by Chris DeRose
The audience first saw Norina in her room, laying on her side, reading aloud from a romance novel:
She but glanced at that proud knight. And his heart was pierced to the core. Straightaway he knelt before her, and declared . . . “I am your cavalier.” With one glance at her beauty, he tasted paradise.
He swore a vow on all the stars. He swore he would never give a thought to any other.
Norina then dressed herself, singing of her magical virtues:
I too know the magic power of a glance. I too know how to make hearts smolder. I too know the effect of a flashing smile. I know a thousand tricks in the game of love. And all the snares to trap a man’s heart.
Norina marries Don Pasquale, but her true love is Ernesto. In the final act, Ernesto stands in the park outside the home of Don Pasquale and sings for Norina to come outside and see him:
Oh, my dearest. Why aren’t you already mine? If I should die, how you would weep! But you could not restore me to life. Your faithful lover is torn by desire.
Did Teresa and Key dare to exchange a look?
Ernesto continued his serenade:
My cruel darling, would you have me die?
Norina sneaks outside, and he covers her in his coat. The secret lovers embrace. They sing to one another in unison:
Tell me again that you love me. Tell me again that you’re mine. When you call me your treasure, life is twice as precious. Your voice is so dear. It soothes my anguished heart. How safe I feel when I am near you. But how I worry when we’re apart.
Norina and Ernesto kiss at last. They are interrupted by the sounds of an angry Don Pasquale as he thunders out of the house. Ernesto spirits off before he can be seen. Don Pasquale demands to know, Where’s the philanderer who was just here?
I’ll find him, he says.
Key watched the stage through his opera glass. In twenty days’ time, he would throw it in a futile effort to survive the wrath of his lover’s husband.
It is unknown whether Sickles, Teresa, or Key attended the next night’s performance of Don Giovanni, Il dissolute punito (“The Libertine Punished”). They would have made every effort on that rainy night, to see an opera written by Teresa’s grandfather, Lorenzo Da Ponte, in whose home they had met. If so, she would have spent another night with her life uncomfortably mirrored on the stage.
In the final act of Don Giovanni, the unrepentant libertine is confronted by the vengeful spirit of a man, in the form of the statue, whose house he defiled. Justice is served when the statue drags Don Giovanni into the fires of Hell.5
Daniel Dougherty, a Philadelphia lawyer, was the next witness for the defense. Dougherty had long been a friend of Sickles and had visited him and Teresa in Washington and New York.
“What was the last time you saw Mr. Key?”
The day before his death, Dougherty answered. Around noon. Dougherty was headed to the Sickles’s house to say goodbye on his way out of town. He ran into Key, who walked with him up Pennsylvania Avenue. Dougherty assumed they were headed to the same place. But on Madison Lane, Key made an abrupt turn and headed for the Club House. Dougherty passed a considerable amount of time with Sickles. On leaving, he was surprised to encounter Key in Lafayette Square, headed from the Club House toward the Sickles home. They passed in front of the Jackson statue and exchanged goodbyes.6
Brady then made a strange maneuver. He asked Carlisle to admit that Key had been the lawyer for Sickles in a legal matter concerning his lease of the Ewell Mansion. Carlisle said, yes; in September or October of 1858, he had had three interviews with Key.7
The night before the trial began, Simon Hanscombe of the Boston Atlas and Daily Bee entered the jail, hoping to get an interview with the defendant.
He judged Sickles “one of the coolest men living. The deliberate manner in which he approached Key, not knowing whether the latter was armed or not, and notified him that he must prepare to die, giving Key, whom Sickles had a right to suppose was armed, a chance to draw upon him, is an evidence of this. Not less cool was the manner in which he described to the writer, in his cell in Washington, the manner in which he perpetrated the bloody deed.”
