DAN SICKLES

07452

BOOKS BY

EDGCTJMB PINCHON

SiCKJUESi Hero of Gettysburg
and "Y&nhee King of Spain"

THE MEXICAN PEOPLE: Their Struggle for Freedom
<with L. G. I>e Lara)

VIVA VILLA!

UNTIL I FIND

ZAPAXA THE UNCX>NQTJERABLE

From The Rebellion Record, 1865.

GENERAL DANIEL E. SICKLES

HERO OF GETTYSBURG AND
"YANKEE KING OF SPAIN"

By EDGCUMB PINCHON

DOUBLEDAY, DORAN AND COMPANY, INC.

Garden City, New York
1945

X94-5
XCDGGT7&CB PX2TGIXO2T

To
DANIEL EDGAR SICKLES

t who shares my view that his grandsire

belongs to history and so
to history's probing, impartial light.

THIS incredible tale of dashing Dan
Sickles Civil War general, lover of the
Queen of Spain, avenging husband xvho
killed his \vife *s paramour has all the ac-
tion and ron^ance of a novel. It: provides
the first full-length portrait of a colorful
American figure who loved to play the
hero, and often ^vas one.

The true storv of Dan Sickles touches
heights of theatrical extravagance that
fiction couldn't risk. At thirty-eight he
became a congressman having already
been a printer, lawver, corporation coun-
sel of Ne^v York, secretary of the Amer-
ican Legation in London. \Vith Teresa,
his very young, very beautiful wife,
Sickles took up residence in ^Washington
"with an eye on the White House. One
day he found Teresa in the arms of his
most intimate friend, Philip Barton Key.
On the rnorro-w he "went gunning, shot
Key dead in the street. There followed
a tumultuous trial, in xvhich the most
powerful battery of lawyers in America
defended him, and the verdict xvas "not
guilty.** His hopes for the presidency
gone, but his spirit still strong, he next
played a prominent role as a Union hero
at Gettysburg. The North \von the battle,
but Sickles lost his leg.

Nothing daunted, this amazing monop-
odous Don Juan ^vent to Spain as United
States Alinister, and \vithin a few "weeks
became the lover of Queen Isabella her-
self! Into the rest of his long life the
"Yankee King of Spain" continued to
crowd enough amours, intrigues, and
good works for a dozen stout-hearted
men. The pace and verve of this, his
story, are something we believe he'd
heartily approve.

What is this Mm, thy darling tossed *nd cuffed,

Thou Ivsmgly engender* st,

To sweat, and make his brag, md rot,

-FRANCIS THOMPSON

My thanks to Qaribel Castle who,

with quick insight for the problem,

sensitive criticism for die page,

played no small part in bringing

this book to birth.

Contents

PART ONE
MANHATTAN OVERTURE

CHAPTER PAGE

I Instead of a Foreword i

n America Emergent 4

in In Search of an Education 10

IV Tammany Nights 15

V Teresa 24

PART Two

A KNICKERBOCKER AT THE COURT OF
ST. JAMES'S

VI Dan Sickles Comes to Town 30

VII "The Little Amedican" 49

VTO Iceberg in the Sun 55

PART THREE
MASQUE OF DEATH

IX Fighting Escalade 58

X Swampoodle Palmyra 67

XI Dragon Couchant Gripping a Key 73

xii Contents

CHAPTER

XII Washington Hostess 77

XIII Tarantelk Si

XIV Mad Honeymoon 88

XV "Whom the Gods Would Destroy " ..... 91

XVI "I Have Killed Him!" 97

XVII Tragic Interlude 114

XVm "Gentlemen of the Jury " 120

XIX "The Fearful Story of My Heart" 133

PART FOUR
"ARMS AND THE MAN" .

