James A. Hessler
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In 1911, Sickles himself published a pamphlet of letters on “the successful movements of the Third Army Corps” on July 2. The pamphlet included Longstreet’s 1902 letter, now a prized Sickles possession, which claimed Sickles had “saved that battle-field.” The majority of the publication was devoted to several testimonials from acquaintances of Phil Sheridan, including Pennsylvania war-Governor Andrew Curtin, who all testified that Sheridan had heartily approved of Sickles’ Gettysburg actions. Of course, Sheridan was not present at the great battle, but in the 1880s he had risen to commanding general of the U.S. Army. Although he had died in 1888, Sheridan’s military opinion and name recognition was perhaps second to only Grant and Sherman in the public eye and so still carried considerable weight. Sheridan had reportedly said, “I examined that portion of the battlefield very carefully, and I have no hesitancy whatever in saying that under the circumstances in which General Sickles found himself on that occasion he could have done nothing else but to move out as he did to meet General Longstreet’s threatening advance.”28
General Edward S. Salomon claimed that Sheridan had once told him that “General Sickles is a fighter. He evidently wanted to be aggressive; he assumed the offensive instead of the defensive.” Sheridan staffer George A. Forsyth recalled that Sheridan thought, “If it [the move] was a blunder, it was a blunder in the right direction.” Sickles also claimed that Ulysses Grant had more than once intimated views in support of his actions. The pamphlet reveals a Sickles who was clearly interested in defending his record for posterity. Perhaps he really thought that such testimonials would be sufficient for history to pass down a favorable judgment.29
Other accolades poured in. The aging general joined President Taft at a New York GAR Memorial Day parade in May 1910. In October of that year, Sickles was elected president for life of the Military Medal of Honor Legion in Pittsburgh. By May 1911, he was bragging that he had attended thirty-two fiftieth anniversary celebrations of the war in six weeks. In August 1912, a movement began within the GAR to name Sickles commander-in-chief of the organization. The vets considered it appropriate, given his status as last surviving corps commander. It had been fifty years since the soldiers had gone to war, and the peaks and valleys of Dan’s long career were being put in perspective. Lt. Colonel John P. Nicholson, a friend of old Dan’s, noted (with great understatement) that “his years have been rich with incident” and given the war’s semi-centennial, “Gen. Sickles has been not a little in evidence in the last few months, and his reminiscences have been much sought.”30
There were still moments of rejection, however, reminders that his status had not erased the old feuds completely from memory. In addition to the failed attempt to elevate him to three-star rank, the New York Commandery of the Loyal Legion, an organization made up of ex-war officers, refused (for the second time) to admit him to membership in 1911. The New York Times reported, “Fifty years is not enough to wipe out bitterness engendered in Civil War days.” Sickles’ membership had been voted down years earlier “because of the strength of certain enmities. His name was brought forward again by admirers who felt that the roll of membership of the Loyal Legion ought to include that of a man whose war record is so distinguished for gallantry. These friends, who are said to have taken the black-balling very much to heart, assumed that the old enmity had died down with the passing of the years.” Although the members declined to discuss the vote publicly, it was initially assumed that Sickles’ role as chair of the New York Monuments Commission had created some bad blood. But a member of the order said “that the hostility was far older than that, and that to understand it one would have to go back to feelings that were astir long ago.”31
While Sickles enjoyed his celebrity status, darker clouds were gathering that would attract significant press coverage and severely tarnish his legacy. Throughout this period, there was one constant figure in his life. Sometime during his time in New York, Sickles had become attached to a housekeeper by the name of Eleanor Earle Wilmerding. Eleanor was born in New York in about 1855, and so was a small child when Dan achieved infamy by killing Key in Washington and disobeying Meade at Gettysburg. She appears to have spent much of her life living with her father George and two sisters in New York; there was no mother in the household as early as the 1870 census when Eleanor was just 15 years old. Perhaps the Wilmerdings were family friends, since a William E. Wilmerding attended George