Smoking a cigar, Sickles “detailed with precision the manner in which he approached Key, what he said to him, how Key received the awful warning, that he drew his first Derringer and fired, and how Key reeled and cried ‘Don’t kill me!’ and then in a desperate struggle for life rushed upon Sickles and grasped his arm, how he threw him off and then drew his second Derringer and fired again, how Key cried ‘murder!’ and staggered against a tree, that he drew a revolver and tried to fire that, but the nipple caught and he came near losing his third shot but luck favored him and the revolver worked and he fired a third ball.”
Sickles said he “was about to fire again, but observing by his eyes that Key was dying he desisted and left with Butterworth.”
The reporter sat uncomfortably as this “was related with as much ease and apparent coolness as though he was describing the shooting of a deer instead of a human being.”
“He dishonored me,” Sickles explained. “And we could not both live on the same planet.”8
The story appeared in the Atlas and Daily Bee on the second day of trial. It was one of thousands of articles on the case to appear that day, and, in a smaller Boston newspaper, it did not attract much attention. And its full significance did not become clear until John Graham’s opening statement, raising the defense of temporary insanity. But Sickles’ cool rendition of a planned, premeditated attack in which he used three guns sharply contradicted the arguments being put forward to save his life.
The article made its way to the desk of Robert Ould. It was hearsay and not admissible by itself. But he prepared a subpoena for its author compelling the reporter’s testimony at trial.
Chapter Thirty-Five
A Thrilling Scene
DAY EIGHT—Tuesday, April 12, 1859
The Albany Journal reported that so many prominent Democrats had come to support Sickles the trial became a warmup for next year’s presidential convention. In the courtroom, elected officials and party leaders compared notes on the possible candidates, with Stephen Douglas appearing to be the favorite.1
The first witness of the day was John McElhone, a reporter for the Congressional Globe. “When I saw” Sickles and Key “together they always had toward each other the language and appearance of good friends. Mr. Key frequently expressed his friendship for Mr. Sickles.”
Former US Marshal Jonah Hoover was the next to testify. “Key was my most intimate and cherished friend for ten years or more,” he said. Shortly after Buchanan’s inauguration, Hoover had introduced Key to his killer. During that time, in “March 1857, Mr. and Mrs. Sickles” spent “two or three weeks as guests.”
“Did you know at the time it occurred of a correspondence between Mr. Key and Mr. Sickles?”
“I was privy to it, and to everything relating to it. Everything.”
On February 23, Hoover said he opened the door to his home. Key was standing there. With Laura Sickles. Laura remained at the Hoover residence for “two or three hours” until Key returned for her.
Sickles managed to keep a brave face. Key had dropped Laura off so that he could be with her mother. And Hoover, whom he had considered a friend, not only knew what was happening but appeared complicit.
Police Chief Goddard took the stand and held up Key’s opera glass. It was handed to me in the jail at the time of the commitment of Mr. Sickles, he testified.
Stanton demonstrated for the jury that the opera glass fit in the case that had been found on Key.
Reverend Smith Pyne was the pastor of St. John’s in Lafayette Square, known as “The President’s Church,” as every chief executive since Madison had worshiped there. On the night before the shooting, Pyne was riding in a carriage through Lafayette Square with his son. They were headed to the White House and saw Sickles walking quickly in the opposite direction. “I was struck by his appearance and cal
led my son’s attention to it.”
“What was it?”
“I thought there was a wildness about Mr. Sickles’s appearance on that occasion; he seemed to be like a man who was in some great trouble of some kind or other.” He had a “Mingled defiant air”—a “desolate air.”
Governor Robert Walker, who had arrived at the Sickles house after the killing, was the next witness. He testified to Sickles’s excited manner, “strange and unusual behavior,” and a change in his voice. Sickles had thrown himself suddenly on the sofa, convulsing, screaming, sobbing and spazzing violently. He was worried about the dishonor brought to his family, particularly to his daughter.
Walker continued his description. “He was in a state of frenzy and I feared if it continued he would become permanently insane.” There were high pitched “Screams of the most frightful character,” “unearthly” and “appalling,” something between a “sob and a moan.”
