Justice
and mercy
Presented
to the
Todd
S. Parkhurst
Copyright
2008 Todd S. Parkhurst
JUSTICE AND MERCY
Good evening. It is with no little regret that I read to you the following letter so as to bring to your esteemed attention the following facts. It is my deep admiration for those who defend the accused in our criminal justice system, and my interest in criminal trial closing arguments, which compel me to bring this complex affair to your perceptive and discerning attention. I am aware that you are familiar with the names of several of the dramatis personae, but I do earnestly entreat you to mentally conduct yourselves as good jurors must and so to withhold your judgment as to the propriety and effects of the herein below related activities until you have completely heard and carefully considered all the relevant facts in this case. Then and only then, gentlemen--and ladies--I shall call upon you to exercise your judgment and, in no less or greater measure, your mercy.
“Hon. Daniel Sickles:
Dear Sir
With deep regret I enclose to your attention these few lines, but an indispensable duty compels me to do so, seeing that you are greatly imposed upon.
There is a fellow, I may say, for he is not a gentleman by any means, by the name of Phillip Barton Key (I believe to be the District Attorney) who rents a house of a man by the name of Jonah A. Gray situated on 15th Street between K. and L. streets for no other purpose than to meet your wife Mrs. Sickles. He hangs a string out of the window as a signal to her that he is in and leaves the door unfastened and she walks in and
Sir I do assure you with these few lines
I leave the rest for you to imagine.
Most respectfully,
Your friend,
R.P.G.
Daniel E. Sickles was born in
Young Dan met Teresa Bagioli in 1836 -- when, he was 33 and she
15. Teresa Da Ponte Bagioli was the daughter of the wealthy and well-known
Italian singing teacher Antonio Bagioli. During her youth, she sometimes lived and
studied in the household of her grandfather, Lorenzo da Ponte, a noted music
teacher, who had worked as Mozart's librettist on such masterpieces as The
Marriage of Figaro. An exceptionally bright child, Teresa spoke five
languages by the time she was a young adult.
Young
Sickles moved into Grandfather Da Ponte’s home; he left after about a year when
his mentor suddenly died. Though Sickles had known Teresa since her infancy, he
made her acquaintance again in 1851, this time as an Assemblyman (and part of
the Tammany Hall Democratic machine). Sickles, a notorious womanizer, was now quite
taken with Teresa and soon proposed marriage. Despite his prominence and long
connection to the family, the Bagiolis refused to consent to the marriage.
Undeterred, the couple wed on September 17, 1852, in a civil ceremony. Teresa's
family then relented and the couple married again, this time with the Catholic Archbishop of New York City
presiding. Some seven months later, in 1853, their only child, Laura Buchanan
Sickles, was born. That same year Dan became corporation counsel for New York
City. He soon resigned to become
secretary of the US legation in London under Ambassador James Buchanan. He did
not take his pregnant wife to England with him, but instead was accompanied by
Fannie White, a notorious prostitute. He
presented Miss White to Queen Victoria, using as her alias the surname of a New
York political opponent. He returned
home in 1855, and was elected a member of the Senate of New York State where he
served from 1856 to 1857. His first great notoriety attached to him there, when
he escorted the lucious Fanny into the Senate chambers. In 1857, Daniel Sickles was elected a
Democratic representative to the United States Congress. There he chaired a
committee which provided for the funding and development of the New York City's
Central Park.
Upon his
arrival in Washington in 1857, Congressmen Sickles purchased a home in
Lafayette Square for his wife and young daughter. In the mid-1800s, Lafayette Square was the
Place to Be. St. John's Episcopal Church
was a thriving institution, and on the west side of the Square lived commodore
Stephen Decatur. Dolly Madison lived on
the east side of the Square. Next door
to her home were the homes, at one time or another, of John C. Calhoun, Edwin
M. Stanton, William H. Seward, James G. Blaine, and Henry Clay. The Blairs, the Slidells, the Adamses and other notables lived nearby.
