On April 17, 1850, while working for the "New York Tribune", she became the first female reporter admitted to the reporters gallery of the U. S. Senate. Both her presence and her account of that day's fracas, in which Mississippi Senator Henry Foote drew a pistol when Missouri Senator Thomas Hart Benton charged at him, were widely noted. According to a Wisconsin newspaper, "nobody but a regular woman could make a description of such a scene so interesting. That jerking, nervous, half breathless excitement which would embarrass the narrative of a man only adds piquancy and grace to that of a woman".