Listening to this testimony, Sickles fell forward, his face leaning on the shoulder of a nearby friend. “At length his habitual self-command gave way, and he burst into a passion of sobs and tears which rendered him completely helpless, and the man who had hitherto preserved a demeanor apparently too calm, impassive and frigid, was torn with an excess of agonized emotion.”
Stanton rose: “If your honor please, may the prisoner be removed for a few moments.”
“Certainly,” said Crawford, looking at Sickles.
Sickles was “so utterly exhausted and overcome that his physical powers failed him, and he was unable to rise.” Emanuel Hart and another friend helped him out of the room as he sobbed like a child. “It was the most affecting scene I ever witnessed,” Stuart wrote, “and will be remembered when time shall have dried the tears that will be shed over the grave of many a spectator.”
When he returned, his countenance reflected “extreme mental suffering” and a “desolateness of his whole appearance.”
Another reporter called it a “thrilling scene . . . when the wounds of Mr. Sickles were opened afresh. There was hardly a dry eye in court and certainly not a heart remained unaffected by it.”2
Thomas Meagher was a late addition to the defense team. In Ireland, he had led a rebellion with no military experience, no money, and few guns. Refusing to admit high treason, he found himself in a Tasmanian penal colony. Meagher escaped, hiding for ten days on an uninhabited island. He sailed to Brazil and on to New York. Fame preceded him in his new country. Newspapers had covered his trial and daring getaway, resolutions had been passed in his defense, songs had been written in his honor, and Irish civic associations had adopted his name with pride. He was invited to more events than he could ever attend. Meagher was admitted as a lawyer in 1856 but had never tried a significant case. His role was to sit at the defense table and draw the sympathy or jurors or reporters who admired him. But Sickles was his friend, and he hoped to contribute something more substantive.3
This outburst gave him an idea. He started writing.
Carlisle asked Walker: “Do you recollect that Sickles grew calm and said he was ready to go with the magistrate?”
“I do. When I say calm, I mean comparatively calm.” Walker had stayed with him for some time in jail because of his concerns.
Francis Mohun was next. He’d known Sickles since before he was sworn into congress. He saw him on February 27 near sundown. “His whole appearance, though I cannot exactly describe how it affected me, did affect me very seriously at the time. I thought there was some very high excitement operating on his mind at the time. I heard the next day of this occurrence. I said I thought he was crazy or insane.”
Ould cross-examined Mohun. “If you had not heard of this occurrence, would his appearance have made that impression on you?”
“It might not. But his wild appearance excited my attention then. He was walking quite rapidly at the time, more rapidly than I ever observed him before. There seemed to be a strange movement about his person and head. I confess that I heard rumors about the city which perhaps made me observe him the more closely.”
Bridget Duffy was next. “I live in Mr. Sickles’s house in the capacity of nurse and lady’s maid, and partly chambermaid. We arrived in Washington from New York between Christmas and New Year’s.” Stuart thought she gave “her testimony with marked precision. She is not only an intelligent but a well-educated woman—most unusually so for one of her class in life.”4
Sickles came home the night before the killing between five and six. “I heard loud talking between Mr. and Mrs. Sickles. Their door was partly open.”
Brady had a piece of paper handed to Bridget. “That’s my handwrite,” she said. “I signed at Mrs. Sickles request.”
“Do you know Mrs. Sickles’s handwriting?”
“Yes.”
“Is that hers?”
“To the best of my belief it is. I saw her write a paper, which I signed my name to. I did so at her request. Mr. and Mrs. Sickles were, I believe, then in their own room. I heard Mr. Sickles cry. Also Mrs. Sickles.”
Teresa’s confession was then offered into evidence.
Ould objected.
Brady said that it was “offered as a communication to Mr. Sickles, affecting his mind, and producing or continuing the excitement under which he labored.”
Crawford “read over the papers slowly but attentively.”
