by Chris DeRose
“He was a fine old man,” Clark recalled, “an interesting relic of a day long gone.”30
Epilogue
Ghosts of New York
Daniel Sickles had survived them all. He had woken up minus a leg in Washington, with Lincoln by his bedside, and gave him an account of Gettysburg. Sickles had returned to New York on a revenue cutter, traveling the Hudson River to his home on 91st Street. James Brady had made the ride, along with Thomas Meagher, with whom he had served in the war, Emanuel Hart, and Chevalier Wikoff. They made speeches and shared memories. Now that was all he had of them.
Edwin Stanton was appointed attorney general by James Buchanan, giving needed ballast to that administration as it faced the Secession Crisis. But it was as Lincoln’s secretary of war that Stanton ensured his name would live forever. He and Brady had died the same year: 1869. Brady had continued as a lawyer in major cases until the last. During the war, he used his rhetorical talents in favor of the Union.
Chevalier Wikoff had no discernible politics and easily made the transition to the first Republican White House. He was arrested for stealing a copy of Lincoln’s 1861 state of the Union and selling it to the Herald. Sickles served as his attorney.1
Reverend Haley served as a cavalry officer in the war and channeled his love for the press into a career, editing the San Jose Mercury and starting his own popular paper in Templeton. Haley wrote the definitive account of Johnny Appleseed in an 1871 article for Harper’s.2
Robert Ould became Assistant Secretary of War for the Confederacy, in charge of overseeing exchanges of POWs, and served as the lawyer for Jefferson Davis after Appomattox.3
Samuel Butterworth headed west and made a fortune as president of a mining company. He was appointed to the Board of Regents of the University of California, and sponsored resolutions “abolishing all fees and charges” for students and opening them up to women on an equal basis with men. The flowers sent to his well-attended funeral nearly hid the body.4
William Stuart/Edmund O’Flaherty, who had chronicled the Sickles trial from DC, found great success in the world of theater back in New York. Among his partners was Edwin Booth, with whom he produced 100 consecutive nights of Hamlet. It was said that he could have “written one of the most entertaining volumes of personal reminiscences of 40 years.” He and Sickles would sometimes attend theater together in New York. When he died, the New York Times called it the “end of a romantic and brilliant career.”5
There was Teresa, who had died young and left him, and Laura, who had done the same, and Key, who had betrayed him, and who he had brutally killed, and a second family that he had failed and estranged. All were now fading memories.
There were new friends, like Mark Twain, who also tried and failed to get Sickles to discuss the trial. But it was not the same. In his waning days, Sickles was a “prominent figure downtown during the day, hobbling “up the steps of Wall Street offices or down the aisles of the theatre on a pair of crutches.” He had entered the world on this island and he would leave it here. In 1819, in the presidency of James Monroe, churches had been the tallest buildings. Now there were sky scrapers, Woodrow Wilson was president, and his city was home to 120,000 souls.6
Sickles, his hair and “large moustache” now gray, was a fixture at plays and operas. Gilbert and Sullivan’s “Patience” was opening at the Standard Theatre. James Barton Key would play the role of Archibald Grosvenor, a character who was “fatally attractive.” Sickles must have thought he had seen a ghost. Key had the same nose, eyes, and mustache of the father who had left him so young, and who existed only in fuzzy memories. Sickles looked down at Key. Key looked up at Sickles.7
And the lights went down.
Acknowledgments
My first thanks are to God, for the opportunity to tell this story and have you read it. “A man can receive nothing unless it has been given him from heaven.” (John 3:27, NAS)
Writing my first acknowledgments in five years, it occurs to me I have more people to thank than ever. Most notably my brilliant and beautiful wife Hannah, to whom this book is dedicated. With her came a wonderful new family: parents Tom and Cindy Lawther, brother Cole (Backstreet forever), sisters Samantha Jasinski, Maddie Kirelawich, and Alex Finley, their husbands Jim, Billy, and Phil, our nieces, Jessica and Kate, and nephews, Willie and Colin.
Then there’s the amazing family I had before, and am pleased to report, still have: my sainted mother Anna DeRose, who raised us on her own and is now enjoying retirement, and sister Catherine DeRose, the smart one.
Kimberly Beare, Amy Kalman, Mikel Steinfeld, and Maria Strohbehn read this first and their feedback made it a better book. Your reward will be reviewing bad first drafts going forward.
Steven Drexler, handwriting expert, teamed up with me to help identify the mysterious R. P. G., the Iago of our story who probably got away with it.
