They felt the new president, a Tennessean, was being too soft on the defeated Confederacy. To pressure the president, Congress passed a law requiring him to get Senate consent to dismiss appointed officials. The president went on trial in the Senate, where Radical Republicans assumed that Ross would side against Johnson. Winn cites contemporaneous accounts that described Ream as a charmer with a gleaming smile. She stood just 5 feet tall and weighed little more than 90 pounds.
Photographs show dark flowing hair and dark eyes.
On the evening before the vote, Republicans sent an emissary to the Ream home to determine where Ross stood. Daniel Sickles, a Johnson foe since the president removed him from a military posting in the Carolinas, was also regarded as a ladies man who might charm the protective Ream into letting him see Ross. Ream managed to put Sickles off for hours, serving tea and even singing for the one-legged Civil War veteran, Winn says. At various times, she whispered with someone behind a door, believed to be the reluctant Ross. Finally, the frustrated Sickles asked Ream if she knew Ross' intentions.