by Chris DeRose
“He did meet him. He met him under the influence of intense provocation fresh upon him.
“Hear it, men of the universe! Hear it, men of the United States! It is claimed that a man is not permitted by law to do anything for the protection and vindication of his honor.” He “can have the greatest affront put upon his right,” and “have the relations between himself and his wife violated . . . made valueless to him by the ruthless hand of the adulterer—he can have his name made a byword and a reproach, and can have his wife reduced to a thing of shame, and cannot raise his hand to prevent all this—he can have what more?
“Look, your Honor, at Daniel E. Sickles, look at Teresa, that was his wife. Look at the woman whom I knew in her girlhood, in her innocence, and for him, in the past as now, I pray the good and merciful interposition of Heaven to make her future life a source of happiness, and of no more anguish than is inevitable.”
Teresa may have consented to the affair, but that was immaterial. “The consent of a child five years of age to taking articles out of her father’s house no more avails the thief.
“In the share I have taken of this case, I have been permitted to avail myself of the great services of the gentlemen around this table, and in the address I have made, I have endeavored to speak their sentiments, thoughts, and opinions. I am sorry, indeed, if under their instructions I have been led into anything erroneous.”
Meagher, who had wanted to serve as more than an ornament for the defense, had taken detailed notes during Sickles’s courtroom breakdown. Now Brady read from those notes, reminding the court that it had witnessed a small sample of the “distraction, bitter woe, the wild desolation, the frenzy, the despair, the strange, unutterable, unearthly agony in which he found Daniel E. Sickles on the afternoon of that memorable Sunday, the 27th of February.”
The words of Meagher describe “the tempest that had been so long pent up, a scene which, from the memories of those who witnessed it, never will be, never can be, blotted out.” Sickles, who had “borne himself with a heroic calmness, [was] suddenly overcome and racked with a relentless grief, struck down as though he were himself the motherless and houseless child for whom he wept.”
To the jury, citizens of the city of Washington, “Mr. Sickles commits his life, his character, all that is to elevate or keep him in existence.”
Brady took his seat. There was some applause. He sat and covered his face, “sensibly affected.”
Now Robert Ould would conclude for the United States. The prosecution, he said, “stands now on a position the same as taken by the other side, to wit: denouncing the offense of adultery. The question, however, is not of adultery, but one of murder, and whatever vice and criminality may attach to adultery does not relieve the other and higher offense of murder from the condemnation which the law passes upon it.”
Adultery “is an offense which cries aloud from heaven for condemnation, and to man for his reprobation.”
But “[t]here has never been a civilized nation, never a code of laws, human or divine, where the sacredness of human life did not, first and foremost, receive all the sanctions which human society itself could gather around it.”
Does taking a life not also strike at the family relationship? “If so, then the right of punishment not only belongs to the injured husband himself, but to any person, no matter how much a stranger to the husband, who might become a witness of the adultery.”
According to Blackstone’s treatises on English law, “If a man takes another in the act of adultery with his wife and kills him directly upon the spot, though this was allowed by the laws of Solon, and likewise by the Roman civil law if the adulterer was found in the husband’s own house, and also among the ancient Goths, yet in England it is not absolutely ranked in the case of justifiable homicide.”
No “code had received the approbation of any civilized people wherein the adulterer was allowed to be pursued after the fact and slain. It had not been shown to exist anywhere.”
Ould was busy proving this assertion when three o’clock arrived.
Chapter Forty-Six
Recalled to Life
DAY TWENTY—Tuesday, April 26, 1859
Ould began where he had left off the day before.
The law in Manning’s case reduced the crime from murder to manslaughter when the seducer was caught in the act. “From that time to this the law had never gone further. It would be very unwise for courts of justice to relax that rule. It would overturn the principles of common law in regard to murder, and would establish the principle that a man could kill another from motives of revenge.”
In Jarboe’s case, Judge Crawford had considered whether the seduction of his sister amounted to provocation or justification, “and his Honor had decided that it amounted to neither.” The parties were not caught in the act of adultery. But even if they were, it would mean that Sickles was guilty of manslaughter.
“Society could not exist on any such basis and human civilization would be an impossibility. Standing here,” he said, “not as a public prosecutor, but as a private citizen, I, on the part of the people of this District, denounce the doctrine that the protection of the wife’s or daughter’s virtue is to be bound in the husband’s or brother’s revolver.
“Stronger than bars and bolts, the flash of woman’s virtue is as quick as God’s lightning and as sure. Far more effectual is it for silencing seducers or revelers in licentiousness than Derringer or revolver. Every pure woman necessarily, and by the gift of God in Christian communities carries that weapon along with her.
“There is no seducer, no villain, I care not from whence he comes, or how he may have trained himself in the arts of seduction, who can resist the showing of that weapon for one solitary instant. I thank God that the matrons and maids of our land have a surer protection than the pistol or the bowie knife. Sad, indeed, would be their fate if it were not so. The very moment you bring the law of force for the purpose of protecting female honor, that moment you sacrifice female honor. If it is to be protected by the sword, the knife and the pistol, it is unworthy of protection.”