XX Chasm Agape 138

XXI 'The Union Is Imperishable!" 142

XXII Armies in Haste 146

XXm Muddle and Massacre 166

XXIV Defeat Grotesque 171

XXV Improvisation at Gettysburg 187

PART FIVE
HIGH TRUST AND INTRIGUE

XXVI General on Crutches 203

XXVn Mysterious Mission 209

XXVm Struggling with Chaos 215

XXIX "The Yankee King of Spain" 226

XXX Le Manage de Convenance 244

XXXI "An Everlasting Stain" 252

XXXH Holiday 257

PART SEC
LONG SUNDOWN

XXXIH "Tenting Tonight" 263

XXXIV Taps^Muted .270

Bibliography 273

Index ., 277

Illustrations

General Daniel E. Sickles Frontispiece

Facing Page

View of the House, Hired by Key, for His Meetings with

Mrs. Sickles 94

Philip Barton Key 95

Facsimile of the Anonymous Letter Informing Horu Daniel

E. Sickles of the Infidelity of His Wife 101

Facsimile of Part of Teresa Siddes's Confession . . . 106

Hon. Daniel E. Sickles Shooting Philip Barton Key, in

President's Square, Washington no

Teresa Sickles in

General Sickles at the Age of Ninety 270

General Sickles with His Staff at Gettysburg, in 1909 . . 271

PART ONE: MANHATTAN OVERTURE

CHAPTER I

Instead of a Foreword

WHEN HE FIRST OPENED HIS EYES in a modest New York home
October 20, 1819, the skyscape beyond the Battery was fretted with
the spars of hundreds of tall sailing, ships. President Monroe was in
the White House, Queen Victoria-to-be still in the nursery. . . .

When, May 3, 1914, those eyes-keen, gray, recalcitrant-closed
for the last time, a stupendous one-hundred-year cycle almost had
run its course. Woodrow Wilson was busying himself with the New
Freedom at home, the Familyhood of Nations abroad. George V
and Wilhelm Hohenzollern were exchanging cousinly notes., British
dreadnaughts nosed unobtrusively toward Scapa Flow* German
cruisers dotted at Kiel . . .

Ninety-four years of America's turgid adolescence! And some
fifty of them spent in the thick of national affairs. . * .

Down the roaring decades that blent a score of polyglot peoples
' to a new breed, thrust Mexico across the Rio Grande and Colorado,
Canada beyond the Columbia, the West out to mid-Pacific, his was
a stormy, dramatic figure in Congress, on the battlefield, at die
courts of Madrid and St. James's, in the pdlarios nauAmdUs of Colom-
bia, Panama, Peru. . . .

And yet, on the crowded shelf of American biography, his niche
stands vacant.

The fact is curious, and needs some explanation.

While, in odd paragraphs scattered through hundreds of old

2 Dan Sickles

volumes and newspaper files, his official record stands fairly com-
plete, these sources give almost no glimpse of the man himself. And,
in this instance, the personal archives letters, diaries, the intimate
memorabilia so essential to the biographer's task, were almost en-
tirely lacking. Some of this material had been lost; part of it had
been left in forgotten caches here and abroad; the great bulk of it
had been stolen and, for a long time, was thought destroyed. Also,
unfortunately, there could be small recourse to personal recollec-
tions. He outlived all the friends of his prime. His family, for the
last thirty-five years of his life, had held no contact with him.

But, during the past two years, elaborate and persistent research
has succeeded in retrieving a great many missing documents. Some
of the most important of these recaptured amid wartime complica-
tions in France and Spain, dispatched by boat and impounded by
the British at Bermuda were dictated from memory pending their
release.

And so, at last, amid delays and difficulties the present portrait:
an attempt to paint <c the man himself" in something of his complex
human actuality, in something of the crimson and the black, the dun
and the gold of his dauntless, brilliant, beclouded career.

Ambition drove him, patriotism inspired him, a tremendous vital-
ity supported him; courage, eloquence, intellectual vigor, executive
capacity lent their aid; ill chance thwafted him; undisciplined pas-
sions betrayed him; self-assurance, decisiveness, impetuosity gave a
dramatic flair to his actions. But, first and last, the central fact of
him abides in something profoundly characteristic of his era and
his breed his deep-rooted indomitabflky. . . .

