American Scoundrel American Scoundrel American Scoundrel

by Thomas Keneally

  Five-year-old Laura’s wants were briskly looked after by Bridget, who told the child that her father had gone away on business. Laura was a spirited but vulnerable little girl, and asked again and again, but in the end Bridget’s answer made sense to her, since it fitted the established pattern. Teresa had spent such a desolate night that Octavia Ridgeley feared she would die at any second, which might have been a merciful thing, since today she would need to face the indignity of appearing downstairs in the long parlor for identification by such Fifteenth Street witnesses as Mrs. Brown, Mr. and Mrs. Seeley and their daughter Matilda, and Mrs. Baylis, mother of the precocious Crittenden, who were brought to the Stockton Mansion by law officers. As these folk arrived downstairs, Teresa was summoned to descend and show herself to them, one by one. She was the meat in the market, the ogre at the carnival. A little way across the square, souvenir hunters were cutting fragments of wood out of the tree by which Key had fallen, and artists from the illustrated papers set up their easels and began sketching every aspect of the area—the railings, the Stockton Mansion, the Clubhouse.

  On that Monday, Dan’s reliable friend and Teresa’s most favored counselor, Manny Hart, appalled at the morning’s news, which all the papers exultantly carried, was on his way from New York’s Pennsylvania Station. Mr. George Sickles boarded the same train with his wife and Teresa’s parents. George had received a telegram from one of Dan’s friends during the night, and broke the awful news to frail Susan Sickles and then to the Bagiolis. To their credit, through their grief, they traveled and worked as a team under George’s leadership. They had already telegraphed their intentions to arrive and help with the management of the affairs of the Stockton Mansion, of demented Mrs. Sickles, of Laura, and of imprisoned Dan. By that evening, Teresa’s mother would tell the solicitous Mr. Haley that Teresa had for a long time been afflicted with a functional disorder of the heart, which was normally no problem, but which under this degree of distress and excitement “became very alarming in its effects.” It was uncertain whether she was speaking of a disorder of the body or of the soul.

  As for Dan’s day, he still had the distraction of plentiful visits, but some of those who emerged from seeing him to speak to the press said he was in a state of mental prostration, and for long exercise periods paced the corridor in silent grief pressing his head between his hands, sorrowing for his disgraced marriage, his child, his loss of a political future. Chevalier Wikoff stopped in to press Dan’s hand and speak earnestly to him. Speaker Orr, Vice President Breckinridge, and many cabinet members visited. So many dignitaries arrived at the jail that everyone outside expected to see the President come through the door soon, and some newspapers reported that Mr. Buchanan had visited Dan. It was not the truth, but the President, while wanting to place a certain distance between himself and the sexual imbroglios of the Sickleses, had still sent Dan a hearty letter of condolence.5

  Though some of his visitors reassured Dan that a jury would understand his attack on Key, at least one informed friend hurrying down from New York, the most renowned Irish-American lawyer James Topham Brady, thought Dan was in severe peril. He would need an acutely crafted defense to save him from hanging as a result of a judge-directed verdict. Over a stellar legal career, Brady himself had achieved murder acquittals in all his cases except one, but much of the press agreed with him as to the danger Dan was in. One newspaper pointed out that at the time of Key’s death, as the prayer from the litany of the Episcopal church—“From battle and murder and sudden death, Good Lord, deliver us!”—still hung in the air of Lafayette Square, Sickles had shot down an unarmed man, and had fired not once but many times at a victim who had implored his adversary not to kill him. Dan had been able to do this because “Key had been detained by a friend in conversation at a convenient spot, until the assassin could have time to arm himself and prepare for putting Key to death.”

  Who was to say a jury would not reach the same conclusion, particularly if presented with a catalog of Dan’s own crimes of carnality? That energetic diarist of American events George Templeton Strong of New York wrote that Dan Sickles, after all his other sins, “has attained the dignity of homicide. . .. Were he not an unmitigated blackguard and profligate, one could pardon any act of violence committed on such provocation. But Sickles is not the man to take the law into his own hands and constitute himself the avenger of sin.” Butterworth, with no wrong to avenge and no passion to cloud his sense of right and wrong, had set forth and engaged Key in conversation “till Sickles could get his pistols and come up and use them.” This sort of argument could be lethal to Dan’s chances.

