its dignity; grasped the bundles from the hands of the printer, cut them open, and rifled them of their contents, before he could resist or the officers could interfere. The precious documents having been secured by the rival reporters, a race was made for the nearest telegraph office. The whole force rushed through the lobbies regardless of the persons whom they there encountered and whom they rudely jostled aside, past Leutze’s "Course of Empire" without stopping to point out its beauties or absurdities, and into the telegraph office in the reporters’ gallery of the House. Our artist has given this scene as illustrative of the energy of the reporters, and it certainly is as characteristic of that industrious class as the scene on the floor is of most of the occupants of the House.


A RACE FOR THE WIRES – ENERGY OF THE REPORTERS.
March 21, 1868 page 180

Articles Related to the Impeachment, Trial, and Acquittal:
To see a list of the related articles go back to the
intro section.

 

Website design © 1998-2005 HarpWeek, LLC
All Content © 1998-2005 HarpWeek, LLC
Please submit questions to webmaster@harpweek.com