Success, tragedy, crime, battle and mutilation, obloquy, neglect
-he knew than all But nothing could defeat him-not even himself!
A staidly in the contradictions of human personality, the dissonant
tonalities of fate! With a genius for friendship, few men made more
bitter enemies. His amours, fleeting as fierce, were innumerable, and
recall-at other levels-die erotic record of a Liszt, a Goethe, a
Ptacho Vffla. But he failed to create a single lasting, or significant,
relationship.

A brilliant pleader at the bar, a politician and acknowledged
fcader of Tammany in his twenties, a diplomat in the early thirties,
lover of the arts and conversant with the major languages of Europe,
IBS education was heterodox, broken, self-chosen.

Instead of a Foreword . 3

Notorious as he was for his affairs with women, he yet, in a mad
moment, shot to death the son of Francis Scott Key who had engaged
the affections of his young wife; and, in the most sensational trial
in the history of American jurisprudence, was pronounced ''not
guilty. 9 ' But immediately thereafter, to the astonished scandal of all
Washington society, he reinstated his beloved "Terry" in her former
position; and in a challenging letter to the press "I ain not aware
of any code of morals which makes it infamous to forgive" de-
fended his action against the gossips.

At the outbreak of the Civil War he raised and equipped the Ex-
celsior Brigade; and, with no more than an amateur's knowledge of
military matters, rapidly rose to the rank of major general, came
close to salvaging and but for the gross neglect of his pleas for
ammunition almost certainly would have salvaged the disgraceful
Union defeat at Chancellorsville; and, at Gettysburg, left to his own
devices and boldly advancing his troops to a dangerous salient, won
fame and blame, and lost a leg.

His political enemies were acrid; an inimical press missed few
opportunities to belittle and deride him. But Lincoln dispatched him
as his secret emissary to the Latin-American republics. Grant sent
him as minister to Spain in the midst of the Cuban tunnoiL Both
men prized him dearly, as did Buchanan, Pierce, Stanton. Longstreet,
his immediate opponent at Gettysburg, frankly adored him. . . .

Adolphe Thiers made him "Grand Croix de la Legion d'Honneur";
Bismarck gave him his confidence, Queen Isabella her couch. Europe
knew him as the "Yankee King of Spain."

In old age, virile, crusty, benignant, he still remained a menace to
his enemies and the secret terror of society matrons with venture-
some daughters. Beloved more than any other by the men of the
Grand Anny, he served them to the end.

An American, then "one of the turbulent breed," spanning a
century of America's coming of age, and summing up in himself
after a dynamic fashion of his own the major motivations of his
time, here General Dan Sickles rides by.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: In bis last days Dan Sickles gave the year 1825 as the date of
his birth. Whether m vanity or as a result of fatting memory, be thus lopped six
years from his actual age. The date here given, however, is sustained by the
fondly archives, and is indubitably correct.

4 Dan Sickles

CHAPTER II

America Emergent

AHE HUSTLING THIRTIES . . . America-to-be emerging. The Louisi-
ana Purchase had stretched her borders from Mississippi to the
Rockies, from Canada to the Gulf. By mule-drawn barge along the
new Erie Canal, by cart and coach over the still newer Cumberland
Road, by great rafts equipped with cabins and bearing entire
families with stock and tools drifting adown the Ohio, native Amer-
ica streamed westward. On to the Promised Land!

At the same time, as though to fill the void thus left, great hordes
of eager, sturdy peasants Irish, English, German, Italian, Dutch,
Scandinavian, even the Greek, Turk, Arab, Armenian came swarm-
ing through the port of New York. 'Behold the Promised Land!

What if to many of these newcomers the Promised Land soon
lost its dream-painted tints? For the most part they held on to their
faith and went to work with a will. . . .

Were there not jobs to be had at the factories even if at the
pittance dictated by greed and the glut of hands? Was there not
"political freedom" or, at least, the vote, and a chance to swap it
now and again for a pot of beer? And out West if one could dodge
the red scalper and the white speculator was not good govern-
ment land to be had for a dollar an acre? Best of all: there were no
class distinctions, no arrogant lords and ladies, only the Rich and
the Poor; no monarch even if certain Wall Street gentlemen were
said to have holdings, larger than a dozen European duchies. But
what if the picture were not so bright as it had been painted? One
thing was sure: opportunity was open to all; the prizes beyond .be-
lief. Wasn't Andrew Jackson born in a shanty? See him now in
the White House! And look at John Jacob Astor yesterday a
penniless shagpate unable to sign his name with his palaces and

America Emergent 5

coaches, his twenty million dollars, still peddling the Indians cheap
rotgut for priceless pelts, and thumbing his nose at the government!
That shows what can be done! All one has to do is to be smart, get
busy, go West. . . .