  In some of the press, there was a tendency to be lenient toward young Mrs. Sickles, ruined as she was. “The character of the husband too often corrupts that of the wife, particularly at the impressible period of early youth.” And on his way to Washington, James Topham Brady must have read with a particular concern the passage in one hostile New York paper: “The manslayer does not seem to have acted on the promptings of any sudden impulse, but to have perpetrated the deed with entire premeditation.” Brady knew that that would be the central question of the trial, and if the jury agreed that “the manslayer does not seem to have acted on the promptings of any sudden impulse,” Sickles would be hanged. Brady knew too that for every Old Testament–style husband who defended Dan there were an equal number of modern men who would condemn him for excessive force.6

  In the Stockton Mansion, once Manny Hart and the senior Sickleses and Bagiolis arrived in the cold early dark, much discussion and planning was under way. Laura thought it a considerable holiday to have four grandparents present, but was confused—as so often recently—by their solemnity. They spent their days and nights guarding Teresa from doing herself damage, and reminding her of her daughter’s need of her. At the moment, though, even the sight of Laura caused Teresa acute sorrow. She did not have a self-pitying temperament and thus lacked the normal solace of such people—that their sins were caused by others. She was skewered on self-blame. Manny, the Sickleses, and the Bagiolis all agreed they should get Teresa away from the scene as soon as possible. She was done with Washington, and staying there merely imperiled her health.

  When the Bagiolis visited Dan the next morning, Mrs. Bagioli, “a fine-looking woman, rather well advanced in years,” came out leaning on the arm of Mr. Charles K. Graham, engineer of the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and sobbing in a most violent manner. The sorrow had been mutual—Dan had seen in his mother-in-law’s face the shadow of his long-taken-for-granted and now lost Teresa. An observer mentioned that Mr. Sickles was unable to control his feelings for some time after the party had left the prison. The same day, Manny Hart brought Susan Sickles to visit Dan, and she was so overcome at seeing her son that she fainted. Among her other desperate feelings, his indelible gesture against Key had brought an unaccustomed sense to her, the meekest and most observant of women, of being marked in an exceptional and guilty way. The grim condition of those close to Dan made a strong impact upon journalists waiting in the prison lobby. It was also partly the reason why, by midweek, Dan became depressed and lost any appetite for food.

  On the Tuesday after the killing, Jacob King, the warden, had made an attempt to cheer Dan by kindly giving up his capacious office for the prisoner’s use. This change afforded Dan privacy, a desk at which to write, and a little bookshelf. He was permitted to exercise more freely in the narrow corridor outside the office. His meals came from the kitchen at home. As for spiritual counsel, it abounded. Apart from Haley, Dan was also visited by the Methodist Reverend F. C. Grandberry and Father Charles J. White of St. Matthew’s Roman Catholic Church.

  Washington did not have a city morgue, so the autopsy on Key had been held on the Monday morning at Barton’s house at C Street. Then, at one o’clock in the afternoon on Tuesday, the members of the bar and officers of the court met at City Hall and marched in a group to Key’s house, where the last rites were pronounced over the remains. A “motley crowd, boy and man, rich
and poor, black and white, free and slave,” poured through the parlor to have a glimpse of the corpse. Numerous friends also pushed in through the crowd for a last look at an admired friend. The coffin in which Barton lay was of mahogany, and the corpse was dressed in black coat and pants, white vest, and white kid gloves. In the hands a bouquet of fragrant flowers had been placed, and Mrs. Pendleton, Key’s sister, had seen to it that the inside of the coffin was strewn with japonicas and geranium leaves.