Speaking of weapons, “Not a solitary witness” saw anything in Key’s hand. Multiple witnesses had seen Sickles armed.
“I would to God, that Philip Barton Key could be put upon the stand, perhaps much that is now dark, much that is now covered with gloom, much that is now not understood, could be made plain as if by the flashing of the sunbeam.
“The only party who could array facts in his defense, or in his behalf, has been silenced in death, and the testimony which might have been adduced for the purpose of vindicating his character is unknown and unheard.”
Now Judge Crawford would instruct the jury. A profound silence fell over the courtroom as he began. “The Court is asked to give the jury certain instructions.” He began by rejecting the defense argument that the killing was justified. If the jury believed that Sickles killed Key, even if under the belief that Key “had adulterous intercourse with the said wife,” then “such willful and intentional killing . . . is murder. But such killing cannot be found to have been willful and intentional in the sense of this instruction if it shall have been proven to the satisfaction of the jury, upon the whole evidence aforesaid, that the prisoner was in fact insane at the time of such killing.”1
The judge granted the second and third instructions for the prosecution together: shooting the victim “implies malice in law, and is murder,” and “the burden of rebutting the presumption of malice . . . rests on the prisoner.”
Fourth, “every person is presumed to be of sound mind until the contrary is proved.” The “burden of rebutting this presumption rests on the prisoner.”
Fifth, if the jury believes that Sickles killed Key while attempting to signal his wife inviting an act of adultery, “such provocation does not justify the act” or reduce “such killing from murder to manslaughter.” Crawford had again sided with the prosecution, rejecting the defense’s expansive definition
of what it meant to catch the parties “in the act.”
Now the court turned to the instructions requested by the defense. He agreed that it was for the jury to decide whether Sickles had the mental state to be found guilty. “The law does not require that the insanity which absolves from crime should exist for any definite period, but only that it exist at the moment when the act occurred with which the accused stands charged.”2
The case now rested with the jury.
Jurors talked amongst themselves with every eye in the courtroom watching. Would they render their verdict then and there? No, they were not in agreement. Supporters of the prosecution claimed loudly that Sickles would be hanged.
People tried to lift Sickles’s spirts. “Thy will, not mine, be done,” he said.3
Ten minutes before two, the jury left the room. When they did, it was as though a weight had been lifted from everyone. The audience rose to their feet, “seemed to think themselves at liberty to talk as much as they pleased,” and shared opinions and impressions.
Many seized the opportunity to talk to Sickles. Reverend Sunderland of the Fourth Presbyterian church took Sickles by the hand. “Sir, I have come to express to you my heartfelt sympathy, and to say that if the voice of the people of this city could speak at this moment your acquittal would be instantaneous. In case, however, an adverse verdict should be rendered, be assured that you have hearts around you, and mine not the least warm of them, to sustain you in your affliction.” Sickles was “much moved,” and “expressed his thanks as well as his emotions would permit him.”
Time went by. The “noise and confusion grew greater.” Judge Crawford, “in a good natured manner,” said that “under the circumstances he could not expect the audience to keep silence, he hoped there would be a slight regard exhibited for the place where they were.”
But soon all eyes were on the clock. The advance of every minute hand was “set down as fresh proof presumptive of a disagreement.”
A policeman entered the courtroom and brought back chairs for the jury. Then they asked for a fire to be made.
“I am prepared for the worst,” Sickles said. William Stuart saw on his face a “perfectly unaffected calmness and self-possession.” His friends, on the other hand, were visibly anxious.
In the jury room, a juror withdrew from the table and knelt in a corner, asking for divine guidance. As the deliberations continued, he went in the corner and prayed again. He returned to the table with his mind made up.
The door to the jury room opened. The courtroom felt like an electric shock through it. “Make room for the jury,” the deputy marshal called out. One by one, the jurors took their seats in the box. “Here they come,” people said. The crowd, unable to wait another second to know the verdict, stared at their faces, hoping for a clue.
People stood up on benches and tables and whatever was around them.
“Down in front,” “Get off the benches,” “Sit down,” Silence in court,” “Order, order.” But order would not return until the judge called the jurors by name. Then, “a pin might be heard to drop in the suddenly stilled court.” The jury was standing.
The clerk addressed the prisoner. “Daniel E. Sickles, stand up and look to the jury.”
Sickles did so.
“How say you, gentlemen, have you agreed to your verdict?”
“We have.” It was Rezin Arnold, the foreman.
“How say you? Do you find the prisoner at the bar guilty or not guilty?”
A “loud, wild thrilling, tumultuous hurrah sent up by the spectators, cheer after cheer resounded in the court room, and it was taken up by the multitude on the outside and repeated.”
“Not guilty.”
What followed was minutes of “unparalleled uproar,” hundreds yelling “as though gone mad, others wept,” as people leapt into the prisoner’s box to embrace Sickles.4
Hats and handkerchiefs were waved, Stanton did “a jig like David before the ark,” Brady “became pale, nervous, and agitated,” Phillips covered his face with his hands and wept. Graham was “passive and undemonstrative.” Magruder, Ratcliffe, and Chilton joined the rush on the prisoner’s box to congratulate their client. Meagher patted strangers on the back, asking, “Is it not glorious?”
