Mary was a leaker

[Steve]

E. J. Edwards article is a third-person account that may be based on a written second-hand account written by Postmaster-General Thomas James. It would be really easy for someone along the line to simply misremember which committee it was. Also, the skeptics seem to have missed that James's account seems to identify his source as a Senator during the Garfield Administration. So, that person may not necessarily have been in the Senate in 1862.

That doesn't match the details of Congressman John Hickman's life but I don't know who else was on the House Judiciary Committee at the time. Here's a link to a biography of Hickman for anybody who's interested:

https://books.google.com/books?id=u7t2CQ...an&f=false