Congressmen
Sickles' good friend Phillip Barton Key lived nearby.Six feet tall, Key was
known as the handsomest man in all of Washington society. He was the son of
Francis Scott Key, composer of the Star Spangled Banner and he had been
appointed the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia through the
efforts of his famous father, a noted lawyer at the time, and the efforts of
his uncle, Roger Taney, then Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. Sickles had helped Key keep his job despite Keys'
hyperactive lifestyle with the ladies and a less-than-diligent focus on his
official duties, traits which occasionally lead then- President Franklin Pierce
to consider firing him. Key was a
frequent dinner guest at the Sickles residence, and had often spent close-together
time with Teresa while Dan was at work in his home office.
So when
Dan Sickles received that letter, he was outraged. The next day he confronted
his wife. Teresa confessed. In her own hand she wrote out and signed a
confession:
“ I have
been in a house in 15th Street with Mr. Key.
How many times I don't know. The
house is unoccupied. Commenced going
there in the latter part of January.
Have been in alone with Mr. Key.
There was a bed in the second story.
I did what is usual for a wicked woman to do. The intimacy commenced this winter when I came
from New York, in a house. An intimacy
of an improper kind. Have met half a
dozen times or more. Mr. Key generally
goes first. I was there on Wednesday
last. I went in alone. My daughter was at Miss Hoover’s. Mr. Key took and left her there at my
request. Went in by the back gate. Went in the same bedroom, and an improper
interview was had. I undressed
myself. Mr. Key undressed also. This occurred on Wednesday, 17th of February,
1859.
Mr. Key
has kissed me in this house (the Sickles house on Lafayette Square) a number of
times. I do not deny that we had a connection
in this house last spring a year ago, in the parlor on the sofa. I did not think it safe to meet him in this
house, because the servants might suspect something.
This is
a true statement written by myself without any inducement held up by Mr.
Sickles of forgiveness or reward, and without any menace from him. This I have written with my bedroom door open
and my maid and child in the adjoining room, at half past 10 o'clock in the
evening. Miss Ridgeley is in the house,
within call. Teresa Bagioli.”
Sickles
was so distressed that night that he did not sleep. Teresa slept on the floor next to the family
bed. Sickles had removed Teresa’s wedding band and had broken it.
The next two days were tense ones in the
Sickles household. Not content with a private confession he had obtained from
his wife, Sickles enlisted the help of his friend and neighbor George Woolridge
to find out if the accusations in the letter were true. Woolridge reported to Sickles that the entire
neighborhood knew of the liaison between Key and Mrs. Sickles.
Sunday, February 27, 1859, was an unseasonably warm
day in Lafayette Square. At about 10 A.
M., Phillip Key strolled down the street toward the Sickles residence. In his pockets were a opera glasses, a white
handkerchief and two brass keys. Dandy, the Sickles Greyhound puppy, romped
outside. Key, taking his handkerchief from his pocket, began to play with the
dog and to anxiously study the windows of the Sickles house with his opera
glasses, searching for a white ribbon, the agreed-upon sign from Teresa that an
assignation could be had.
Inside
the house, Sickles was consulting with Samuel Butterworth, superintendent of
the US Assay Office and a close friend.
When the Sickles maid reported to Sickles that Key was outside waving
his handkerchief and examining the house with his opera glasses, Butterworth
said to Sickles "There is but one course left to you as a man of
honor. You need no advice." Some
historical sources say that Butterworth then went outside to warn Keys away
from the house, while Sickles armed himself with two Derringer pistols and a
five shot revolver. In any event, Sickles soon dashed out into to Lafayette
Square. Running toward Key, Sickles shouted, "Key, you scoundrel, you have
dishonored my house--you must die!” Sickles
fired a Derringer, but the bullet only grazed Key. Key began shouting "Murder!" and charged Sickles. The two grappled on the ground. Sickles, smaller but stronger than Key,
escaped Key’s grasp and pulled out a second Derringer. "Don't murder
me!" shouted Key as he ran, trying
to escape the furious Sickles. Key
stopped, and hurled his opera glasses at Sickles; they bounced off Sickles and fell
to the ground. Key was unarmed and
defenseless.