Such was the arising spirit of the time breeding like a contagion.

With every ship that belched bundle-clutching humanity at the
Battery, New York real estate boomed, stocks rose, western land
prices stiffened. Soon even the stay-at-homes caught the excitement
spread by this explosion of repressed peoples loosed on the wharves.
They, too, waked, looked about, fell to.

In the thirties, in truth, the young Republic, hitherto a bit con-
fused as to its destiny what with the British invasion, humiliating
struggles with the Seminoles, open treason in New England, incip-
ient rebellion in the South, bitter feuding between shipmasters and
millowners suddenly began to achieve selfhood, began to sense its
own vast potentialities and to realize that its strength, and the future
of the democratic tradition, ky no longer with the Seaboard but
with the new states being builded by "the men of the western
waters." Instinctively it turned its back squarely upon Europe and
set its face toward the Rockies. At the same time a great wave of
hope swept the country. Scarcely a man, native or foreign born,
but felt its impetus, gained a new sense of his own possibilities, or
failed to quicken his pace under the exciting illusion that El Dorado
lurked just around the corner. . . .

The Decade of Dream! And the birth of the American spirit of
optimism! No ephemeral phenomenon, that spirit, but a force
destined to endure, find cosmic voice in an Emerson, a Walt Whit-
man, and, in one hundred years, forge, amid froth and folly and
fire, a civilization mechanistic, speed-mad, drab, corrupt, but, ma-
terially, the most powerful and enterprising known to man.

And with optimism came the spirit of venture. These shores, from
the first, were peopled by those who had "taken a chance" usu-
ally a tremendous chance. Now the new day, the ever expanding
frontier, called for fresh gambles with fortune. And there emerged,
especially in the '^western waters," the American saluted by Kipling
nearly a century later, who

. . . greets tJf embarrassed Gods, nor fears
To shake the iron hand of Fate
Or match with Destiny for beers.

6 Dan Sickles

But optimism and readiness to bet on the board must be backed
by action. If one is to forge ahead of the other fellow, one must get
busy. And get busy every man did. "Even the carts proceed at a
gallop," said one foreign critic of the time. Said another, "One has
the sense that everyone of this people is afraid of being kte some-
where." The spirit of hustle!

Optimism, take a chance, hustle all good things in a raw people
at grips with a raw empire. But in a competitive economy based on
the right of the individual to appropriate the public resources, these
inevitably gave rise to something less admirable: the spirit of "each
for himself and devil take the hindmost!"

And westward ky a vast territory for the looting. Ahead of the
settler sped the specuktor. Terms of purchase pre-empted crops
for years to come. The Free West became an ever receding mirage;
and, usually, with the first furrow the adventurous farmer plowed,
he sealed himself and all his family serfs for life to the new but
invisible lords of mortgage bank and grain pit.

Still the optimistic flame could not be quenched. If there were
those who wondered why a democracy on paper was not also a
democracy on earth, they were few and unheard. An odd success,
a stroke of luck here and there served to keep the illusion alive; and,
as an ironic corollary to frontier conditions, the man who profited
most by the scheme of things the gentleman who never hitched a
trace nor turned a sod soon came to be looked upon as a new kind
of titujar deity to be envied, respected, copied. Naturally, if insidi-
ously, there arose, as a permanent American attitude, the conviction
that money is the man, and die making of money no matter how
brutal or shabby the means the greatest of all private and civic
virtues. The Calf donned a Puritan collar!

