An Antebellum Crime of Passion: Murder and the Insanity Defense of Congressman Daniel Sickles

With recent headlines being dominated by the risque internet activities of certain politicians, I decided that it would be an apt time to explore the case of New York Congressman-- and future Civil War general-- Daniel E. Sickles (and no this is not going to involve some joke about sexting via telegraph).  A controversial and colorful figure, whose actions nearly led to Union disaster at the second day of Gettysburg, Sickles' tumultuous life was captured succinctly by one historian:  "From his mid-30s until his death at age 94, he [Sickles] was continually embroiled in some sort of financial, legislative, sexual or homicidal crisis." 

"HOMICIDE OF F. BARTON KEY BY HON. DANIEL E SICKLES AT WASHINGTON, Harper's Weekly.  Key was the son of Francis Scott Key, author of the Star Spangled Banner, and was also the nephew of US Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, the author of the infamous Dred Scott decision (Courtesy of Library of Congress)

 Sickles was born in New York City in 1819 to a well-to-do family.  As a young man, he was active in New York Democratic politics serving in the state legislature before being elected to Congress in 1856.  Sickles gained national notoriety in 1859 when he discovered that his much younger wife, Teresa Bragioli, was having an affair with Francis Barton Key, the son of the author of our National Anthem.  Enraged, Congressman Sickles confronted Key outside the Sickles' Lafayette Park residence on the afternoon of February 27, 1859.  According to eyewitnesses, Sickles shouted, "Key, you scoundrel.  You have dishonored my wife.  You must die."  Sickles then fired a revolver at Key, killing him within spitting distance of the Executive Mansion. 

Teresa Bragioli Sickles, the younger wife of Congressman Daniel Sickles and the object of Francis Barton Key's affections, Harper's Weekly (Courtesy Library of Congress)

Sickles was charged with murder and his trial captured newspaper headlines throughout the country.  The New York Times' Washington correspondent observed that "the vulgar monotony of partisan passions and political squabbles has been terribly broken in upon today by an outburst of personal revenge, which has filled the city with horror and consternation, -- I cannot unfortunately add with absolute surprise."  The press reported that Key had even maintained a residence along 15th Street in a run-down neighborhood for his liaisons with Mrs. Sickles. 

Sickles was represented by a legal "dream team" including future War Secretary Edwin Stanton.  Sickles' legal team employed the then novel defense of "temporary insanity."  The jury agreed and Sickles became the first defendant in US history to be acquitted by reason of temporary insanity. Sickles, who himself was a known womanizer, remained married to Teresa until her death in 1867 from tuberculosis. 

THE TRIAL OF THE HON. DANIEL E. SICKLES, Harper's Weekly (Courtesy Library of Congress)

A pro-Union War Democrat, Sickles volunteered his services at the outbreak of the war and became one of the most prominent, albeit also controversial, political generals of the war.  At Gettysburg, Sickles disobeyed orders and advanced his Third Corps, leaving the Union lines vulnerable.  In the resulting fight, he was injured by a cannonball and had to have his right leg amputated. Sickles had bones from the amputated leg preserved and donated them to the Army Medical Museum in Washington, D.C.  Throughout his life, he regularly visited the museum to see his leg on the anniversary of its amputation.  (You too will be able to see his leg and other Civil War medical curiosities including the bullet that killed Lincoln at the National Museum of Health and Medicine, when it completes its relocation from Walter Reed Army Medical Center to the Forest Glen Annex later this year). 

Avoiding the court-martial that he deserved for his actions at Gettysburg, Sickles returned to military duty.  After the war, he resumed his political career and served abroad as a US diplomat in Spain and later  was elected to another stint in Congress.  Through his political connections, Sickles was even able to secure himself a Congressional Medal of Honor in 1897 for his actions at Gettysburg.  In his later years, Sickles was a prominent presence at aging veterans' reunions and was responsible for overseeing New York's efforts to erect memorials to its war dead.  In this capacity, Sickles was accused of embezzling funds in the early 1900s.  Sickles lived to a ripe age and died in New York City on May 3, 1914.  He is buried  at Arlington National Cemetery. 

Major General Daniel E. Sickles signing autographs in 1913 at the fiftieth anniversary reunion of the Battle of Gettysburg.  In his later years, Sickles was estranged from his second wife and children who accused him of squandering their inheritance.  Sickles was also suspected of embezzling funds meant for monuments to New York's war dead.

An Unfinished Nation, an Unfinished Monument (or Beef, It's What's for dinner)

Any discussion of key landmarks in Washington, DC can not fail to mention the Washington Monument, that  iconic memorial, which today towers over all structures within DC's boundaries. Perhaps a fitting symbol of the unfinished nature of the Union in 1861, the Washington Monument-- dedicated to the Father of the Country and the Capital's namesake--sat incomplete throughout the war.

The Washington Monument's cornerstone was set in 1848.  However,  lackluster fundraising, internal squabbles (including "Know Nothing" involvement) and the withdraw of Congressional funding led to a halt in construction in 1856.  The author Mark Twain would later sarcastically observe that "the Monument is to be finished, some day, and at that time our Washington will have risen still higher in the nation's veneration, and will be known as the Great-Great-Grandfather of his Country."

The failure to complete the Monument before the outbreak of the war was not indicative of any lack of enthusiasm, both North and South, regarding George Washington some sixty years after his death.  Americans, both North and South, continued to venerate Washington and both sides claimed his legacy for their own cause.  Southerners viewed their struggle as a Second American Revolution and naturally invoked that great Virginian, and a slaveholder, to justify their cause.  In 1861, one Georgian even proposed that the new Confederacy be named the Republic of Washington.  Although this motion was not adopted, the official Great Seal of the Confederacy depicted a mounted figure of General Washington.