Sickles
now drew his revolver, carfully aimed at Key, again, and fired. The bullet hit Key in the crotch, entering
the thigh and just missing the main artery.
Key staggered and fell. Sickles shouted at Key, "You villain, you
have dishonored my house, and you must die!” Key pleaded for his life as
Sickles pulled the trigger, but the gun misfired. “Murder, murder” screamed Key, but none of
the stunned bystanders came to his aid.
Sickles stepped forward and stood directly over Key's body, aimed
the gun at Key’s chest, and fired point-
blank. The bullet tore through his
chest, and Key convulsed on the pavement, his chest filling with blood.
Sickles was
not finished. He put the gun directly
against Key’s head and pulled the trigger.
The gun misfired again. Sickles then walked away. Passersby carry Key into the Cosmos Club,
then located on Lafayette Square. Three guns, five pulls of the triggers, two
mis-fires, and three bullets had ended Key's life.
A young
spectator named Bonitz ran down the block and into the White House and informed
President Buchanan of the events. Buchanan, evidently misunderstanding the
situation and thinking that Bonitz was the only witness,, promptly gave Bonitz a pocketful of cash and a razor
to shave off his beard, and advised him to leave town. Bonitz was never heard
from again.
Meanwhile
Butterworth led Sickles across the Square and down another street to the home
of Attorney General Jeremiah Black. By
the time they arrived at the Black home, Sickles had entirely composed
himself. Sickles joined in a
conversation about Pennsylvania politics with other guests at the Black home
before gently taking Attorney General Black aside to explain what had just
happened. Black allowed Sickles to
return to his house accompanied by two police officers and Butterworth. As he pushed through the gathering crowd on
the way home, Sickles could see souvenir hunters cutting pieces from the tree where
Keys had lain. When Sickles arrived at home, he asked to see Teresa. The police made him promise he would not hurt
his wife before allowing him to go upstairs.
There Sickles found that Teresa had not moved since he'd last seen
her. Sickles gazed at his wife, and uttered
one sentence: “I've killed him.” He was
then escorted to jail. There, visited bv
the Reverened Mr. Haley of the Unitarian Church, Sickles vowed never to see his
wfe again and asked the minister to return the broken wedding ring to Teresa as a symbol of the "sundered
bonds."
The day
after the killing, Sickles began to assemble his legal defense team. He hired two close friends, James T. Brady
and John Graham--and a powerful Ohio attorney who had begun practicing in
Washington, named Edwin McMasters Stanton. On the prosecution side, President James
Buchanan, Sickles’ friend, promoted Assistant District Attorney James Ould to
the position of U.S. District Attorney and appointed him to prosecute the case. Ould was an inexperienced trial lawyer and in
disposition seemed to be "more like a friend to be honorably trusted then
a lawyer to be depended upon."
The
trial began on Monday, April 4 (which would have been the eve of Key's 41st
birthday) with the reading of the indictment: "the jurors of the United
States for the District of Columbia upon their oaths presented, that Daniel E.
Sickles, gentlemen, not having the fear of God before his eyes but being moved
and seduced by the instigation of the devil, on the 27th day of February in the
year of our Lord 1859, with forece and arms in the County aforesaid, and upon
the body of one Phillip Barton Key, in the peace of God and of the United
States then and there feloniously and willfully and of his malicious
aforethought, did make an assault by a certain pistol of the value of two
dollars, then and there charged with gunpowder and one leaden bullet, which
said pistol he, the said Daniel E. Sickles, in his right hand, then and there
had and held, then and there feloniously, willfully and of his malicious
aforethought, did discharge and shoot off to, against and upon the said Phillip
Barton Key... and wound him …in and upon the left side of him... a little below
the 10th rib of him... giving to him, the said Phillip Barton Key, then and
there, with the leadin bullet aforesaid, one mortal wound of the depth of 10
inches and of the breadth of half an inch, of which said mortal wound he, the
said Phillip Barton Key, then and there instantly died."