When asked to visit a nineteenth century murder scene, Abby Livingston didn’t ask too many questions. Everyone needs a friend like Abby.
For all the researchers, curators, and librarians who gave me assistance, particularly Dan Boudreau at the American Antiquarian Society and Dale Stinchcomb in the Harvard Theatre Collection.
For the team at Regnery: Stephen Thompson, superlative editor, gentleman, and scholar; Anne Mulrooney, for the incredibly smooth and professional final edits process; Nicole Yeatman, Tim Meads, and Jennifer Duplessie, publicity and marketing ninjas—if you’re reading this, it’s probably because of something they did; or maybe because of Josh Taggert’s beautiful cover art; but certainly because of publisher Alex Novak’s enthusiasm for this story.
For Adam Chromy, advocate and friend, who wears every hat of a literary agent with aplomb, and makes you feel like you’re his only client.
Abraham Lincoln was right when he said, “The better part of one’s life consists of their friendships.” The better part of mine has included: Jon Anderson, Alex and Allie Benezra, Elliot Berke, Clint and Shawnna Bolick, Mark and Wendy Briggs, Bill and Debbie Cheatham, Chuck Coolidge, Josh Daniels, Nolan Davis, Dominic Draye, Jeremy and Robyn Duda, Rob Ellman, Ashley and Connie Fickel, Tom Forese, Tom and Ana Galvin, Ruben Gallego, Justin Herman, James Hohmann, Eric Johnson, Ken and Randy Kendrick, Adam and Orit Kwasman, Heather Lauer, Whitney Lawrence, Dylan Leffler, Heather Macre, Simer and Vicki Mayo, Danny and Bonnie Mazza, Adele and Fran Ponce, Tysen and Kellee Schlink, James Slattery, Evelyn Slomka, Jay Swart and Carol Perry, Don Tapia, Trey and Elise Terry, Jim and Kitty Waring, Katie Whalen, Justin Wilmeth, Megan Wojtulewicz, and Jess Yescalis. For David and Caroline Van Slyke and everyone in small group, for my friends in the Abraham Lincoln Association and at President Lincoln’s Cottage, for our friends in the British American Project, for all my former law students, and for the Blue Comet, Arizona’s premiere bar trivia team.
And for you, the reader. You have made possible this extraordinary chapter in my life.
About the Author
Author photo by Hannah DeRose
CHRIS DEROSE is the national bestselling author of The Presidents’ War, Congressman Lincoln, and Founding Rivals. He was formerly Senior Litigation Counsel to the Arizona Attorney General, a professor of Constitutional and International Law, and Clerk of the Superior Court for Maricopa County. Chris sits on the board of directors for the Abraham Lincoln Association and the board of scholarly advisors for President Lincoln’s Cottage. He and his wife, Dr. Hannah DeRose, live in Phoenix. Connect with Chris online at www.chrisderosebooks.com.
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Notes
OVERTURE
1. Playbill for “Sickles: or, the Washington Tragedy.” TCS 66 (403), Houghton Library, Harvard University.
2. Evening Star, May 28, 1859.
3. Boston Journal, April 14, 1859.
4. Appleton’s Annual Cyclopaedia and Register of Important Events, v. 42, 450.
5. The Era (London), May 29, 1859.
CHAPTER 1
1. Thomas Keneally, American Scoundrel (New York: Random House, 2002), 27.
2. Globe, February 24, 1859, 1324.
3. Benjamin Perley Poore, Reminiscences of 60 Years in the National Metropolis (Philadelphia: Hubbard, 1885), 2:25.
4. New York Times, March 15, 1859; Press January 19, 1859.
5. New York Times, February 28, 1859.
6. W. A. Swanberg, Sickles the Incredible (New York: Scribner’s, 1956), 6; Tribune February 26, 1859; Cincinnati Commercial Tribune February 28, 1859; Plain Dealer, March 5, 1859.
7. New York Times obituary 1884; Press January 19, 1859; John Forney, Anecdotes of Public Men (New York: Harper Brothers, 1873) 1:368; Crain, Caleb. “The Courtship of Henry Wikoff; or, a Spinster’s Apprehensions.” American Literary History. Vol. 18, No. 4 (Winter, 2006), 659-694.
