Read American Scoundrel Online
Authors: Keneally Thomas
Attorney General Thomas Carmody in Albany stood against the tide of sympathy for Dan. “General Sickles had appropriated a large amount for his own use. This he has not attempted to justify or to defend.” The sheriff now attended to arresting Dan in the most benign manner. He went to the house, into a back room, where General Sickles was seated in a huge chair, wearing a black suit, an eye shade, and a strip of plaster on his left cheek. Grasping him by the hand, the sheriff placed him under arrest. But then he arranged that Dan be granted bail without having to leave his residence, which would become his
de facto
prison for a short time. A $30,000 bond was arranged through a surety company official, who produced the papers and had them signed by all parties. Sheriff Harburger apologetically told Dan that a sum of $5.29 was due as a bond fee. “Ah, yes,” the general said. “Eleanor! Please get me $5.29.”
“Yes, dear,” Mrs. Wilmerding replied, and fetched the money.
27
Dan had fought off the state and his wife. But he believed that Caroline and Stanton intended to get control of his house, and that was a battle he would not be able to win from beyond the grave. In July 1913, he went to Gettysburg, accompanied by his valet, Moseley, and by Mrs. Wilmerding, to attend the celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the battle. He listened to a speech by a new President, Woodrow Wilson. At a related ceremony, he sat in honor on the porch of the Rogers house, behind the Emmitsburg Road, where a girl had once baked biscuits for some of General Humphrey’s men as they waited for Longstreet’s attack. He watched white-headed men, veterans of the Confederate Army, hobble across the space between Seminary Ridge and Cemetery Ridge, reproducing Pickett’s charge. As they reached Cemetery Ridge, they were not shot down but were embraced by aged survivors of the Union line. Dan’s friend Horatio King was there, and so was the Reverend Joseph Twichell. Helen Longstreet, not yet aged, was writing up the
event for a Southern newspaper. She was aware of Horatio King’s verses to Dan:
I see him on that famous field,
The bravest of the brave,
Where Longstreet’s legions strove to drive
The Third Corps to its grave.
The fight was bloody, fierce and long,
And Sickles’ name shall stay
Forever in the hall of fame
As he who saved the day.
28
Mrs. Wilmerding perished the next winter of a sudden pneumonic infection. Dan made a new will, naming his three grandchildren—that is, Stanton’s and Eda’s children—as heirs and leaving bequests to his servant Moseley and to Horatio King, who had written the verse representing Dan’s version of Gettysburg.
He suffered a cerebral hemorrhage in April 1914, and Caroline and Stanton at last moved into the house. He died less than two weeks later, on May 3, a little after nine o’clock at night.
Because of a vanity that had led him to misrepresent his age, the
Times
confidently but wrongly gave his years as ninety-one. The journalists at the
Times
fondly remembered the previous March, when a rumor had got around that Dan was at the point of death, and a
Times
reporter had called his home on the telephone. Dan had answered. “Yes, this is General Sickles. Am I ill? Nonsense. I was never better in my life. There’s nothing to that story.” This time, however, the story was soundly based.
So now at last he joined Teresa and Key, Abe and Mary Todd Lincoln (who had died of a stroke in 1882), Meagher, James Topham Brady, Wikoff, Queen Isabella II, Laura, and other vivid spirits. But Teresa did not intrude upon his obsequies as he had upon hers. If he got the larger share of mention at her funeral, at his she was barely a whisper. Five
days after his death, his body was transported to Washington. He was buried at the Arlington National Cemetery with gun carriage and riderless horse, escort and volleys of rifle fire, and it was his triumphant and militant career that dominated the event.
29
For the sake of his courage, the Republic honored his vivid character and forgave him the failures of his heart.
T
YPICALLY
, D
AN MADE AN UNQUIET GHOST
, his life, particularly his actions on July 2, 1863, casting up a legion of disputative voices to ensure that his name still has resonance. A recent dispute can serve as a case in point. In 1993 a report in the
Times
of 1914 was seized on by two New Yorkers named Davis and Shad, the latter Sickles’s great-great-nephew and only known survivor, to demonstrate that his widow, Caroline de Creagh, had wanted Dan buried near the New York Monument on the Gettysburg battlefield. The battle between the Gettysburg Military Park and Mr. Davis on the issue of moving Dan to Gettysburg continued for some years, with the Gettysburg Military Park conceding that Dan’s remains could go into the Soldiers’ National Cemetery Annex, or his ashes could be strewn in the original cemetery, which had been closed to burials since 1903. Davis was
contemptuous of the bureaucrat who gave him this answer, saying, “He wouldn’t have a job if it wasn’t for Dan Sickles.” The dispute is unsettled and will probably never come to conclusion, and Dan is still in Arlington, beneath his discreet military stone, which mentions merely his name, rank, Medal of Honor, and date of death. But to arise yet again easefully from that place, Dan needs only the invocation of his name at a history seminar, at a Civil War buffs’ meeting, or on an Internet Civil War chat site, and from the heat of people’s breaths he rises again to full and controversial life.