At the same time the unprecedented growth of popuktion tended
to throw the political machinery in reverse especially in the larger
cities. Doubtless a system of simple geographical representation was
suitable enough in the days of the town meeting, when folk, gath-
ered in small communities, knew their neighbors and the candidate.
But as villages became towns, towns cities, when in the flux and
flow of a swarming, new popuktion, the town meeting disappeared,
no man knew his neighbor any more, nor, often enough, so much
as the names of his representatives until he read them on his ballot
paper, the system revealed itself as a pathetic anachronism. More

America Emergent 7

and more the business of selecting and seating candidates fell into
the hands of small groups of gentlemen anxious to relieve the public
of the burden. Adepts these! Rome knew them in her putrescence.
Of all types: the smooth shyster with a social veneer, the raw plug-
ugly, the educated schemer, the brawny Irish saloonkeeper, the
flash brothelmaster, they had one thing in common: they, as Boss
Tweed, with gentle pride, used to say of his associates, "saw their
opportunities and took 'em." Largely recruited from the under-
world, imbued with its cynical realism, a bit short on grammar but
long on human psychology, they operated instinctively on the theory
that the average citizen works for nothing but his pocket and his
glory all the time. Their technique was to make each supporter, no
matter how humble, feel that, in one way or another, lie was "in on
the game." And theory and technique worked amazingly. Giving
three hundred and sixty-five days a year to a matter which occupied
the average voter a few hours at most, men such as these found it
easy enough to select their own candidates, pky boodling benefactor
to masses of ignorant immigrants, forge naturalization papers for
those that lacked them, vote the same man a dozen times, stuff or
steal ballot boxes, organize gangs to terrorize opponents from the
polls. And once in control and up to their elbows in the treasury,
they found it easy enough to suborn newspapers, bribe off enemies,
win the open or tacit support of the various financial groups seek-
ing legislative favors or a blind eye to taxes. . . .

The Founding Fathers could not be expected to foresee that a
system based on the odd opposites of economic privilege and town-
meeting politics would work out this way. But the logic of events
outwits the logic of reason. And the Great Experiment was not fifty
years old before its actual result was to crowd municipal councils
and legislative halls, not with the intended "chosen best," but, despite
splendid exceptions here and there, with the ultimate "unchosen
worst," the offal of a social system gone awry. The rise of "machine
politics" as the product of geographical representation plus economic
privilege and public indifference put legislation on the market,
thieves at the public till. It also, even for the honest and aspiring,
early and often made itself the sole entrance to political life; and a
man had to swim through slime to get to a place where he could
bring his own ideas to bear. In New York City the machine-
rooted, ironically enough, in America's first organization of de-

8

fence against aristocratic Federalist tendencies early had developed
into that tenacious political octopus: Tammany Hall originally a
fraternal organization pretending Indian origin, affecting Indian
ceremonial dress, and ludicrously organized into "wigwams" super-
intended by "sachems."

And whatever the Founding Fathers foresaw or did not foresee
and Washington had moments of tragically true prevision the
realistic fact remains that Tammany Hall, born with the Republic,
proved to be the archetype and Founding Father of the henceforth
actual as opposed to the intended administration of American pub-
lic affairs, municipal, state, national.

And thus in tie thirties, amid the drums of hope and hustle,
Babel at the Battery, steamboats churning Mississippi mud, settlers
and speculators racing to the Rockies, while Tammany Hall set its
feet on New York City and with one hand reached for Albany and
with the other reached for the Capitol, it happened that the Amer-
ican Dream quietly was folded up and put away in the national
garret to be taken out henceforth, like grandmother's wedding
gown, only for Charades. In its place appeared new twin deities in
die American Pantheon: the Political Boss, and that "rugged individ-
ualist," the Unrepentant Thief.

The American Tragedy possibly. But it turned out well enough
for George Garrett Sickles, sturdy, rigid Knickerbocker, sixth of
his American line, proud of his ancestor, Zacharia Van Sicklen, one
of the pioneers of New Amsterdam (later New York City) and
founder of New Rochelle, proud of deep family roots across the
seas, proud also of the fact that he was the first patent attorney in
these States. Somewhere in the thirties, growing dissatisfied with
much work, modest fees, he plunged into the current gamble in
New York real estate. He couldn't miss. Real estate that marvelous
sponge that sops up the community wealth as fast as it is made was
overcharged. He made his bets, took his profits, proved himself an
up-and-coming American of his time and place; and, in a few years,
amassed such millions as needed a suite of offices at 74 Nassau Street
to take care of them. And it was here that his only son, Daniel Edgar
both pride and problem received his first initiation into law and
business.

