Sometime in the spring of 1858, 22-year-old Teresa Sickles, the wife of Congressman Daniel E. Sickles, began an affair with 40-year-old Philip Barton Key II, US Attorney and son of Francis Scott Key.
On the morning of 27 February 1859, Daniel Sickles saw Key sitting on a bench near his Washington DC home and went out and shot Key several times. Key died later the same day.
Sickles surrendered himself to Attorney General Jeremiah Black and confessed to the murder. Sickles was taken to jail, but placed in the jailer’s personal quarters, where he received numerous visitors, including congressmen and senators. Sickles was even allowed to keep the murder weapon. President James Buchanan sent a note offering his help.
With Buchanan’s assistance, Sickles assembled a prominent legal defense team, including Edwin Stanton (who would go on to become Secretary of War under Abraham Lincoln). Sickles and his defense team argued that the murder was due to his “temporary insanity,” the first time that defense had been used in US legal history.
The trial began on 4 April. The prosecution tried to argue that Sickles was a well-known adulterer (he had been censured for allowing prostitutes into his congressional chambers, and had taken a prostitute with him to England, introducing her to Queen Victoria) who paid little attention to his wife, but the judge disallowed that line of argument.
On 23 April, Edwin Stanton began the defense’s closing argument, stating that the murder had been “committed in defense of family chastity, the sanctity of the marriage bed, the matron’s honor, the virgin’s purity.” He continued, “Who seeing this then, would not exclaim to the unhappy husband, “Hasten, hasten, to save the mother of your child! And may the Lord who watches over the home and family guide the bullets and direct the stroke!” When he had finished the court erupted in cheers.
The jury deliberated for less than an hour on 26 April 1859 and returned with a verdict of not guilty. Sickles celebrated that night at a party attended by more than 1500 members of Washington politicians and supporters.
After the trial, Sickles reconciled with his wife, which caused the press and public to turn on him. Teresa Sickles died of tuberculosis in 1867.
During the Civil War, Daniel Sickles recruited a regiment of volunteers and attained the rank of major general. He lost his right leg at Gettysburg (he donated the amputated limb to the National Museum of Health and Medicine, and reportedly visited it on every anniversary of the amputation) while his judgment and conduct on the field of battle were heavily criticized. Sickles is the only General at Gettysburg who was not memorialized with a statue.