1
The gentler and pleasant spirit of Teresa is not as easily invoked, and insofar as these pages have been able, within the limits of evidence, to commemorate this beautiful, pleasant, and intelligent girl, the author is happy.
1.
Philip Shriver Klein,
President James Buchanan
, p. 117; John W. Forney,
Anecdotes of Public Men
, pp. 317, 318; W. A. Swanberg,
Sickles the Incredible
, p. 92; Marilyn Wood Hill,
Their Sisters’ Keepers: Prostitution in New York City, 1830–1870
, p. 281;
New York World
, June 30, 1869.
2.
Harper’s Weekly
, April 9, 1859; Joseph Louis Russo,
Lorenzo Da Ponte, Poet and Adventurer
, passim.
3.
G. W. D. Andrews to Sickles, August 13, 1853, Daniel E. Sickles Papers, Manuscripts Division, New-York Historical Society (hereafter NYHS).
4.
Ronald H. Bayor and Timothy J. Meagher,
The New York Irish
, pp. 122–123; Hill, pp. 77, 82, 110, 134; James Dabney McCabe,
Lights and Shadows of New York Life
, p. 583.
5.
Robert Ernst,
Immigrant Life in New York City, 1825–1863
, pp. 14, 20, 21;
Harper’s Weekly
, April 9, 1859.
6.
Harper’s Weekly
, April 9, 1859.
7.
Russo, pp. 12, 30; Felix G. Fontaine,
De Witt’s Special Report: Trial of Daniel E.
Sickles for Shooting Philip Key, Esq., U.S. District Attorney of Washington D.C.
, pp. 54–55.
8.
Russo, pp. 151ff.; Thomas Keneally,
The Great Shame
, p. 289;
Harper’s Weekly
, April 9, 1859.
9.
Swanberg, p. 81; Ernst, p. 170; James M. McPherson,
The Battle-cry of Freedom
, p. 60; Gustavus Myers,
The History of Tammany Hall
, p. 171;
Harper’s Weekly
, April 9, 1859.
10.
Harper’s Weekly
, April 9, 1859;
New York World
, June 30, 1869.
11.
Ernst, pp. 163–165; Bayor and Meagher, pp. 88, 102; Keneally, p. 249.
12.
Ernst, pp. 164–166; Thomas Lowe Nichols,
Forty Years of American Life
, pp. 160–162.
13.
McPherson, pp. 60–62; Myers, p. 171.
14.
Myers, p. 187;
New York Herald
(hereafter
NYH
), August 24, 1852; Bayor and Meagher, pp. 122–123; Ernest A. McKay,
The Civil War and New York City
, pp. 1, 3;
Harper’s Weekly
, April 9, 1859.
15.
New York World
, June 30, 1869; David Graham to Sickles, October 25, 1851, Daniel Edgar Sickles Papers, Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations (hereafter NYPL).
16.
Hill, pp. 102–103;
New York World
, June 30, 1869.
17.
New York World
, June 30, 1869; George Templeton Strong,
Diary of George Templeton Strong: Selections
, Vol. 2, p. 438; Swanberg, pp. 83–84.
18.
Swanberg, p. 84; Nat Brandt,
The Congressman Who Got Away with Murder
, p. 22; Stephen Fiske,
Off-Hand Portraits of Prominent New Yorkers
, p. 284; Irving Katz,
August Belmont: A Political Biography
, p. 42; Fiske, pp. 27–29.
19.
Swanberg, p. 84; Forney, pp. 68–69, 317–318; McCabe, pp. 475, 476.
20.
J. L. Carpentier to Sickles, March 19, 1852, NYPL; Richard Schell to Sickles, July 23, 1853, NYPL.
21.
Hill, pp. 102, 103, 395; Strong, Vol. 2, pp. 440–441; George Sickles to Sickles, April 14, 1862, NYPL;
New York Times
(hereafter
NYT
), March 15, 1859.
22.
Harper’s Weekly
, April 9, 1859; Jane McCerren to Miss T. Bagioli, December 15, 1852, NYPL; Teresa Sickles to Florence, May 3, 1856, NYPL.
23.
Harper’s Weekly
, April 9, 1859; Strong, Vol. 2, pp. 440–441.
24.
New York World
, June 30, 1869;
NYH
, March 1, 1859;
New York Sun
, March 15, 1853; H. C. Banks to Sickles, March 16, 1853, NYPL.
25.