  The four children were not at the funeral service; they had been moved to Barton’s mother’s home in Baltimore. As a younger son, Barton left no property, but his family connections were equipped to look after the children. The Episcopal funeral service having been read over the remains, the coffin was placed in a hearse, which took it to the railroad depot for transport to Baltimore. Among the pallbearers were James M. Carlisle, an eminent Washington lawyer, and Senator Joseph H. Bradley, and they and a number of other friends traveled to Baltimore on the three-o’clock train with the remains. A few hours later Key was buried in the Presbyterian cemetery on Green Street, in the same grave as his wife. At a somber gathering at his parents’ Baltimore home, Key’s mother, the widow of the great anthem’s creator, mourned the violent death of the third of her sons. Friends discussed his eccentricities and the nervous condition caused by his wife’s death; spoke of his drinking, which had increased during his affair with Teresa, though he had recently cut back; canvassed the fact that he might have been a leading lawyer but for his easy ways; and decided with justice that he was still a “first-rate fellow,” ready for a joke or a frolic, and an excellent storyteller. He had always been lavish with money, spent a good deal on horseflesh, and would often hire a carriage to carry him a single square. He was, in a word, a former young man of fashion who dared to be unconventional, and was able to be something more than a man about town.7

  As Teresa languished in her room or emerged to mystify her daughter with tears of contrition, Antonio and George, the two fathers, were brokering between them the terms of the inevitable separation. Antonio felt that his daughter, however much he retained a love for her, had dishonored the Bagioli name, and made no bones about that when writing to Dan. “You have heaped on my child affection, kindness, devotion, generosity. You have been a good son, a true friend, and a devoted, kind, loving husband and father.” But Teresa was young, and if her normally robust spirits returned, she would live a long time and need a civilized haven. George Sickles was reported to have made a conditional offer that one of the country homes, among which it seemed he had title to the one in Bloomingdale, should be at the disposal of Antonio Bagioli as a haven for his daughter, provided he would live with her and supervise her. Bloomingdale would obviously be Teresa’s ultimate harbor, but an essential part of the pact about Teresa’s returning to New York under her father’s care was that if she fulfilled these terms, she could keep her daughter, Laura.8 There may have been both compassion and practicality in this. In an age when servants were readily employable, Dan could have—in an acceptable sense of the time—raised the child without too much inconvenience to himself. But it was obvious that Teresa was the better parent for Laura, given that the poor child, blithe and vocal in the company of her two indulgent grannies, was socially blighted to begin with.

  A number of poor Teresa’s former guests were suddenly ashamed of her. Rumors flew throughout the town. Mrs. Sickles was pregnant, but by whom? Mrs. Sickles had actually visited Dan in prison! George Templeton Strong heard people commenting on the Sickles business everywhere, giving conflicting stories and conflicting views. “By gracious, you may depend upon it,” said a prominent New Yorker. “Poor Key’s great mistake was mixing himself up with a low set like the Sickleses.” The distinguished historian, politician, and diplomat George Bancroft was one of the few who had a sense of Teresa’s pain: “Poor child, what a cruel thing to deprive her of her sole stay and support. Key was the only man she could look to for sympathy and protection.”9

  Indeed, though the Sickleses and Bagiolis would have been for a time capable of shielding her from the knowledge, the general details of Teresa’s confession were somehow known within a week of the killing, since George Templeton Strong discussed them at dinner in New York on March 5. James Topham Brady—whom one could call a reliable source—would later deny that Dan was involved in releasing either the fact of a confession or news of the existence of the tip-off letter signed R.P.G. Perhaps it was the work of some other friend or counsel of Dan’s. Though both documents certainly helped build a case that Key had offered Dan Sickles intolerable provocation, their release would be a calamity for Teresa and Laura, Teresa providing the focus for the prurience of a nation.

  The news of the confession caused, as George Templeton Strong gleefully reported, a strong reaction against Sickles himself. People, said Strong, believed that the confession extorted from his wife and put on paper before witnesses “was the dodge of a Tombs’ lawyer, and shows the homicide to have been premeditated from the first. That Sickles seduced his mother-in-law and silenced the husband by telling him there was another Mrs. Bagioli in Italy, and also seduced the daughter before their marriage, appears granted.” There was a common rumor that since the killing occurred on federal territory, should Dan be found guilty, President Buchanan, “that disgraceful old Chief Magistrate,” would intervene to save him, for the relations between the lady and Buchanan had been designed to put “that venerable sinner in Dan’s power. . .. There is hardly a kind or degree of baseness that somebody is not quite ready to vouch for.” Like many others, Strong overestimated Dan’s composure at the time of the confession and of the crime, and the political feasibility of the President’s issuing an executive pardon.