8. Trial Day, 14.
9. Virginia Clay-Copton, A Belle of the Fifties (New York: Double Day, 1905), 73, 86.
10. Clay-Copton, 97–98; Press January 24.
11. Trial Day, 7; Tribune, March 2, 1859.
12. Unknown author. “The Dobbs Family in America” (London: John Maxwell, 1865).
13. Poore, 2:26; New York Times, February 28, 1859.
14. Leslie’s, March 26, 1859; Poore 2:26; New York Times February 28, 1859; Harper’s March 12, 1859.
15. Trial, Days 7 and 8.
16. Harper’s, March 12, 1859.
17. Trial Day, 9; Star April 11, 1859.
CHAPTER 2
1. Harper’s, April 9, 1859.
2. Harper’s, April 9, 1859 (This was the first attempt to tell Sickles’s life story, and many of the earliest details of his life are attributable to this article. It has served as the foundation of every subsequent biography); Brown, William [Editor] “History of Warren County.” (1963); “Printer’s Devil,” Historically Speaking blog, obtained online: https://idiomation.wordpress.com/2011/08/10/printers-devil/.
3. Harper’s, April 9, 1859.
4. GWD Daniels to Sickles, NYHS, 1853.
5. Harper’s, April 9, 1859.
6. Harper’s, April 9, 1859.
7. Hathi Trust catalog obtained online: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000529340.
8. Keneally, 4.
9. Classic FM; Renee Montagne, “The Librettist of Venice,” https://www.classicfm.com/composers/mozart/guides/da-ponte-facts-gallery/venice; Harper’s, April 9, 1859.
10. Edgcumb Pinchon, Dan Sickles: Hero of Gettysburg and “Yankee King of Spain” (New York: Doubleday, 1945), 12-13.
11. Later known as New York University.
12. Harper’s, April 9, 1859.
13. Commercial Advertiser, February 3, 1840; New York American, January 31, 1840.
14. Keneally, 10.
15. Harper’s, April 9, 1859.
16. Harper’s, April 9, 1859; Golway.
17. New York Evening Post (Post), May 14, 1844; Sober Second Thought, June 8, 1844.
18. Anonymous. The Life and Death of Fanny White: Being a Complete and Interesting History of the Career of That Notorious Lady (New York: 1860), obtainable online: https://iiif.lib.harvard.edu/manifests/view/drs:2968201$1i.
19. Harper’s, April 9, 1859.
20. Keneally, 26.
21. Anonymous, The Life and Death of Fanny White.
22. Sickles to J.H. Herbach, January 28, 1859, Library of Congress.
CHAPTER 3
1. The Ladies’ and Gentlemen’s Etiquette, excerpted at susannaives.com; London Daily News, March 31, 1854.
2. Keneally, 18–19.
3. American, September 26, 1832; Pinchon 12; Keneally, 4.
4. New York Times, March 15, 1859; Keneally, 21.
CHAPTER 4
1. Keneally, 26; Reflector, January 14, 1853.
2. Forney, John Wiley. Anecdotes of Public Men 1:317-319 (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1873).
3. Chris DeRose, The Presidents’ War (New York: Lyons Press, 2014), 57.
4. Buchanan, The Collected Works (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund), 9:31.
5. Daily Union, July 31, 1853; Inquirer, August 1, 1853.
6. Keneally, 33.
7. Manchester Courier and Lancashire General Advertiser, March 9, 1853.
8. Teresa to Sickles, August 1853, New York Public Library.
9. Buchanan to Harriet Lane, September 30, 1853, found in Works, 9:61-2.
10. London Times, April 1, 1859; Boston Journal, March 2; London Daily News, April 18, 1854; London Morning Advertiser, April 20, 1854.
11. Morning Chronicle, February 13, 1854.
12. Pinchom, 849-900.
13. Morning Post (London), August 31, 1854.
14. Albany Journal, January 11, 1856 and February 1, 1856; Tribune, February 9, 1856; February 16, 1856.
15. Leslie’s Illustrated, May 3, 1856.
CHAPTER 5
1. Alexandria Gazette, May 21, 1856.
2. McKinsey, Folger. History of Frederick County, Maryland. 306-307; Leepson, Marc. What So Proudly We Hailed: Francis Scott Key, A Life (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2014), 193; Ferris, Marc. Star-Spangled Banner: The Unlikely Story of America’s National Anthem. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 2014); Daily Journal (Wilmington), June 4, 1856; Leepson, Marc. What So Proudly We Hailed: Francis Scott Key, A Life (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2014), 193; Dubovoy 459.
3. Alexandria Gazette, April 9, 1844; Sina Dubovoy, The Lost World of Francis Scott Key (Bloomington, IN: WestBow, 2014).