Sickles’ 1887 funeral. News reports at the time of her death in 1914 suggested that she had then been in Dan’s employ for fifteen years. A romantic relationship has been suggested by some (she was extremely possessive and referred to him as “Dear”). Caroline Sickles blamed the breakup of her marriage on “another woman,” whom she identified as Wilmerding’s cousin. Sickles biographer W. A. Swanberg speculated that Wilmerding was actually the other woman, but this interpretation is dubious, since as late as 1915 (after Wilmerding’s death) Dan’s son Stanton was considering calling “the prominent society woman” whom he clearly considered to be still alive and responsible for the marriage’s breakup to testify in legal action over George Sickles’ estate. Dan Sickles also insisted, for whatever his word is worth, that he “was not even acquainted” with Wilmerding when he left Caroline in Europe. The widow of New York Governor William Sulzer, who lived as a tenant in Sickles’ house, called Wilmerding “a fine, intelligent, capable and respectable woman.” The cause of her devotion “was undoubtedly the hope of securing a goodly share of his worldly goods when he died. So long as he had money, he paid her liberally, and she saved her wages. When his cash was exhausted, he borrowed from her, and her faithful service continued. This went on for years.”32
Early Sickles biographer Pinchon wrote that Sickles “many, varied—and sometimes scandalous—affairs chagrined and shocked” Wilmerding. Pinchon perpetuated the legend that Dan was still the ladies man at this age, with his dresser drawer containing lady’s black stockings and gloves, jewelry, and perfumes. But Mrs. Sulzer had insisted to Pinchon’s researcher that “those reports of General Sickles having been a beau and man-about-town up to his last days…Mrs. Sulzer declares are positively false.” She saw Sickles as “very old, feeble, and infirm,” a near-invalid whose “amputation gave him much trouble, and his eyesight was nearly gone. All day long he sat in the Egyptian darkness of an alcove in his big room on the first floor; swathed in blankets, his eyes shielded by an enormous shade.…Even his once sonorous voice had become a guttural utterance between a grunt and a cough.” The relationship with Wilmerding was probably not romantic, but with his advancing age he had become dependent upon her housekeeping and bookkeeping. Their mutual devotion increased to what has been called a “jealous possessiveness.”33
Sickles’ wife Caroline and now adult-son Stanton had sailed from Europe to New York in 1908. Despite the fact that Dan had now been away from them for nearly three decades, Caroline and Stanton both seemed to genuinely hope for reconciliation. Caroline demanded, however, that in order to reconcile, Sickles was to dismiss Wilmerding from the house. Mrs. Sulzer’s recollections suggest that Sickles’ family was jealous of Wilmerding’s over-protectiveness and likewise assumed that she was stealing from the general. Sickles refused the demand, and Caroline and Stanton were banished to a nearby hotel. Caroline went public and told the press that Wilmerding’s presence was preventing reconciliation. Such news would have been very embarrassing publicity for any normal man in those days, but for Dan Sickles it was pretty mild stuff.34
Although Mrs. Sulzer recalled that Wilmerding “protected him from the inopportunities of countless panhandlers, including his kin,” there is no evidence to suggest that Wilmerding reigned in his extravagant spending. Dan fell for an artist named Princess Lenott Parlaghy, and when she told him she had always wanted a lion cub, he appeared with a litter of six. More significantly, he agreed to guarantee her $5, 500 debt to New York’s Plaza Hotel. It has also been estimated that in addition to his extravagant spending, he may also have lost as much as four million doll
ars on Wall Street. As astounding as it sounds, his father’s mammoth inheritance was gone; General Sickles was broke.35
War hero or not, his creditors began legal actions, including placing his home in foreclosure. In 1912, Caroline learned that an $8,200 judgment had been placed against Dan, and his household goods were to be sold at auction. Despite their continuing estrangement, Caroline was still willing to spare him “the sorrow of parting with his treasures.” Accompanied by son Stanton, she pawned her own jewels in a New York pawnshop. “Tears trickled down her cheeks” as she handed over “tokens of the happy days of her youth, when she was a belle at the court of Queen Isabella of Spain.” From the pawnshop, they went over to the offices of Lincoln Trust Company, where she “cheerfully” paid the judgment.36