“I thought it would be so,” said Ould. Carlisle, who had declined the biggest case of his career to vindicate his friend, took leave of the scene as fast as he could.5
Only two people were unmoved: Judge Crawford and Sickles himself, “though doubtless a volcano of feeling straggled within.”6
Stanton tried to gain the attention of the court. “I move that Mr. Sickles is discharged from custody.”
Judge Crawford reminded him to “wait till the verdict is recorded.”
“Of course, your honor,” Stanton replied. “You must excuse excitement on this occasion.”
The clerk said, “Your record is, gentlemen, that you find Daniel E. Sickles ‘not guilty.’ ”
The jury nodded.
“And say you all.”
They nodded again.
Stanton was “boiling over with excitement.” “In the name of Mr. Sickles and of his counsel,” he said, “I desire to return thanks to the jury. I now move that Mr. Sickles be discharged from custody,” Stanton said.
“The court so orders.”
Marshal Selden tried to tamp down the celebration. “Come to order gentlemen, come to order. This is a place where there should be no noise.” Nobody cared. The marshal had lost control of the courtroom.
Two of Sickles’s Tammany friends escorted him on a slow march through the crowd and their “earnest, loud, and frankly expressed” congratulations.
The madness continued outside. The police were powerless to stop it. Sickles declined requests for a speech.
A small fleet of carriages were lined up, hoping for the honor of taking Sickles away. Some of the crowd tried to disconnect the horses from his carriage in order to draw it themselves, but “the movement was detected in time and prevented.” Finally, they managed to pull away. Hundreds of people “of all classes” followed.
From the second the verdict was read, the shouts within were heard by the crowd of thousands outside, and the news “spread like wildfire.” All business in the capital came to a stop. In the dining room at Willard’s Hotel, guests stood up “and gave repeated hurrahs.”
Sickles arrived at the home of his friend John McBlair, his neighbor on Lafayette Square and the current occupant of the Decatur House. His jailor had accompanied him. With the entire world clamoring for a private sentiment from Sickles, he turned to his jailor and took him by the hand. “I would wish, if I could, to make it known how grateful I feel for all the affectionate and considerate kindness that has made my prison a second home.”
McBlair’s house could not be secured. Hundreds flowed in for hours, shaking hands with Sickles, congratulating him. An “old fruitman from the neighborhood of Georgetown” showed up with “his choicest stock” of oranges: “Mr. Sickles, I am a poor man, but I have a wife and child at home, whom I love, and I, if you will take this poor gift, as a token of how I honor a man who has taught me how to defend them, will be made most happy.” Other merchants and tradesmen did the same.
The crowd, looking to participate in some way at the end of this great drama, came up with the idea of burning down the house where Key and Teresa had carried on their affair, forgetting or disregarding the fact that it had been a rental. Thankfully for John Gray, they did not.
A delegation of jurors came to see Brady at the National Hotel. One of them, John McDermott, said: “I want you, sir, to tell the people of New York, that the citizens of Washington are not behind those of any other part of the country in devotion to the family altar.”
Juror Henry Knight played the fiddle. We were worried about you, Brady said, because you’re a member of the Know Nothing Party, “but if we had known that [you] played the fiddle we might have made our minds easy, for no fiddler was ever known to find a convicti
on for murder.”
Rezin Arnold, the foreman, said that “his only fear had been that his health might not last him throughout the trial, and that he hoped that his latest posterity would honor his memory, from his having served on this jury.”
Juror William Hopkins said that if it had been his wife, he’d have “brought a howitzer to bear” on Key, rather than a Derringer.
A crowd arrived at the National Hotel to serenade the defense team. They returned their thanks, and Chilton asked that they defer their intention to serenade Sickles, who “wished to retire to rest undisturbed.” The crowd then serenaded Reverend Haley and the jury. Accompanied by the Marine Corps Band, the serenaders also went to the prosecution. Washington was a single “scene of rejoicing.”
One of the jurors said: we rendered our “verdict on the principle that, in the absence of any adequate punishment by law for adultery, the man who violates the honor and desolates the home of his neighbor, does so at the peril of his life, and if he falls by the outraged husband’s hands, he deserves his doom.” They “have made it from this hour a principle of American law.” He could not have imagined how right he was.
Schouler, of the Boston Atlas and Bee, had been subpoenaed to come to Washington to testify as to the interview with Sickles, where he had coolly described how he had done it. But it was an era without bylines, and it had been his colleague, Simon Hanscombe, who did the interview and wrote the article. Ould had not realized this until testimony closed. Brady was thankful for the near miss.7
The following day, the New York lawyers boarded a train for home. They wanted it known that they were impressed by the “extraordinary power, brilliancy, legal knowledge, and eloquence” of Stanton. William Stuart, in seeing them off, wrote that they had “stood at some sacrifice, and with much devotion, around their friend like a wall of fire.” Stuart had made enough money from covering the trial to return to New York and put on another production.8