Insane — but only for a bit

“Mr. and Mrs. Sick­les are uni­ver­sal favorites; nowhere is there a more refined or gen­er­ous welcome.”

— Harper’s Weekly, 1858

“Key, you scoundrel! You have dis­hon­ored my home. You must die!”

—Daniel Sick­les

Con­gress­man Daniel Edgar Sick­les has a most remark­able life story. Born in New York City dur­ing the pres­i­dency of James Mon­roe, Sick­les quickly rose through the ranks of New York soci­ety. He attended New York Uni­ver­sity, stud­ied law and was admit­ted to the bar. Just a year later, at the age of 28, he was elected to the New York Assembly.

By his mid-30s he was named cor­po­ra­tion coun­sel for the City of New York and soon after became sec­re­tary to future Pres­i­dent James Buchanan when Buchanan was Amer­i­can ambas­sador to Great Britain. Return­ing from Europe he re-entered pol­i­tics, first being elected to the New York State Sen­ate and then to the U.S. House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, where he was serv­ing at the out­break of the Civil War.

He entered his country’s ser­vice as a colonel and was pro­moted to brigadier gen­eral and then to major gen­eral. He served in the Bat­tle of Get­tys­burg, where a can­non­ball took off his right leg. Pres­i­dent Lin­coln went to his bed­side dur­ing his recov­ery. After the war he returned to Con­gress and served as ambas­sador to Spain. Upon his death in 1919, at the age of 94, he was buried in Arling­ton National Cemetery.

Those are, of course, the high­lights of Daniel Edgar Sick­les’ life. If there wasn’t some­thing more beneath the sur­face then I would not, of course, be writ­ing about him. Sick­les’ life was filled with the kinds of activ­i­ties you wouldn’t want to tell to your grand­mother. At the age of 33 he mar­ried a girl of 15, over the objec­tions of both her par­ents and his. He was given a pub­lic cen­sure by the New York Assem­bly because he was cavort­ing with a known pros­ti­tute — at the Statehouse.

While his wife was preg­nant, he took that same pros­ti­tute to Lon­don and pre­sented her to the Queen. Dur­ing the Civil War he ignored the orders of Gen­eral George Meade to dis­as­trous results. Fol­low­ing his ser­vice in Spain he was forced out of a posi­tion on the New York Mon­u­ments Com­mis­sion when a large sum of money went missing.

His mark on the legal world, how­ever, comes not from his polit­i­cal career, but rather the most notable event of his per­sonal life. After Sick­les moved his young fam­ily to Wash­ing­ton, and despite his own mar­i­tal infi­deli­ties, he became obsessed in the belief that his wife was hav­ing an affair. His obses­sion was well founded — she was, indeed, fre­quently seen in the com­pany of one Phillip Bar­ton Key. Key was a young wid­ower, United States Attor­ney for the Dis­trict of Colum­bia and the son of “Star Span­gled Ban­ner” author Fran­cis Scott Key.

When Sick­les learned of the affair in 1859 (by way of an anony­mous let­ter that said that Key “has as much use of your wife as you do”), he grew furi­ous, con­fronted her and got her to sign a con­fes­sion. He laid in wait the fol­low­ing day and when Key came to the Sick­les house — wav­ing a hand­ker­chief as a sign to lure Mrs. Sick­les out, Daniel Sick­les rushed him armed with mul­ti­ple firearms. His first shot hit Key in the hand, his sec­ond hit him in the groin and his third hit him in the chest, killing him within feet of the White House. Con­gress­man Sick­les was arrested and charged with mur­der. The New York Times reported that the affair was, “of that marked and pecu­liar kind which may per­fectly well con­sist in the inno­cence of any absolute guilt.” The news­pa­per also reported that Key’s asso­ciates had made, “inti­mate threats of sum­mary vengeance.”

He arranged a defense team that would have made O.J. Simp­son proud. Lead­ing the team was Edwin Stan­ton, who would later serve as Sec­re­tary of War. Stan­ton knew that his client had com­mit­ted the offense, so he turned to the only defense that could rea­son­ably be claimed: tem­po­rary insan­ity. Stan­ton told the jury that so enraged was Sick­les, by his wife’s affair, that he was tem­po­rary dri­ven to a point where he could no longer tell right from wrong — no longer be held respon­si­ble for his actions. In a fit of insane pas­sion he charged Key and shot him. The trial lasted 22 days in the spring of 1859.

Sick­les was acquit­ted by the Wash­ing­ton jury (else he would not have served in the Union Army, as Ambas­sador to Spain, etc.). Harper’s Weekly ran an edi­to­r­ial in May of 1859 in which they assailed the insan­ity defense as a sham, but the pub­lic bought it, Sick­les’ career con­tin­ued and he goes down in his­tory as the first per­son to ever claim — and ulti­mately be acquit­ted as a result of — a tem­po­rary insan­ity plea.

David Hej­manowski is a Mag­is­trate and Court Admin­is­tra­tor of the Delaware County Juve­nile Court and a for­mer Assis­tant Pros­e­cut­ing Attorney.

Posted by Dave Hejmanowski on Nov 29 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.