Although her sacrifice received extensive press coverage, it did not lead to reconciliation. When Caroline and Stanton journeyed to Dan’s home to notify him of the payment, they were refused admittance on orders of Wilmerding. An exasperated Stanton complained, “My father is completely in the clutches of this woman.” They were outraged further when Sickles issued a statement openly questioning her motives. He accused Caroline of not actually paying the debt, and she grudgingly admitted that she actually had the judgment transferred to her, although she insisted that she never intended to collect on it. Sickles also argued that many of “her” jewels were actually his in that they originally belonged to his mother and Laura. An angry Caroline denied this. “I will not put up all my money to save his house to have it occupied by him and his housekeeper to the exclusion of me.” A few weeks later Sickles was served with yet another judgment. Wilmerding had refused to let the process servers anywhere near the general, so a private detective was sent to the house disguised as a “Special Delivery Messenger.” A suspicious Wilmerding initially refused his admittance, but when the detective was finally let in, he handed the papers directly to Sickles. “See that, it’s a trick to serve legal papers!” Wilmerding shouted, ordering him out of the house. “I did not wait to hear what the General said,” the victorious detective told the Times.37
Stanton was also alarmed that the children had never received any accounting from their George Sickles inheritance, of which Dan was their trustee, and of his one-third interest in the New Rochelle property that Dan and Stanton had jointly purchased in 1895. When Stanton threatened to make public the name of the mysterious society woman, “for years now the wife of a prominent New York man,” whom Stanton believed was somehow mixed up in all of this, he received an anonymous letter “to advise you that if any such action is taken by you to bring disgrace to a woman who is decently living down her past…a punishment will be inflicted upon you in a bodily way that will make you regret it as long as you live.”
The entire affair only became more sordid. Dan’s other child with Caroline, Stanton’s sister Mrs. Eda Sickles Crackenthorpe, the wife of a British diplomat who had reunited with her father in 1897, filed suit against Sickles to prevent a disposal of certain properties and to have him removed as trustee. Dan’s domestic problems were enthusiastically replayed in the press, just as Teresa’s infidelity had been public consumption more than fifty years earlier.38
It was against this financial backdrop that the battle’s fiftieth anniversary, and the end of Dan Sickles’ Gettysburg adventure, arrived in 1913. The general was now in his early nineties, failing mentally, nearly blind, and confined to a wheelchair. It was readily apparent that he was no longer capable of managing his own household affairs, let alone the finances of an organization like the New York State Monuments Commission. Sickles had held the unpaid post as chairman of the commission for twenty-six years. Several months prior to the Gettysburg anniversary, Sickles suffered another public embarrassment. The State Controller had been attempting an accounting of the commission’s funds since 1910. When Controller William Sohmer finally saw the books in late 1912, he discovered that chairman Sickles had vouchers for only $417,165 of the $445,641 that had been given the commission for expenditure on state monuments: $28,486 was unaccounted for.39
After conferring with the governor and attorney general, Controller Sohmer wrote Sickles on November 21, “under no circumstances will an extension of time for this settlement be granted beyond December 6.” Sickles begged for more time, requesting until December 20 “to obtain a loan on my three houses and lots at the corner of Fifth avenue and Ninth street.” The extension was granted, although the state’s attorney general actually intended to initiate criminal proceedings against the entire eight-man commission. But just as he had refused to consider his Gettysburg performance a “misapprehension” of orders, he once again stubbornly held that, for better or worse, his faults were his own. The chairman accepted responsibility and requested that he be the sole target of the legal proceedings. The state was serious about recouping the money, but ultimately realized that prosecuting a popular ninety-something war-hero was sensitive business. Still, he was embarrassingly deposed as chairman of the commission. For a man who identified himself so strongly with veterans and Gettysburg—and presuming that he was still mentally competent enough to comprehend it all—this may have truly stung him.40
An elderly Sickles enjoying his cigar, circa 1912. Library of Congress