It was hearsay, Ould said, and not evidence of Sickles’s mind. And communications between husbands and wives are not admissible.
Brady responded: “It helped to constitute the irresistible pressure under which he acted. How far that confession would act on the prisoner’s mind would be a matter for the jury to decide. In the case of Jarboe, decided in this court, had not the prisoner acted on the statement of his sister, and was not that hearsay evidence as much as this?” And “if the husband chose to waive that privilege and permit his wife to open her mouth, on what principle of law is he to be denied that right?
“Who lighted the flame in the breast of the husband we now propose to show. The materials are always there. They are in your honor’s bosom. They are in every man’s bosom. And only require the application of the torch to burst into a complete conflagration.”
Judge Crawford said, “It is now within ten minutes of the hour of adjournment.” They would revisit the issue in the morning.
On the same day, a crowd of thirty thousand gathered in Baltimore to watch four executions. John Cyphus, “a colored man, about 30 years of age,” had killed “for an offense such as that of Mr. Key.” Cyphus thanked God that he could state his innocence. Whether he meant that he was not the killer or that a man who kills his wife’s lover commits no crime, the newspaper did not grant him the space to say.5
As the Tribune noted, if the scene had been “Whitechapel or the New York quays” and the crime between a laborer or a sailor, it “would have been dismissed in a single contemptuous paragraph. The morbid sympathy which attends the murderer is a melancholy feature in American morals.” The States agreed: other killings were “ignored because neither [the killer or victim] belonged to the ‘upper ten.’ ”6
The Alexandria Gazette hoped that the two-penny wood cuts and illustrations of the Sickles trial and the Baltimore executions would “over-do the business and nauseate even the appetite of those from whom they cater.”7
That night, George Sickles, Daniel’s father, was surprised at his hotel by a group of twenty women. Their ostensible leader, a sixty-year-old woman, said, “We demand [Sickles’s] discharge on behalf of our sex. Let him be convicted, and the libertine obtains new license. Let him be vindicated, and virtue requires new guarantees.”8
Chapter Thirty-Six
The Confession
DAY NINE—Wednesday, April 13, 1859
The day opened with Carlisle opposing the admission of Teresa’s confession. It was irrelevant, he argued, for the possible effect it might have had on Sickles. “In all cases the question is not whether the prisoner drank liquor enough to mak
e him drunk, but whether, in point of fact he was drunk.”
Watching the two sides fight reminded William Stuart of a battle. Brady was “like a 24-pounder gun in the center of a park of flying artillery.” Carlisle was a “Minie rifle—quick, clear of aim, sure of hitting his mark,” and “a deadly logician.”1
As the lawyers argued, Stuart looked over at the confession on the counsel table. “I was extremely struck by the beauty of the handwriting,” he wrote, “and its clearness and firmness. The orthography is perfect, and the whole document, in its mere external features, bears the impression of a mind perfectly collected and a hand unshaken by emotion.” He wondered whether there had been multiple drafts, or if she had maintained her composure in the face of an angry husband.2
The judge took a brief recess and returned with his ruling. “Declarations of a wife or husband, for or against each other, stand on the same footing as though it was testimony given on the stand. Suppose the wife of the defendant were in court at this moment, could she be put upon the stand? Could she be heard? Certainly not. It would violate well-established principles and rules to admit it. It would have a most injurious effect upon the relations of husband and wife in destroying their confidential identity. The proposition is therefore rejected.”
Sickles’s lawyers had asked, begged him from the beginning to release the confession. It was proof of the affair. It had been going on over a year; they were intimate in Sickles’s own house; Key had dropped Sickles’s daughter off so that they could be together. Without the confession, they might never be able to prove the affair. It could save his life.
Sickles was adamant. He would not further his wife’s humiliation. And, if it were made public, Laura would read it someday. No; he would take his chances.3
But Judge Crawford had ruled the confession inadmissible. There was one last chance, however. If the confession were published, the jurors, though sequestered, might hear about it.