The reconciliation turned public opinion resoundingly against Dan, and the verdict of innocence was now openly questioned. A correspondent for the Philadelphia Press argued that if Teresa “can be forgiven now [then] Key ought to have been forgiven in February … under the circumstances, as now developed, [Key] ought to have been spared.” The New York Sun editorialized with regret “that Mr. Key is not alive to witness Mr. Sickles’ restoration to sanity, and his full condonation of his wife’s ‘indiscretions.’” The New York Evening Post chimed in, “The inquiry everywhere now is, why Key was killed at all, or, having been killed, why such extraordinary efforts were made to screen the slayer.” Many of Dan’s friends understandably scrambled for cover. The Tribune was “assured that in taking this remarkable step, Mr. Sickles has alienated himself from most, if not all, of those personal and political friends who devotedly adhered to him during his recent imprisonment and trial.” The New York Herald fumed that Dan and Teresa were “representatives of a bad state of society, wherein political success and power are to be had at any sacrifice of personal honor and private morality.”39
Since every aspect of the story had played in the newspapers, it was probably no surprise when Dan used the press to respond to the relentless criticism. The response was vintage Sickles. Referring to a “recent event in my domestic relations,” the unapologetic attorney supposedly took on full responsibility for his actions. Gettysburg residents read Sickles’ side of the story in the July 25 edition of the Compiler. They could not have imagined that the unrepentant tone of the letter would be remarkably similar to speeches Sickles would make in their own town, on another topic, in the coming decades:
Referring to the forgiveness which my sense of duty and my feelings impelled me to extend to an erring and repentant wife … I did not exchange a word with one of my counsel upon the subject, nor with anyone else. My reconciliation with my wife was my own act, done without consultation with any relative, friend or adviser. Whatever blame, if any belongs to the step, should fall alone upon me.40
Sickles knew that his actions were perhaps “fatal to my professional, political, and social standing,” but “I have seen enough of the lives of others, to teach me that, if one be patient and resolute, it is the man himself who indicates the place he will occupy.” Sickles closed by appealing to America to “aim all their arrows” at him and to spare his wife and child.
Although Dan’s manifesto received some support, the overall response remained decidedly negative. Tireless critic George Templeton Strong speculated that Teresa “had a hold on him and knew of matters [that] he did not desire to be revealed.” Dan had “sacrificed all his hopes of political advancement and all his political friends and allies. He can hardly shew [sic] himself at Washington again.” He was now a political embarrassment rather than a rising star.41
The upshot of all this was that Dan Sickles remained uncharacteristically on the sidelines when he reported back to Congress on December 5, 1859. He had little influence, actively participated in few debates, and was ostracized by his colleagues. He remained dressed in “exquisite taste,” but he would enter the House “quietly from the side-door, and takes his seat on one of the sofas on the western side of the House, where, resting his head on his gloved hand, he remains seated, taking no part in the discussions- voting, when called upon, in a low voice. … He seems conscious that public opinion is greatly against him.” Southern diarist Mary Chesnut famously observed Sickles “sitting alone on the benches of the Congress. … He was left to himself as if he had smallpox. There he sat—unfriended, melancholy, slow, solitary, sad of visage.” When Chesnut asked why he was such an outcast, a friend sniffed that killing Key “was all right … It was because he condoned his wife’s profligacy, and took her back … Unsavory subject.” It surprised no one when Sickles declined to run for another term. It was a shockingly swift fall for the husband and wife who had arrived in Washington with so much promise only a few short years before.42
The rise and fall of Dan Sickles’ first tenure in Congress offers insight into both his character and his later battlefield performance. The Key murder remains his most well-known prewar accomplishment, overshadowing his otherwise lengthy political resume. But, as far as Gettysburg is concerned, the episode demonstrated that when under severe stress (as he would be again on the morning of July 2, 1863), Sickles’ reaction would likely be more emotional than thoughtful. The trial also provides an early example of the means Sickles would go to save himself when faced with public censure and potential humiliation. The Key scandal’s most lasting impact on Gettysburg was the fact that it drove Sickles out of Congress. The killing, acquittal, and reconciliation with Teresa ensured that Sickles would be looking for a new opportunity when the Civil War started. Such disgrace would have destroyed less durable men. Resiliency and re-invention would become hallmarks of Dan’s lengthy career.