The news did not come as a surprise to everyone. “I have traced $60,000 in [New York Monuments money] to Sickles’ private account, and I am getting uneasy,” monument sculptor James Kelly had cautioned Alexander Webb in 1904. “There is something queer about Sickles, I think.” Although Sickles’ legions of detractors were, and still are, pre-disposed to believe the worst, a review of Sickles’ mental, physical, and financial status at this stage of his life suggests that the shortfall was probably due more to incompetence than malice. According to Horatio King, a member of the commission, “It is most unlikely that the shortage was incurred with dishonorable motives or that there will be any criminal prosecution. General Sickles allowed the shortage to occur through laxness rather than design. He says he will make good on his shortage in about a month.”41
Caroline and Stanton Sickles intervened once again. Stanton suspected publicly that his father had lost the money on Wall Street, and paid $5,000 out of his own pocket. He arranged for yet another postponement and promised that the state would be reimbursed for the remaining $23,000 and change. Caroline issued a public appeal. “I wish the public would come to the aid of General Sickles. If I can forgive General Sickles, I think the general public can. The thing to do is to save General Sickles.” Stanton’s son (Dan’s grandson) would tell Pinchon’s researcher in the 1940s that the funds were missing through Sickles’ “carelessness in leaving the accounts to the attention of unscrupulous assistants,” specifically naming Wilmerding and Dan’s attorney.42
Some veterans refused to help him, and the highest ranking GAR official in Missouri claimed that Sickles deserved his troubles. Many, however, wired in their support.43 Most memorable was the response from Helen Longstreet, who wired Sickles from Gainesville:
My soul is sorrowed by your troubles. Am wiring the Attorney General of New York that I shall raise money among the ragged, destitute, maimed veterans who followed Lee to pay the amount demanded if the New York officials will allow sufficient time. We are writing into our history the story of degenerate descendants of heroic sires. The Republic, whose battles you fought, will not permit your degradation.44
When word of her offer was made public, Helen told the newspapers, “My husband always spoke of Gen. Sickles as the hero of Gettysburg. General Longstreet, in the last autograph letter he ever wrote…to General Sickles told him that the taking of the Peach Orchard by Sickles’ corps won the battle for the Union forces.…General Longstreet said: ‘Sickles can well afford to leave a leg at Gettysburg, for he has made sure his place forever in the hearts of Americans.’” However, Stanton Sickles drew Helen’s ire when he said that she owed her position as postmaster in Gainesville to Dan. Nevertheless, she said that she was still willing to help Sickles “if
New York pushes the prosecution and none of his Northern friends go to his aid.”45
The state’s attorney general was smart enough to know that he was facing a potential public relations nightmare. “Your sympathetic and patriotic expressions do justice to your heart,” he responded to Helen, “but they do violence to the facts in this case.” In accusing Sickles of converting public money for “his own use,” the attorney noted that “this he has not attempted to justify or defend, admitting that he took the state’s money for private use without authority of law, an act which, under our laws and under the laws of all civilized governments, means stealing.” The state did not intend to deprecate his public service, but feared that “misdirected sympathy” would turn the accused into a “martyr.” “New York State appreciates her heroes and feels humiliated at the spectacle which this case presents.”46
An order for arrest was issued on Saturday, January 25. News reporters staked out the house and watched as Sickles’ valet hung three American flags out the window. New York’s Sheriff Julius Harburger did not look forward to the prospect of putting the war hero in jail, and promised that Sickles would have all the comforts of home there. Instead of serving the order over the weekend, the sheriff waited until Sickles’ attorney, Daniel P. Hays, had arranged for Sickles’ freedom with a $30,000 bond from a surety company. Only then did Hays and Harburger go to Sickles’ house on Monday afternoon, followed by a revue of reporters. Sickles and a disdainful Wilmerding were found sitting in a rear room, Sickles attired in an eyeshade and black suit. An apologetic Harburger told Sickles, “You know I have to serve you with these papers. I’m sorry I have to do so, but I have no choice.” Sickles tossed the unopened order on his desk. “It is all right. You’re one of the best friends I’ve got, Sheriff.” After Sickles signed for the bond, the county charged him a $5.25 serving fee. When he summoned Wilmerding to pay the bill, she replied dutifully, “Yes, dear,” but tripped on a carpet and scattered loose change across the floor.47