Litde is recorded of Daniel's childhood. It is not until the spring
of '36 that he comes fairly to view. Then a few months short of six-

America Emergent 9

teen, he was standing on the stoop of the Glens Falls Academy for
Young Gentlemen, viewing the street and the future with a brood-
ing, angry, meditative eye.

A sinewy, good-looking lad, gray-eyed, with a mop of honey-
colored hair, dressed substantially in homespun coat, knickerbockers,
wool hose and stout brogans, he looked what he was a sturdy young
Dutch American bent on adventure.

Under his ribs pulsed the song of his day: "Believe: take a chance:
every man for himself!" He had been marooned in this dull private
school upstate because recently typhus had raged in filthy New
York; and, also, he had been rather something to handle even for
a Knickerbocker paterfamilias. But the sense of his time stirred in
his blood.

Behind the heavy door he had banged on himself, a wizened
dominie hugged his haunches, endeavored to resume his dignity and
quell the timorous riot of a score of happily scandalized boys. In an
unlucky moment the headmaster had undertaken to whip the in-
subordinate Dan and had been soundly whipped instead.

On the stoop Dan, still breathing a little hard, looked up and down
the empty village street. Suddenly decision snapped. Resolutely he
turned north toward his favorite haunt: the print shop of Stephen
Adams, editor of the Glens Falls Messenger. Had he not already
learned for fun to set type, write up news? Very well, he would
get old Adams to take him on as apprentice, give him room and
board for a while. Someday he would be the owner, editor, master
printer of a great American newspaper. Devil take Glens Falls
Academy!

He was not surprised that he felt so calm or that suddenly every-
thing looked so different! No more than a chick that breaks its
shell did he find any need to explain to himself how it happened
that in one vicious tussle he had crossed a line, opened a door on
himself, passed from schoolboy to man. He only knew that it was
so, that school was done, that he was outward bound on his own.
Possible objections? In two strides he had forgotten them. Decision
action! Reflection burned to an intuitive flash.

So it was to be with him in Congress, at Ghancellorsville, Gettys-
burg, in London, Paris, Madrid, and on the bloodstained curb of
Washington's Lafayette Square.

jo Dan Sickles

CHAPTER III

In Search of an Education

IF THE Messenger was easily seduced, not so George Garrett Sickles.

He promptly ordered his son to return to school or come home.
Dan did neither, but stuck to his typesetting stick. Finding letters of
no avail, the bearded, strong-jawed father tucked his wife under
his arm and descended on Glens Falls. It was Knickerbocker to
Knickerbocker. Stalemate! In the upshot, Dan's status as an inde-
pendent wage earner with a lust for printer's ink was recognized
de -facto if not de jure.

But what gave the meeting a cast of fatality was the presence
of a new friend the parents had contacted en route and brought
along with them a young professor of New York University. A
fascinating fellow, this Charles Da Ponte-and a member of a fasci-
nating family. His father, the uncannily brilliant Jewish scholar and
poetaster, Emmanuel Conegliano, self-styled Lorenzo Da Ponte-
apparendy after the scintillant Venetian Jesuit-was a master of
Hebrew, Latin, Greek, and of most of the languages of Europe.
Formerly Court Poet to the Emperor Joseph of Hapsburg, com-
rade of Casanova in erotic adventure, librettist to Mozart, and the
intimate of all the great and scandalous in the dying, decadendy
iridescent years of Europe's eighteenth-century culture, he had fled
to the New World refuge-for reasons. And, for the past thirty
years, a proud, pathetic sponger, dazzling, insinuating, grandiose,
he had reigned as a kind of seedy social lion over New York's naive
intellectual circles.