The jury
was impaneled and Prosecutor Ould presented his case in a straightforward
manner. A parade of witnesses described the murder. James A. Reed, a wood and
coal dealer, told how Key took cover behind the tree after the first shot, then
crumpled to the ground after the next shot and was hit a second time while
lying on the pavement pleading, "Don't shoot." There was no evidence of any resistance by
the terrified victim.
After
the close of the prosecution's case, the great orator and defense attorney John
Graham arose and delivered a spellbinding opening statement over two days,
unveiling a defense strategy never before attempted in US history: the
defendant was not guilty because he had been insane --temporarily insane -- at
the time of the killing.
The
immediate origin of the insanity defense had arisen in England in the
McNaughton case, decided by the English House Of Lords only 16 years before the
Sickles trial. This decision held that a
defendant could be held not guilty by reason of insanity if a defendant did not
know the nature and quality of his act, or if he did, that he did not know that
the act was wrong. Of course, a jury
finding of not guilty by reason of insanity did not mean that a defendant was
alowed to go free. Rather, the defendant
was delivered to a hospital for treatment—and, in the mid-1800s, that treatment
involved the administration of Mercury and laxatives and enemas and leeches and
brain surgery.
But the
Sickles defense team took an unheard-of additional step--arguing that Sickles was not
guilty by reason of temporary insanity.
The temporary part would be the delicate and difficult part. Sickles’ shooting was not done in the
presence of an adulterous act nor in a few moments of passion. Sickles had known about the adultery for
days. Even if he was emotionally provoked
by the sight of Key signaling to his wife from the street, Sickles took time to
prepare and execute the killing by collecting his weapons and ammunition, by
crossing the street, and by arguing with Key.
In ponderous prose Graham described the temporary insanity defense --
and a second, related defense: the "higher, unwritten law defense." Yes, Sickles killed Key at least two full
days after the receipt of the anonymous letter and so had had a generous
"cooling-off period" --but the biblical Absalom had waited two full
years to kill the violator of his sister.
Graham argued that if the law permits a husband to kill an adulteror
caught in the act --which the law did then permit-- it was equally permissive
to kill the adulteror if he was caught "so near the act as to leave no
doubt as to his guilt." Mr. Sickles
had not invited the debonair Mr. Key to stroll past his house on that fateful
Sunday afternoon and waive his adulterous handkerchief at Mrs. Sickles’
window. Finally, attorney Graham argued
legal precedent to presiding Judge Crawford.
In a recent Washington criminal court trial presided over by the same
Judge Crawford--and prosecuted, ironically, by the late Phillip Barton Key--the
jury had acquitted one Mr. Jarboe for exacting the same revenge for the same
reason.
Trial
was already a week old, and now the defense attorneys spent another ten days
presenting their witnesses and evidence. Every seamy, steamy detail of the Phillip
Key--Theresa Sickles affair were exposed.
In equally juicy detail, the numerous seductions, liasons and affairs of
Daniel Sickles himself were exposed. Then, the drama heightened by a
thunderstorm raging outside the courthouse, Edwin Stanton began his closing
argument:
May it
Please Your Honor: it becomes my duty to present some considerations in support
of the points of law which had been submitted by the defense, and which points
are in conformity with those which may be given to a jury…. there are two
classes of cases in which a man may be exempted from judicial punishment for
killing, namely, self-protection, which is a natural right, and, secondly, the
defense of one’s household from a thief or robber. But there is a third class, arising from the
social compact, for the law holds family chastity and the sanctity of the
marriage bed, the Matron’s Honor and the Virgin's Purity, to be more valuable
and estimable in law than the property --
or life -- of any man.
