The Congressman Who Killed a Man Across from the White House and Got Away With It. The Story of the American Scoundrel, the Incredible Dan Sickles, Part Four: Pariahs

Aug 08, 2023

Today I continue telling the story of the incredible American Scoundrel, Congressman, and later Major General Daniel Sickles. In the first installment, I discussed his early life and career, the second his murder of his wife Teresa’s lover across from the White House, and then his trial and acquittal in the trial of the 19th Century, a trial better suited to our day and time. This section deals with the tragic consequences of each, especially for Teresa.

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After a brief absence, Sickles returned to Congress and to Teresa, who was now even a worse social pariah than her husband. After the murder and for the duration of the trial, Teresa remained at one of the family homes in the New York countryside under the care of her parents. She followed the trial and occasionally wrote to Dan in jail, and over time he began to write back. Teresa was thrilled with the verdict and she honestly believed that the marriage and her reputation could be rehabilitated and that she could be restored to a normal wife.

The normal family values system of the time would have now involved Sickles divorcing his tarnished wife. That would have been “the predictable and conservative course.” [1] But despite his own continuing excursions into infidelity and his rage over hers, Sickles still loved her, and could not fathom divorcing her. His father George and Teresa’s father Antonio “were stricken with the same delusion as Teresa – that reconciliation would be tolerated by society.” [2]

Had the recently celebrated Congressman divorced Teresa, his political career, while crippled, might have resumed its previous upward trajectory. But the ever unpredictable Dan Sickles “shocked everyone by forgiving Teresa and resuming their former relationship.” [3] His lawyers were appalled, they thought that it was lunacy and would ruin his career. [4]

It was a characteristic of the time, and in some place even today in that maintained the belief that an adulterous wife knew no forgiveness, and Sickles “put himself beyond the pale by the simple act of forgiving his wife and restoring her to his bosom.” [5] Murder could be forgiven, a man’s indiscretions as well, but forgiving adulterous women, especially a wife and mother was unforgivable. All the better people had already assigned the appropriate scarlet letter to the fallen woman, and they were shocked into paroxysms of moral outrage when Sickles apparently forgave her transgression.” [6] Sickles’ act of forgiveness was “out of kilter with an age that neatly divided women into “saintly mothers,” “pure virgins,” and “fallen women.” [7] Frankly, the action shocked New York and Washington society, and Dan and Teresa paid the price. Still, the price paid by Teresa would be greater and ultimately contribute to her death, a death that occurred far too early.

Sickles was flailed in the papers, the New York Dispatch noted “His warmest personal and political friends bitterly denounce his course.” While the Sunday Courier wrote, “His political aspirations, his career in life, once so full of encouraging brightness, and his business prospects, have all been blasted by this act.” [8]

The New York Herald reprinted a piece called an “Epithalamium” an ode normally written for newlyweds from the Sunday Mercury. It used poetry as biting satire which lampooned Dan and Teresa:

Hail matchless pair. United once again. In newborn bliss forget your bygone pain

Hail! Turtle doves, returning to the nest. Defiled, yet dear - determined to be blest!

What the world may say, ‘With hands, all red, Yon bridegroom steals to a dishonored bed.’

And friends, estranged, exclaim on every side: ‘Behold! Adultery couched with Homicide!’

What thought (in dreams) a bleeding spectre flings. Your curtains backward, like a demon’s wings,

And howls, exulting, as entranced you lie. Beneath the glare of its sardonic eye:

‘Live on - live on! each other’s proper hell; None but yourselves could damn yourselves so well!’ [9]

Even long-time friends like James Topham Brady who had defended him at his trial were livid. Interestingly enough it was Sickles old foe Horace Greeley who “flew in the face of convention by commending Sickles for his forgiveness.” [10] But Greeley was an exception, and in the face of the critics sent a letter to the New York Herald in which he fired a broadside:

“Referring to the forgiveness which my sense of duty and my feelings impelled me to extend to an earring and repentant wife… I am prepared to defend what I have done before the only tribunal I recognize as having the slightest claim to jurisdiction over the subject – my own conscience and the bar of Heaven. I am not aware of any statute or code of morals which makes it infamous to forgive a woman… And I cannot allow even all the world combined to dictate to me the repudiation of my wife, when I think it right to forgive her and restore her to my confidence and protection. If I have ever failed to comprehend the utterly desolate position of offending though penitent woman – the hopeless future, with its dark possibilities of danger, to which she is proscribed as an outcast – I can now see plainly in the almost universal howl of denunciation with which she is followed to my threshold…” [11]

Dan Sickles the sinner had struck back at his Pharisaical accusers with the aplomb of Christ himself, who had forgiven the adulteress woman, but it did little to change public perception. Teresa would always be the adulteress, abandoned by friends and scorned by society at large. Unlike the adulterous who Jesus forgave in the Gospels, no religious leader would offer her succor or chastise her accusers.

With the scandal of the Key murder behind him, Dan Sickles would have been forgiven had he denounced and divorced his wife. But he was now a pariah, even among his peers and colleagues. He was of little use to the Democratic Party or his district, his pipeline to the White House was cut off as Buchanan “did not dare to be seen with him or connected to him in any way.” [12] Mary Boykin Chesnut, wife of renowned Senator James Chesnut, and a prolific diarist and often acerbic person from South Carolina took pity on him. She “sat in the House gallery one day and saw Sickles deliberately, and totally ostracized. He was sitting all alone, like Catiline, every other member careful not to come near him – “left to himself as if he had the smallpox.” [13] When Chesnut asked a friend why he was shunned, the friend told her that the murder of Key “was all right… It was because he condoned his wife’s profligacy and took her back.” [14] Another sniffed, “Unsavory subject.” [15] His one legislative achievement was in submitting a resolution making George Washington’s birthday a national holiday. It was passed through his efforts, pariah or not, no one would deny honoring the Father of the Country.