Young Da Ponte, black-eyed, magnetic, speaking with animal ease
the half-dozen languages he had acquired from the cradle, and al-
ready, at thirty, America's first professor of the philosophy of his-
tory, captured Dan's imagination at a stroke. And with that spon-

In Search of an Education n

taneous outgoing which henceforth was to mark him whenever his
eye lit with recognition on man or mistress, Dan grappled him. Da
Ponte returned the grip. Raw, rebellious schoolboy and sensitive,
sophisticated scholar became classic friends. But it was a year or so
before they could get together again. . . .

The Panic of '37 caused by President Jackson's transference of
government funds from the privately owned and badly mis-
managed Bank of the United States to the regional state banks-
brought about a slump in New York real estate; and the elder
Sickles was glad, for a while, that his son could prove self-supporting.
In fact, during this interlude when paper fortunes vanished as
magically as they had been made Dan, now a good journeyman
printer, came from Glens Falls to New York, and, taking a job with
Mr. Turney of Fulton Street, set about contributing to the depleted
family exchequer. But in due time the panic passed as panics will.
New York real estate boomed once more higher than ever. And
Sickles, senior, realizing on the market, wisely invested much of
his profits in the broad and productive acres of a farming estate at
Livingston, New Jersey. To him now a trifle sobered by his recent
experience the life of a gentleman fanner seemed the better part
of valor. He also deemed it a good life for his son; and he set about
training him to take over the care of the estate. But Dan had other
ideas. Since he first had met young Da Ponte, he had lusted for a
college education. Lacking the necessary scholastic equipment, he
begged his father to be allowed a spell of precollege preparation in
the Da Ponte household. The response was not encouraging; and so,
after an honest trial of hogs and apples, Dan, in characteristic fashion,
suddenly packed his traps and left home to fend for himself. Then,
like a wise man well whipped, George Sickles relented. Once more
Dan won his way. A week later he was installed with his dream
and his idol in the Da Ponte household.

An island in time, the Da Ponte home was and for many years,
by grace of benignant friends, had been the center of the last phos-
phorescence of eighteenth-century culture transplanted to a youthful,
blatant New York. The great rambling, half-decrepit house, once
the baroque pride of a shipowner, had become both the rookery of
the Da Ponte clan and the Artistenheim of New York's intelligentsia.
And presiding over it, with the aid of seven languages, a gourmet's
knowledge of cookery, and a flair for discipline, the signora Da

iz Dan Sickles

Ponte, that energetic Italian madonna, managed, on an easily ex-
hausted budget, to prove herself an inexhaustible hostess to her
husband's eager and ravenous guests.

The household was large and included, besides the exotic, irre-
sponsible sire and his competent spouse, two unmarried sons, Joseph
and Lorenzo, and Charles, the youngest, with his wife, and the
clamorous Durant, their two-year-old. Also there was an adopted
daughter now a mother and her husband. Of course, Lorenzo Da
Ponte, barely able to secure his own existence, would adopt a
daughter! Not celebrated for conventional rectitude, it is possible
that he may have had certain paternal yearnings in the matter. Any-
how, very lovely and seductive, Maria early had attracted the atten-
tions of that constant guest at the Da Ponte table, the maestro of the
Montressor Opera Company, Signer Bagioli. The upshot had been a
marriage and a new boarder for opera was no road to wealth also
a baby. And when Dan entered the scene, that baby a little chuck-
ling imp already had become the hub of the Da Ponte cosmos.

Her name was Teresa.

Always easily engaged by puppies, kittens, birds, butterflies any-
thing little, anything lovely Dan now had his first experience with
a human fledgling. And he was her captive on sight. She seemed to
know it, always put on an act whenever he came awkwardly diddle-
daddling over her crib.

At the same time he found himself in a dumf ounding atmosphere
where people talked endlessly and volubly in five or six languages
about what, he could only guess; where they greeted each other in
French, discussed philosophy in German, criticized the wine in
Italian, scolded the servants in English, and quarreled about Medi-
terranean politics in Spanish. . . ,

He felt an outcast, stupidly deficient. But what these people could
do he could do. ... Already he was dreaming of a diplomatic
career as a step to the White House! Someday a command of
languages might prove important. He would see what there was to
all this!