The
present case belongs to that class. The
instructions presented by the defendant brings to the attention of the court two
consistent lines of defense: one, that the act of the prisoner at bar is
justified by the law of the land under these circumstances; the other, that
whether justified or not, he is free from legal responsibility by reason of the
state of the prisoner's mind. "The
family," says a distinguished moralist, "is the cradle of sensibility,
where the first lessons are taught of that tenderness and humanity which cement
mankind together; and were they extinguished, the whole fabric of society would
be dissolved." If the adulteror be
found in the husband's bed, he is taken in the act, within the meaning of the
law. If he provides a place for the
express purpose of committing adultery with another man's wife, and be found
leading her, accompanying her, or following her to that place for that purpose,
he is taken in the act. If he not only
provides but habitually keeps such a place and is accustomed, by preconcerted
signals, to entice the wife from the husband's house, to accompany him to that
vile den, and if he be found watching her, Spyglass in hand, and lying in wait
around the husband's house, he is taken in the act. If, moreover, he has grown so bold as to take
a child of the injured husband, his little daughter, by the hand, to separate
her from her mother, to take the child to the house of a mutual friend in order
to enjoy the mother, it presents a case surpassing all that has ever been
written of cold, villainous, remorseless lust.
Who, seeing this thing, would not exclaim to the unhappy husband, "hasten,
hasten hasten to save the mother of your child.
Although she be lost as a wife, rescue her from the horrid adulteror;
and may the Lord, who watches over the home and the family, guide the bullet and
direct your stroke." [Applause
here]. The death of Key was a cheap
sacrifice to save a young mother from the horrible fate which, on that Sabbath day,
hung over this prisoner's life and the mother of his child. The husband here beheld the adulteror in the
very act of withdrawing his wife from his room, from his presence, from his
arm, from his wing, from his nest; meets him in that act and slays him; and we
say that the right to slay him stands on the firmest principles of
self-defense. [Thunderous applause and
cheers.]
Now
began the closing argument of James Brady, a highly talented jury orator:
The
prosecuting attorney has represented the prisoner as a walking ordinance magazine,
an animated battery, going out from his house on the morning of the homicide
determined to turn all his engines of destruction against Mr. Key. He represented Mr. Sickles as knowing Mr. Key
to be unarmed, and as having giving the deceased no opportunity of defending
himself. But every man would have been
surprised if the evidence had been allowed to stop there, showing only the
fatal meeting between these two men who had hitherto been best friends. If the case had stopped there, would not the
whole world say that in such a case there must have been either insanity or
justification? There is no man in this
District, possessed of any intellect and knowing anything of the facts of this
case, who could have supposed that Mr. Sickles walked out of his house that
Sabbath morning, left his home and his wife, and the darling blossom of his
heart--that child who has been polluted by the touch of the adulteror--could
have walked out of his house in the light of day, under the blessed sunlight,
and in the face of Heaven, and committed an assassination of his friend. Therefore, Your Honor asks, the jury asks,
and the whole world asks, Why Did This Thing Happen? The whole world, Your Honor, has it eye on
this case; and I cannot help saying that when all of us shall have passed away,
and when each shall have taken his chamber in the silent halls of death, and
while some of us would have been totally forgotten but for this unfortunate
incident, the name of everyone associated with this trial, from Your Honor who
presides in the first person of dignity, to the least witness that was called to
the stand, will be known so long as the earth shall exist. The whole world, I say, is watching the
course of these proceedings, and the nature of the judgment; and I believe I
know what kind of a pulsation stirs the heart of the world. I think I know, if the earth could be
resolved into an animate creature, could have a heart, and a soul, and a
tongue, how it would would rise up in the infinity of space and pronounce
judgment on the features of this transaction.
The
provocation of this incident occurred before Mr. Sickles went out of his house.
The waving of the handkerchief was admitted--a white handkerchief. Mr. Key was unfortunate in its
selection. A white handkerchief is
regarded among all the nations of the earth as emblematical of purity, peace,
good faith. The white color in our
national flag is that which was selected
in this case. It would have been well had
Mr. Key attached as much important to the dignity of his banner as did his
distinguished sire the estimable Francis Scott Key. If he had remembered that the Star-Spangled
Banner has been raised everywhere around the world, he would never have
forgotten these two lines: Oh thus be it ever, where freemen shall stand between
their loved home and the wars desolation!
If his noble father inculcated in those lines the imperishable duty of
the American people to protect their homes against the invasion of a foe, how
does it become a less solemn duty of the American husband and father to protect
his home against the invasion of a traitor and an adulteror, who, stealing into
his embraces under the pretext of friendship, inflicts a deadly wound on his
happiness, and aims a blow at his honor?