McPherson, pp. 118–119; L. A. Gobright,
Recollection of Men and Things at Washington During the Third of a Century
, pp. 134–135; President Pierce from Sickles, March 13, 1853, NYPL.
26.
Harper’s Weekly
, April 9, 1859;
NYH
, March 1 and March 2, 1853; Swanberg, p. 85; Brandt, p. 19;
New York Post
(hereafter
NYP
), March 1 and March 17, 1859.
27.
Fiske, pp. 285, 286;
NYT
, March 15, 1859; Teresa Sickles to Sickles, August 1853, NYPL; Edgcumb Pinchon,
Dan Sickles, Hero of Gettysburg and “Yankee King of Spain,”
pp. 134–135; Forney, p. 318.
28.
Undated Sickles essay, “The Founder of Central Park, in New York,” D. E. Sickles Papers, Library of Congress (hereafter LC).
29.
Notes on a cross travel system, Manhattan, Daniel E. Sickles Papers, NYHS.
30.
Sickles to Robert Dillon, March 14, 1853, NYPL.
31.
Sickles to George Sickles from Gadsby’s Hotel, February 1853, NYPL; undated letter, Gandicini to Sickles, NYPL; George Sickles to Sickles, April 11, 1853, NYPL.
32.
Gobright, pp. 135–136.
1.
Klein, pp. 117, 118, 130–132.
2.
Forney, pp. 317–318; Fiske, p. 29.
3.
Edmund Porter to Sickles, July 23, 1853, NYPL; Teresa Sickles to Sickles, August 1853, NYPL.
4.
Sickles’s notes, December 3, 1852, to August 4, 1853, NYPL; signed note in favor of Antonio Bagioli, August 18, 1853, NYHS; Ernst, pp. 79, 80; Mary Ellwill to Sickles, April 14, 1853, NYPL.
5.
Dictionary of American Biography
, Vol. 10, pp. 197–198.
6.
Swanberg, pp. 90–91; Brandt, p. 29.
7.
Hill, pp. 160–162.
8.
Swanberg, p. 91;
New York World
, June 30, 1869; Pinchon, p. 34.
9.
Forney, pp. 318–319.
10.
Keneally, pp. 251, 262–263.
11.
McPherson, p. 110; Katz, p. 42; Don Carolos Seitz,
The James Gordon Bennetts, Father and Son
, p. 130; Swanberg, pp. 93–95.
12.
Swanberg, p. 94; Benjamin Perley Poore,
Reminiscences of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis
, Vol. 1, p. 444.
13.
McPherson, pp. 105–110; Swanberg, pp. 98, 99.
14.
NYH
, November 4, 1854.
15.
NYH
, July 25, August 7, and November 8, 1854.
16.
Harper’s Weekly
, April 9, 1859.
17.
Harper’s Weekly
, April 9, 1859.
18.
Strong, Vol. 2, p. 441; Pinchon, p. 53.
19.
McPherson, pp. 107, 108; Fiske, pp. 26–31; Katz, p. 42; Swanberg, p. 99.
20.
Swanberg, pp. 99, 100; Fiske, p. 286;
New York World
, June 30, 1869;
Harper’s Weekly
, April 9, 1859.
21.
Hill, pp. 101, 282, 387, 397.
22.
Swanberg, p. 99; undated Sickles essay, “The Founder of Central Park, in New York,” LC.
23.
D. Wemyss Jobson,
The Allan Trials
, pp. 31, 56, 57.
24.
Swanberg, pp. 102–103;
Harper’s Weekly
, April 9, 1859;
Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography
, Vol. 3, p. 102.
25.
Teresa Sickles to Florence, May 3, 1856, NYPL; Swanberg, pp. 102–103;
New York World
, June 30, 1869.
26.
Undated Sickles essay, “The Founder of Central Park, in New York,” LC.
27.
D. E. Sickles,
Remarks of Hon. Daniel E. Sickles in the Senate of the State of New York on the Bill “to Prevent Illegal Voting in the City of New York,” Commonly Known as the Registry Bill.
28.
Swanberg, p. 104; Ernst, p. 20; Hopper Striker Mott,
The New York of Yesterday: A Descriptive Narrative of Old Bloomingdale
, pp. 17, 18;
Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Paper
, March 26, 1859.
29.
Ellen E. Plante,
The Victorian Home
, passim; Teresa Sickles to Sickles, April 20, 1861, NYHS; Teresa Sickles to Florence, July 9, 1861, NYPL.
30.
Teresa Sickles to Florence, late 1856, NYPL.
31.
Klein, p. 220; Swanberg, p. 103.
32.
McPherson, pp. 106–109.
33.
McPherson, pp. 156–162; Swanberg, p. 105.
34.
Jean A. Baker,
Mary Todd Lincoln: A Biography
, p. 137; Teresa Sickles to Florence, late 1856, NYPL.