Chapter 2
The Making of a First Class Soldier
Tensions had rapidly escalated over the slavery question during Dan Sickles’ tenure in Congress. “I saw this Republic drifting without a pilot on the stormy sea of revolution,” Sickles would recall of this period decades later. “Now it is plain to all that the day of compromises had passed away … Slavery would yield only to the sword.” On several occasions, Sickles later declared that Washington’s alcohol-fueled social circuit—the same one that had helped destroy his marriage—also played a large part in the growing tensions. During an 1862 recruiting drive, he accused prewar Southern legislators of frequently passing out drunk. “There never was a state that seceded that did not secede on whiskey.” Later, he elaborated on his bizarre views to a news reporter when he claimed, “The War of the Rebellion was really a whiskey war. Yes, whiskey caused the Rebellion!” Congress was “whiskey in the morning … then whiskey all day; whiskey and gambling all night.… The fights—the angry speeches—were whiskey.”1
As a Democrat in the prewar Congress, Sickles had traditionally voted with the Democratic Southern bloc, and considered it an “illusion” that the Union could be preserved by force. But his conciliatory attitudes changed when open hostilities erupted with the firing on the supply ship Star of the West in January 1861. He felt betrayed by the position in which Southern Democrats had placed his party, and he briefly transformed himself from outcast to firebrand. Speaking before the House of Representatives on January 16, 1861, an outraged Sickles called the Southern actions “unmitigated war” and announced that the “loyal” citizens of New York were “unanimous” for the Union. Regis de Trobriand, who would later serve as an officer under Sickles in the Army of the Potomac, wrote that the congressman was “Disgusted with the bad faith of his old allies, and irritated at the false position in which they had put the Democrats of the North; he considered his party as in duty bound, more than any other, to carry on the war … unto the complete triumph of the national government.”2
Because his last session of Congress ended in March, Sickles was back in New York practicing law as a private citizen when Southern artillery ringing Charleston harbor opened fire on Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861. As with so many aspects of Sickles’ colorful life, there are multiple versions about how he ended up in the army. The most popular account finds him drinking at Delmonico’s when his friend, Captain William Wiley, offered to raise a regiment if Sickles agreed to command it. In a postwar paper, Sickles claimed that he had enlisted fully expecting to serve in the ranks, but as he was getting ready to leave for camp, he was convinced by his friends “that I could better serve the cause by raising a regiment” and “thus rapidly was I advanced from the ranks to the grade of a regimental commander.” Sickles also loved to tell the story of how he met up with President Abraham Lincoln, who needed every “Democrat of prominence … right up in the front line of the fighting.” Lincoln assured Sickles, “I do not want you to serve as a private. I believe in pushing the Democrats who want to fight right up to the head, where everybody can take a lesson from their example. I wan
t you to go out and raise some troops for service.” Whether the story is completely true—it seems preposterous to imagine a man like Sickles serving as a common private—there is little doubt that Lincoln needed the support of Democrats like Sickles; indeed, the two men would mutually exploit each other’s strengths for the remainder of the war. Sickles’ new military career was also aided when a friendly presence ended up within Lincoln’s administration. In January 1862, Lincoln named Sickles’ former defense attorney, Edwin Stanton, as his secretary of war.3
Sickles and Captain Wiley received permission to raise a brigade rather than a regiment, which was fortuitous for Sickles since colonels commanded regiments while brigadier generals commanded brigades. The excitement following the capitulation of Fort Sumter made it relatively easy to gather large numbers of men to a flag. Using speeches and calls to patriotic duty, the pair recruited about 3,000 eager enlistees, which Sickles promptly dubbed the “Excelsior Brigade” after the New York State motto (“Ever Upward”). Often forgotten today is that the original Excelsiors included company contributions from Michigan, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. Sickles’ notoriety carried with it a fair amount of baggage. One newspaper illustration mocked the brigade’s recruiting efforts by depicting an officer (whose pocket is being picked) soliciting lowly candidates in front of a liquor store in the city’s Five Points slums, alongside a sarcastic caption of “The Capitol is in danger[.] Sickles Brigade to the Rescue!!!”4 The historian of the Excelsior Brigade remembered the ridicule they were subjected to when they joined Dan Sickles’ outfit:
A person belonging to the Excelsior Brigade met with nothing but scorn and contempt from the majority of the people, and to be a member of the Sickles’ Brigade, was all that was necessary to exclude you from any society or company, and repeatedly have I felt the sting of such insults myself—no name was too bad for you; one would call you this and another would call you that, and even a person’s own relatives would censure him for joining such a Brigade as that of Daniel E. Sickles.5
Sickles overcame the bad press “by winning to himself the good will of his men, and so popular did he become, that no inducement, however strong, could have any effect toward turning them against him.” His old friend Charles Graham quit his post at the Brooklyn Navy Yard and joined, bringing 400 of his Navy Yard workers with him. What started as a pair of regiments—the Excelsior (or First Excelsior) and Jackson (Second Excelsior)—eventually swelled into three, and then five, regiments. (It would be several months before the regiments received their numeric New York state designations.) Although Sickles acted as the brigade commander, he was officially colonel of the First regiment. Graham eventually received command of the Fifth. A young Yale graduate named Joseph Hopkins Twichell was studying for the clergy when he enlisted in the Second Excelsior Regiment in April 1861. The Excelsior Brigade, Twichell observed, was “composed as it is of rough, wicked men.… ”6 Twichell was impressed when Sickles, an Episcopalian whom an acquaintance later remembered as being violently anti-Catholic, introduced his two chaplains (Twichell and First Excelsior chaplain Charles Bulkley) to the new brigade. “Had you heard this address, blindfolded,” Twichell wrote his family,
I am sure you would never have recognized the speaker as Danl. E. Sickles, i.e., if you had formed the opinion of him which the recorded events of his public life seem to [have] induced in most cases. His opening words concerning the power of God and the accountability of men and nations, might well have emanated from any pulpit in the land. His idea of the Christian ministry and its offices indicated that he had thought on the subject. In short, I could see no reason why Gen. Sickles, in theory at least, was not himself admirably fitted to undertake the Chaplaincy of his own regiments.7
After his opening remarks, Sickles “made another speech, better and more pious if possible than the last.” Among the spectators in the gallery was Teresa Sickles, but Bulkley warned Twichell not to mention it, “lest it might get into the papers.” Afterward, Bulkley asked Twichell to ride with Teresa and her mother to the Sickles home. Twichell refused. “Some how or other I had not the courage. I did not want to look the woman in the face … I expect to learn much more from Mr. B. concerning this sadly notorious family.”8
Problems arose when New York’s Governor Edwin Morgan gave in to pressure from state politicians who argued that too many of New York’s regiments were being drawn from the city. Morgan told Sickles and Wiley to disband all but eight of their companies, and the state hesitated to officially muster the Excelsiors into service. Sickles blamed it all on “unscrupulous partisans and a few newspapers that [said] troops raised by Sickles or other Democrats would march over to Jeff Davis in the very first battle in which they were engaged.” The result of such opposition was that Sickles’ brigadier general commission was not issued. Refusing to take no for an answer, Sickles headed for Washington to meet with President Lincoln and request that the Excelsiors be enlisted as United States Volunteers. Lincoln liked Sickles’ initiative and still needed fighting Democrats. “Gen. Sickles adopted this course rather than the ordinary one—through the state Gov’t,” Joe Twichell wrote on May 15, “in order to avoid the delays of red-tapeism to a certain extent, and to thwart some plans supposed to be set on foot by political opponents to hamper his movements.”9