"Jealousy
enrages a husbandman, and he will not spare vengeance”, says our God in the Book of Proverbs at
Chapter 6, verse 34. If I could have the
grave opened, if I could have summoned a witness who has not been called, if I
could put Phillip Barton Key on the stand in this court, if I could haave asked
him -- in virtue of his birth, his education, of whatever manly characteristics
belonged to him, and whatever opinions he may have derived from his association
with gentlemen, what he would have done if any scoundrel had invaded his house,
polluted and wronged his wife, and brought shame and reproach upon him, if I
could have asked him what he would have done under such circumstances, I leave
the prosecutor, I leave his surviving friends, to say what would have been his
answer.
“Jealousy
enrages a husbandman”; it takes possession of a man's whole nature; no
occupation or pursuit in life, no literary culture or enjoyment, no sweet society
of friends and the brilliancy of sunlight, the whispers of hope or promise of
the future, can for one moment keep out of his mind, his heart, or his soul,
the deep, and all-consuming fire of jealousy.
When once it has entered within his breast, he has yielded to an
instinct which the Almighty has implanted in every animal or creature that
crawls the earth.
“Jealousy
enrages a husbandman.” It converts him into a frenzy in which he is wholly irresponsible
for what he may do. All the emotions of
the defendant’s nature changed into one single impulse; every throb of his
heart burned before the great sense of his injury; every drop of his blood coursed
with his sense of shame; and the inextinguishable agony about the loss of his
wife; the appreciation of the dishonor to come upon his child; a realization
that the promise of his youth must be forever destroyed; and the future, which
opened to him so full of brilliancy, had been shrouded in eternal gloom by one
who, instead of debautching his wife, should have invoked from the good God his
greatest effulgence in the path of his friend. Could Daniel E. Sickles, a man
of unvaried and constant courage, let Phillip Barton Key believe that he could
not only seduce his wife but intimidate him?
If he had done anything more or less than that which becomes a man, under
the circumstances, I would have been willing to see him die the most ignonomous
death before I would venture to raise anything in his behalf but a prayer to
Heaven for the salvation which after death might come. Look,Your Honor, at
Daniel E. Sickles; look at Teresa, that was his wife; look at the woman whom I
knew in her girlhood, in her innocence, and for whom in the past, as now, I
pray the good and merciful interposition of Heaven to make her future life a
source of happiness, and with no more anguish than is inevitable for the
repentance to which her life should be devoted!
Look at Mr. Sickles, and look at poor Teresa, for although the mother of
a child, she herself is a girl, accessible to the influence of a master
intellect – though the sphere of its mastery be in the arena of seduction --and
look at that young child, standing between its father and its mother, equally
influenced by the great laws of the Creator to go toward either, and destined
to leave one! No judgment of Solomon can
prevail here; and but perhaps it might be better to divide this poor child in two
and leave one-half at the feet of each parent, than let it live from that
period it has now reached. Look at Daniel Sickles and the dashed
treasures of his home, betrayed by the friend whom he confided in, who outraged
his hospitality, who brought shame upon him, and left him, left him almost
hopeless, a wanderer in the world.
For all
of the Counsel on this side, and for our client, I wish to say that none of us
have forgotten the great commandment of our Maker, "thou shalt not
kill." We have not forgotten that
commandment any more than we have forgotten the other commandment, "thou
shalt not commit adultery."
Brady finished
his closing argument exhausted. He
covered his face with his hands and wept, amid a thunder of applause. The jury was instructed and shown out to
deliberate. Seventy minutes later, the
door opened and the jury returned. The
court clerk asked, "how say you gentlemen of the jury, do you find a
prisoner at the bar guilty or no?"
The jury foreman -- named Reason
Arnold -- slowly spoke "not guilty."
Pandemonium
ensued.
That
evening, James Brady invited the jurors and the other defense attorneys to his suite
at the National Hotel to celebrate the verdict.
The jurors admitted that they had decided the case not on the law but on
the moral principle behind the killing.