Lincoln was not about to cede Washington's legacy to the South.  In his 1860 Cooper Union speech, Lincoln rejected southern agitators' attempts to appropriate Washington's legacy for their own sectional agenda:  "Could Washington himself, speak, would he cast the blame of that sectionalism upon us, who sustain his policy, or upon you who repudiate it?" Upon his departure from Springfield in February 1861, President-Elect Lincoln observed the grave work ahead, upon which the very Union that Washington had helped to forge depended :  'I now leave, not knowing when, or whether ever, I may return, with a task before me greater than that which rested upon Washington.'



Although the incomplete monument only reached one-third of its eventual height, at approximately 150 feet, it still towered over other Washington structures.  (Today there is still a discernible difference in the shading of the marble, showing where construction  had been halted before the war)   However, the unfinished monument did not impress Mark Twain, who quipped that it looked like a "hollow, over-sized chimney."

As tens of thousands of soldiers descended on Washington in answer to the President's call for 75,000 volunteers to put down the rebellion, space was needed to train, feed and shelter them.  The monument's grounds were used for drilling and also hosted large cattle herds.  As a result of these herds and a slaughterhouse established by the army, the area was sometimes called Beef Depot and the Washington National Cattle Yard.

One can only imagine the wonderful odors that must have emanated from the Monument's grounds during the war.  In 1862, Frank Leslie's Illustrated News painted a dismal picture of a Washington Monument “surrounded by offal rotting two or three feet deep.”


As the country reunited, public interest in completing the Monument grew.  On the nation's centennial in 1876, Congress appropriated funds for the Army Corps of Engineers to complete the project.  The monument opened to the public in 1888.


The use of the Monument grounds would set a precedent for later military use of the Mall during wartime exigencies. During the Second World War, the Federal Government erected "temporary" office buildings in the vicinity of the Washington Monument grounds to serve the growing wartime government workforce.




                                                                                                                                           

Cattle can be seen grazing on the Washington Monument grounds just west of 14th Street in this 1865 photograph lookin gin the direction of the White House and Treasury.

Harpers Weekly illustration showing an artillery unit drilling on the Washington Monument grounds.

A wartime illustration in Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper depicts the use of the grounds of the unfinished Washington Monument as a cattle depot. The poet Walt Whitman recalled once seeing nearly 10,000 cattle on the grounds.

Officers of the U.S. Treasury Battalion; uncompleted Washington Monument in left background, Circa April 1865 (Courtesy Library of Congress)

Welcome

Welcome to my blog regarding Washington, DC sites associated with the Civil War.  As a native of the Washington suburbs, I have been fascinated since childhood with the role that Washington played as the political and military "Seat of War" for the United States from 1861-1865.  As a child, my parents took me  to Fort Stevens, site of one of the 68 forts and batteries defending Washington during the war.   These visits to this park, which was just down the street from my mother's childhood home, began my interest in this topic.  This blog will focus on those sites in Washington and its close-in suburbs (i.e. locations within the Beltway) that have connections to the Civil War and help tell the story of the role our community played in ensuring that "... government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."  I plan on highlighting historical photos, archival materials, modern day photos, and maps to help flesh out this story.  This work in progress has been spurred on by the recent bicentennial of Lincoln's birth, the start of the Civil War Sesquicentennial, and my wife's desire that I harangue anyone but her, with my observations about Civil War life within the Beltway.

When Abraham Lincoln stealthily arrived in Washington, DC on February 23, 1861, this southern town probably did not look that different from when he had left it twelve years earlier at the conclusion of his sole term in the US House of Representatives.  However, one striking difference to the President-Elect certainly would have been the US Capitol Building.  In the 1850s, new wings were added to house new chambers for the House and Senate.  In 1855, construction began on an iron dome to grace the center of the Capitol Building.  However, construction still had not been completed on this dome at the time of Lincoln's inauguration.

On the eve of the Civil War, the nation's capital was just over sixty years old and its oldest residents still would have remembered its burning by the British some fifty years earlier.  The capital had approximately 75,000 residents, according to the 1860 Census.  This paled in comparison to the nation's leading cities:  New York (800,000), Philadelphia (500,000).  Washington's population in 1860 was nearly double that of Richmond, which had 38,000 inhabitants.

African-Americans, most of whom were free, made up nearly twenty percent of Washington's population on the eve of the war.  Although slave trading in Washington, DC itself had been abolished as part of the Compromise of 1850, "the peculiar institution" itself remained legal in the District.  (In 1849, Congressman Lincoln unsuccessfully attempted to pass legislation to gradually phase out slavery in the District.).

As for military defenses, there were almost none to speak of as Lincoln prepared for his inauguration.  By war's end, Washington would be the most fortified city in the world with miles of entrenchments ringing the city's then rural outskirts.  Some of these entrenchments remain.  Some locations even are used today for defense related government installations.  Others were destroyed and built over years ago. This blog will explore the vestiges of these and other Civil War related facilities.

As we will see, our nation and our nation's capital was forever transformed-- both physically and ideologically-- by the events of 1861-1865.  Propelled by wartime growth, the District's population would balloon to over 130,000 by the end of the decade.

 

1846 daguerreotype of east side of the US Capitol.  This is how the building would have looked

when a young Whig congressman from Springfield, IL roamed its halls.  (Courtesy of Prints and Photographs Division Library of Congress)





The US Capitol, with its new dome under construction, as it appeared at the time of President Lincoln's first inauguration on March 4, 1861 (Courtesy of Prints and Photographs Division Library of Congress)