4. Saturday Visitor, April 12, 1845 (the number of children given is usually four; but Ellen was reported as having been buried with one of her children. Therefore, the Keys must have had five).
5. Sun, March 3, 1846; Alexandria Gazette, January 29, 1846.
6. Alexandria Gazette, March 4, 1844; Daily Union, June 20, 1845 and February 3, 1847
7. Stanley C. Harrold, The Pearl Affair: The Washington Riot of 1848. Records of the Columbia Historical Society. Washington D.C., Vol. 50, (1980), pp. 140-160.
8. Daniel Drayton, Personal Memoir of Daniel Drayton (Boston: Osgood, 1875), 33-34.
9. Drayton, 64.
10. Drayton, 45-46.
11. Drayton, 65-68.
12. National Intelligencer, July 17, 1849; Globe, March 27, 1843.
13. Evening Journal, September 7, 1853.
14. Intelligencer, March 22, 1855; Baltimore Sun, March 22, 1855.
CHAPTER 6
1. Leslie’s, July 19, 1856.
2. Herald, May 25, 1856, May 26, 1856, and June 6, 1856; Daily Union, June 20, 1845; Richmond Whig, June 13, 1856.
3. Ghosts of DC, http://ghostsofdc.org/2012/09/20/philemon-herbert/; Erin McHugh, Political Suicide: Missteps, Peccadilloes, Bad Calls, Backroom Hijinx, Sordid Pasts, Rotten Breaks, and Just Plain Dumb Mistakes in the Annals of American Politics (New York: Pegasus, 2016).
4. Washington Reporter, March 23, 1859.
5. Tribune, July 14, 1856.
6. Albany Evening Journal, October 10, 1856 and October 12, 1856; Herald, July 19, 1856; Schenectady Reflector, April 1; Tribune, November 4, 1856.
7. New York Times, November 5, 1856.
8. United States senators were chosen by state legislators until the adoption of the Seventeenth Amendment in 1913.
9. Schenectady Reflector, February 6, 1857; Swanberg 1-2.
10. Swanberg, 1-2.
11. Poore, 2:26.
12. Boston Evening Transcript, March 9, 1857; Swanberg 21.
13. Swanberg, 6.
14. Herald, June 6, 1870; World, June 6, 1870; Intelligencer, June 1, 1849; Manufacturers’ and Farmers’ Journal, February 7, 1853; Daily Pennsylvanian, March 19, 1853.
15. Swanberg, 7.
16. Trial Day, 7.
CHAPTER 7
1. Lonnie Hovey, Lafayette Square (Washington, D.C.: Arcadia, 2014), 9; Albany Evening Journal, February 28, 1859.
2. Munsey’s Magazine, v. 20; Hovey, 42. Most biographies of Sickles refer to this home as Stockton House. They are one in the same; Busey, 212; Metropolitan, February 10, 1820 and May 9, 182
0; Washington Gazette, November 1 and December 11, 1820.
CHAPTER 8
1. Globe, February 26, 1859.
2. Crouthamel, James, and Jackson, Andrew. “James Gordon Bennett, the New York Herald, and the Development of Sensationalism.” New York History, Vol. 54, No. 3 (July 1973), pp. 294-316; Albany Journal, April 12, 1859.
3. John David Lawson, American State Trials (St. Louis: F. H. Thomas, 1914), 636.
4. Trial Day, 15; Star, February 26, 1859.
5. Globe, March 28, 1859.
6. Trial Day, 14.
CHAPTER 9
1. Poore 2:26; Richard Henry Dana, To Cuba and Back: A Vacation Voyage (Boston: Osgood, 1875).
2. Boston Herald, December 18, 1857.
3. Boston Evening Transcript, February 6, 1858; Tribune, February 6, 1858; The States, February 6, 1858; Herald, February 7, 1858; Clark, 41.
4. Clay-Copton, 114; Champ Clark, My Quarter Century of American Politics (New York: Harper Brothers, 1920), 41.
5. Star, March 1, 1859.
CHAPTER 10
1. Trial, April 12, 1859.
2. Trial Day, 8.
CHAPTER 11
1. Clay-Copton, 86.
2. Clay-Copton, 134.
3. Clay-Copton, 128.
4. Trial Day, 15.
5. Henry Watterson, Marse Henry (New York: Doran, 1914), 63.
6. Herald, May 15, 1858.
7. New York Times, November 20, 1858.
CHAPTER 12