In their minds, "a man who violates the honor and desolates the
home of his neighbor does so at the peril of his life." Sickles returned to his home and soon began
meeting with his friends. On occasion he
took his friends to the spot on Lafayette Square where the shooting had taken
place and reenacted the way the killing
had played out. When asked if he had
meant to kill his former friend, Sickles replied, "Of course I intended to
kill him. He deserved it."
Sickles
forgave Teresa which turned out to be a grave political mistake. In a letter to Daniel, Teresa wrote "do
I now stand upon a footing with the other women I know you have loved? I have long felt like asking you what your
love affairs have been --love of the heart, or love of their superior qualities
such as you have often informed me I did not possess, or attraction of face and
form, or an infatuation? Ask your own
heart who sinned first, and then tell me, if you will.” Although Daniel and Teresa would never again
share a house, they maintained a civil and decent relationship. But civil and decent was not what the public expected. The newspapers that once hailed Sickles as a
hero now attacked him mercilessly. If Sickles
could forgave the adulterous Teresa now, the papers asked, why could not he
have forgiven Key then and spared his life?
Teresa
and daughter Laura lived with Teresa's aging father until Teresa died of
tuberculosis eight years later at the age of 31. Those eight years were lived in loneliness
and in isolation--except for one visitor, James Brady the attorney. He served as a pallbearer at Teresa's
funeral.
Sickles
paid little attention to Laura after Teresa's death, and the young woman soon
began seeking the attention of men.
Laura Sickles died at the age of 38 in a Brooklyn slum, friendless,
penniless and alone, reportedly as a result of a severe drinking problem. Daniel Sickles did not attend her funeral.
Sickles
barely won reelection to Congress in 1860, but he was a broken man. He did not run for reelection for a fifth
term, and moved into a small apartment in New York.
But then
the Civil War erupted. Sickles organized
his own military unit, christened it the Excelsior Brigade, received a
commission as a Brigadier General, and marched against the Confederacy. July of 1863 found him, now a Major General,
in the small town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
Disobeying the direct orders of a senior officer, Sickles moved his
Brigade out in front of the Union line.
This maneuver was later condemned by General George McClellan, but
General Philip Sheridan maintained that Sickle's position distracted
Confederate General James Longstreet's initial attack. Longstreet himself, with whom Sickles became
fast friends later in life, admitted to Sickles that the battle of Gettysburg
would have had a different outcome entirely had Sickles remained at his
assigned position.
Sickles
was struck by a cannonball at Gettysburg.
His shattered right leg hung from him by a small piece of flesh. In response, he pulled out a Havana a cigar
and lit up. Sickles was seen by his men
industriously puffing away as he was carried off the battlefield. Surgeons were unable to save the limb, of course,
and so Sickles requested possession of it.
He placed it in a jar of formaldehyde, and consigned it to the Army
Medical Museum in Washington -- where he went every year to visit it. The bones and
cannonball are still on display there.
Sickles
ultimately received the Congressional Medal of Honor for his conduct on the
battlefield--though it took him 34 years of lobbying Congress to obtain the
coveted award.
In 1869,
President U. S. Grant appointed Dan Sickles ambassador to Spain--where, by some
accounts, he had an affair with the deposed Queen Isabella II. In 1871 he
married Senorita Cremina Ceagh, the daughter of a Spanish nobleman and
diplomat, and he fathered two children by her.
He was again elected to Congress in 1883.
For most
of his postwar life, General Sickles was the chairman of the New York State
Monuments Commission, but the old man could not leave scandal alone. Virtually all the principal senior generals at
Gettysburg have been memorialized with statues there. There is none for Dan Sickles. Money was appropriated for a statue to him and
his Excelsior Brigade, but the evidence is fairly clear that Congressman and
Major General Dan Sickles stole the money.
Today a modest memorial stands sentinel in the Peach Orchard. The likeness of a screaming eagle crowns the
monument.
Dan
Sickles died in 1914. He is buried in
Arlington Cemetery. I ask for your kind
thoughts for the soul of Dan Sickles.