The delays increased tensions in camp. The captains of at least two Excelsior companies filed grievances against Sickles in the State Supreme Court asking to be released from service. According to The New York Times, one captain complained that “his command were induced to join the Brigade by promises which had not been fully realized.” Another captain alleged that his men had borne all of their travel expenses from Pittsburgh, only to have Sickles place them under “officers from among his own City friends.” When the company tried to desert by ferry to Philadelphia, Sickles led a detachment with fixed bayonets down to the docks to keep them in camp. A lack of patience was not the only problem faced by the men. Sanitation was always an issue, as was alcohol abuse. Chaplain Twichell, however, was “pleased to observe that the General is flat-footed on the matter of temperance among officers—I do not say that he insists on total abstinence, but anything like getting tight he frowns upon.”10
Sickles was finally issued orders on July 20, 1861, stating that “as many of the regiments under your command as are accepted, mustered into service, armed and ready, be without delay put en route to Harper’s Ferry.” Lincoln needed troops, and on July 22, the day after the Federal disaster at First Bull Run, the brigade finally broke camp. Sickles and the first three regiments departed immediately, while the newer two regiments left shortly thereafter. In December, the War Department issued orders designating the Excelsiors as New York Volunteer troops and the five regiments were re-christened the 70th through 74th New York. Having raised a brigade, Sickles presumed his brigadier generalship was assured. Officially he was commissioned colonel of the First (Excelsior) Regiment of United States Volunteers on June 29, 1861, but in practice he was functioning as the general of the Excelsior Brigade, and the men treated him as such. He was nominated as brigadier general of volunteers on September 3, but in another political twist, the Senate delayed his confirmation for several months. With Sickles’ future rank in doubt, Private Alfred Oates of the Fifth Regiment wrote, “I do not know what they are going to do with Sickles.… We would not like to see him removed for he has always done well for us.” Ever the opportunist, Sickles used his time in Washington to further ingratiate himself with Lincoln and work on getting the promotion put through.11
When Sickles marched off to war, he left his friend William Wiley with the bill for housing, feeding, and supplying the men. The bill that came due, in Wiley’s estimate, totaled $283,000. He would later complain bitterly that Sickles had “marched off with three regiments, and paraded them before Lincoln, and said he had done all this out of his own pocket. There were piles of judgments against him in the offices.…He left me in the lurch.…I left him [Sickles] on acco
unt of it; denounced him then, and have done so since.” Sickles later admitted that all of his accounts were paid except a “not inconsiderable amount” for which the vouchers were allegedly lost when two of his aides-decamp were killed during the Peninsula Campaign. Although Wiley seems to have been left primarily on the hook, as late as 1877 Sickles was sued by a potential creditor for repayment. Sickles replied to the suit, not unreasonably, that such advances had been made “as a personal patriotic contribution” to the United States government, and not “for his personal benefit, nor upon his personal promise to repay the same.” In any event, he never mastered managing large amounts of money.12
Few imagined in late 1861 that Daniel E. Sickles had stepped into a new role that he would play for the remainder of his long life. With no military education or training, he probably gave little serious thought to a career in the army. It is with some irony, then, that his new public persona was that of war hero—an image he would carefully cultivate for the next fifty years.
Sickles has become synonymous with the label of “political general.” When applied to the American Civil War, the term characterizes officers who achieved their rank with little or no prior military training. Among many Civil War historians, the phrase has also come to imply military incompetence. Sickles was hardly unique in this regard, for the true test of battlefield competence involved more than a West Point education.
James A. Hessler Page 4