Following his return to New York, he went back to work at his father they attempted to return to a normal life. They took rides in their carriage and excursions on Hudson River steamers, but their lives would never be the same due to the Puritanical standards of the day where he could be forgiven and she not. Alabama’s Daily Confederation wrote:

“Man “can tread the lowliest haunts of vice and infamy, and still the right hand of fellowship is extended. He was lost but now is found. But poor woman, like Teresa Sickles, when she sins, when she acknowledges her sin, when she is willing to be turned loose on the cold charities of the world—but simply asks forgiveness from one—that same mankind is insulted.” [16]

Her husband composed a letter that was published in the New York Herald, which was published in newspapers throughout to country, he wrote:

“Referring to the forgiveness which my sense of duty and my feelings impelled me to extend to an erring and repentant wife, you observe, in the course of your temperate and dignified article that, it is said, however, that the last phase of the affair was brought about through the advice of his lawyers?’ This is entirely erroneous. I did not exchange a word with one of my counsel upon the subject, nor with any one else. My reconciliation with my wife was my own act, done without consultation with any relative connection, friend or advisers. Whatever blame, if any, belongs to the step, should fall alone upon me. I am prepared to defend what I have done before the only tribunal I recognize as having the slightest claim to jurisdiction over the subject—my own conscience and the bar of Heaven… And I cannot allow even all the world combined to dictate to me the repudiation of my wife when I think it right to forgive her and restore her to my confidence and protection.” [17]

He likewise acknowledged what she would incur no matter what he said or did to defend her:

“If I ever failed to comprehend the utterly desolate position of an offending though penitent woman—the hopeless future, with its dark possibilities of danger, to which she is doomed when proscribed as an outcast—I can now see plainly enough, in the almost universal howl of denunciation with which she is follow to my threshold, the misery and perils from which I have rescued the mother of my child… In conclusion, let me ask only one favor of those who, from whatever motive, may deem it necessary or agreeable to comment in public or private upon this sad history; and that is, to aim all their arrows at my breast, and for the sake of my innocent child, to spare her yet youthful mother, while she seeks in sorrow and contrition the mercy and pardon of Him to whom, sooner or later, we must all appeal.” [18]

For Teresa, the consequences of the experience were worse as she was forever labeled with the dreaded Scarlet Letter. The cruelty that she experienced was devastating. Teresa lived “socially exiled, shunned even by humble neighbors, compelled to keep the house by day or face the sneers and hoots of such street trash as recognized her, cut off from her cherished riding and walking, couped up with a loving but over-emotional mother, a penurious, egocentric father, Teresa, torn between grief for the dead, contrition for the living, began to fail…” [19] Despite being forgiven and defended in public by her husband, there could be no going back to the time before the murder and her exposures an adulteress. After his acquittal, he spent little time with her and she never again accompanied him in any of his assignments, in the military, or after the war. But his act of leaving her behind was not due to cruelty or neglect, as Dan and Teresa were “merely accepting an accomplished social fact, knowing Teresa would forever be an outcast and forever be an outcast and would be exposed to endless snubs and torment were she be so rash as to essay a new entrance into society.” [20]

In his own way Dan loved her, but neither could change the attitude of a society where Puritanical morality still reigned, and the granddaughter of Giacomo Casanova’s friend could never be forgiven, and whose relationship with her husband would always be haunted by the ghost of Barton Key. There could be no happy ending for her or their daughter Laura. He took her back but could not give them a happy home. He made no attempt than to go beyond what he did, and in a sense Dan left Teresa and Laura as orphans, and she could never be happy living this way. [21] Nothing could change that, and soon Teresa lost the will to live though she was not even twenty-five years old. “Sleepless, she took refuge in opiates….She sank slowly from frailty to invalidism.” [22] She contracted tuberculosis, and though she attempted to maintain her household she suffered from severe depression, and again took up her family’s Catholic faith. Catholic rosaries, missals, holy cards, and other items filled her bedroom. Teresa died unexpectedly of a cold which probably turned to pneumonia on February 5th, 1867, when most people thought she would recover. She was just 31 years old.

Dan Sickles was serving as the military governor in South Carolina and upon receiving the news was stunned. He returned home for her funeral and his friends rallied to him. Her pallbearers include James Topham Brady and four U.S. Army generals including Sickles former comrade Alfred Pleasanton and his Gettysburg aide Henry Tremain.

Her funeral was conducted at St. Joseph’s Catholic Church. The building was packed to capacity by the the large number of people who came to mourn her and comfort her husband. A Funeral Mass was officiated by the pastor, Father Thomas Ferrell assisted by two other priests. After the Mass, Father Ferrell delivered a touching eulogy and words of consolation to Dan, their daughter Laura, and her aged parents. [23]

In death Teresa finally found a measure of public sympathy, the funeral Mass was attended by many mourners, and as Sickles and his now teenage daughter Laura followed Teresa’s casket out of the church, “His feelings now broke forth and he wept, and the large congregation rushed tumultuously from the building after him, testifying to the hold he held on their hearts, and the extent to which they shared his affliction.” [24] In light of the prevailing morality of the day can wonder if most of the mourners had more sympathy for Sickles than his now-dead wife.

He returned to his duty in South Carolina with Laura and Teresa was buried in New York’s Green-Wood Cemetery in the Sickles family section. It remained unmarked until 2019 when a marker was placed to identify it.

To be continued…

Dedicated to the Proposition that All Men are Created Equal

The Congressman Who Killed a Man Across from the White House and Got Away With It. The Story of the American Scoundrel, the Incredible Dan Sickles, Part Four: Pariahs

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