  It was widely said, too, that the R.P.G. letter had been written by lusty Rose Greenhow, jealous at not having enchanted the widower Key, who was a true Southern gentleman as she was a true Southern lady. Other rumors were that Dan had attempted to commit suicide after shooting Barton; that Barton’s younger brother Charles threatened to avenge him by shooting Sickles; that the President had earlier found out about the affair between Teresa and Barton and had set out to dismiss him as district attorney; that at a ball at the Douglas house three weeks before the killing, Key “made love to her in a distant corner of the crowded rooms, while Mr. Sickles was dancing with the widow Mrs. Conrad,” though “making love” then meant courting rather than coitus.10

  By midweek, not all of Dan’s friends could gain admission to the prison, and cards were left at the prison gates “to an alarming extent.” One journalist wrote that he doubted he had ever known such friendship exhibited toward a prisoner. Manny Hart had arranged for Dan’s dog, Dandy, to be brought to the jail so that Dan could have canine comfort. The hound was ecstatic to see Dan, and would be depicted in the illustrated papers as jumping on its master’s knee. For a portfolio-toting artist from Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper had visited to make a drawing of the new room in which Mr. Sickles was henceforth to be imprisoned, and engaging Dan, fondling the greyhound, became the fellow’s intimate friend for the duration of the sitting.11

  It took some days before Maria Bagioli saw any improvement in Teresa’s condition. But after a week, Teresa began to respond to the reminders of motherly duty toward Laura. When she seemed well enough to make a journey north to New York, Mrs. Bagioli brought Laura in a carriage on a bright late-winter day to say goodbye to her father. Dan had worried that the prison might create terror in the child, but the little girl passed without a qualm from the clear sunlight into the vaulted room with bare whitewashed walls and brick floor. After greeting her father and telling him excitedly that she and her mother were going back to New York, she explored the room and found in one corner a rack containing antiquated muskets, which had been replaced by the new side arms the guards now carried. She could tell, not least from the bars of the window and the whitewashed walls, that this was a strange place, and she asked her father why he did not come home. Dan told her h
e had a great deal of work to do at the moment and could not leave. She asked a barrage of further questions, her face becoming more troubled, and finally she began to sob. In the end she was taken away by her grandmother, carrying with her a little bunch of flowers Dan had given her. Dan, according to one observer, hid his face in his pillow and wept the most bitter tears he had shed since being in prison.12

  Dan having waived a formal hearing before a magistrate, his hope of soon being in front of the grand jury was thwarted by the sudden death of Postmaster General Aaron Brown. The grand jury could not sit until March 12, after the funeral. Once Mr. Brown had been buried, the municipal officials summoned a grand jury as quickly as possible rather than let the press frenzy and berserk speculation have an even longer period in which to grow.13 Among the members of the jury was Barton’s relative Benjamin Ogle Tayloe, whose splendid house still stands beside the location of the Clubhouse. Dan’s lawyers decided not to challenge his right to be on the panel.

  The grand jury began hearing testimony at City Hall on March 14, two jurors to a desk, placed in an oval around a table at which officials and lawyers sat. The illustration in Frank Leslie’s showed a freed black man, probably Mr. Gray, from whom Barton had rented the Fifteenth Street house, in spectacular plaid pants and holding a top hat, sitting in the witness’s chair. Dan was not summoned before this tribunal during its ten days of deliberation; that the killing had occurred and Congressman Sickles’s responsibility for it, were not in dispute, the only question being whether the bill made out by Acting District Attorney Robert Ould would be returned as a true bill of murder. The attendance of the two established Washington attorneys who represented Dan before the grand jury, Daniel Ratcliffe and Allen Bowie Magruder, was little but a necessary formality.