And the Da Ponte family found him forever eager and question-
ing. He was young enough, plastic enough, quickly to catch sounds,
intonations, phrases. Charles had laid it upon the household that they
were to help his student and never give him a word of English. The
pupil proved apt. He toiled at his grammars and waded boldly into

In Search of an Education 13

conversations. A couple of years of this, and he could take tolerable
care of himself at table in French, Italian, Spanish and, at least,
swear convincingly in German. At last he felt ready for New York
University. And here, under the special tutelage of maestro Charles,
he worked well for a few semesters.

Then the elder Da Ponte, well on in his eighties, gathered himself
for his last literary effort, wrote an exquisite ode to his own demise,
"Parti de la Vita," and within twenty-four hours folded himself to
sleep. Three months later Charles, stricken with pneumonia, fol-
lowed him. And Dan was left to struggle with his first experience
of devastating loss. ... He tried to behave with correct Knicker-
bocker phlegm, but once the coffin of his beloved Charles was
lowered, he broke down in such grief as scandalized the decent
crowd of mourners. . . .

And when he got back to the stricken, shabby old house, there
was Teresa now four years old puzzled and lonely, wanting to
play. He couldn't stand it and fled from her in tears.

Student days were done. Nothing could make him go back to
college. But he could not forsake the Da Ponte home. After a while
he was in and out again, practicing his languages, romping with.
Teresa.

For a few months he lent a serious presence to his father's law and
real estate practice. Then, sensing his future career, he apprenticed
himself to the ranking kw firm of B. F. Butler Attorney General
under President Van Buren. He studied hard, passed his examinations
with credit, and was called to the bar. He was only twenty-four;
and in his first case involving a question of contested patents-
argued before a board of commissioners at Washington, won high
praise from Daniel Webster.

Thus ended Dan's youthful educational ambit. On the surface
there seems nothing very remarkable about it. Actually it stands
unique.

Characteristically, it was self-chosen throughout and with an un-
canny sense of the training his future career would require.

At the age when, as the newest and oldest pedagogies agree, most
boys would be benefited by exchanging the schoolroom for the
workshop and contact with the world for a while, he forsook desk
and bench for the printer's case and a craft that went far to form
the orderly prose and trenchant speech of his later life. That step

14 Dan Sickles

did more for him: it gave him a knowledge of the working world
and an understanding of the common man that served him well to
the end.

And when he was ready to benefit by it, he chose what the better
type of university regards as its essential value the informal private
tutoring that comes of personal intimacy between student and
teacher. And in his case the teacher was brilliant, and the contact a
deep mutual attachment that implanted its influence for life. Dan
entered the Da Ponte home an awkward, self-assertive lad: he left
it with urbane manners, an awakened love of music, painting, liter-
ature, and special gift of a master of the philosophy of history a
dispassionate approach to problems and a sense of historic perspec-
tive, that, in later years, distinguished even his minor political
speeches.

Thereafter college and law studies were simply means to a clearly
grasped end: the White House. When he entered the courtroom for
the first time, he brought with him, as aides to his ambition, a
trained mind, ease of manner, cultured sense, and a practical knowl-
edge of life. He had given himself precisely the education he needed.
It may be doubted if any vocational authority, endeavoring to
guide him, could have done better or as welL

Meanwhile, in New York forty thousand desperate unemployed
enviously eyed the pigs fattening in the filthy gutters. The narrow
sidewalks compelled them either to walk ankle-deep in mud or
humbly to brush against a stream of immaculate tight pants and
frock coats escorting velveted crinolines. Arkansas and Michigan
were admitted as states. Texas had revolted against Mexico and the
tragedy of the Alamo quivered on the air. Colt invented his handy
little tool for clinching arguments. The gentle Audubon issued his
classic on American bird life. Longfellow was making neat verses.
Congress passed its famous Gag Resolution tabling all further dis-
cussion of slavery. A genial Englishman, with half a million dollars
to spare, founded the Smithsonian Institution "for the diffusion of
knowledge." And the first three thousand miles of American railroad
had been built. French-Canadians revolted against British rule; a
group of American enthusiasts tried to join them. The British inter-
posed. And the steamer CaroliTia went over Niagara in flames.

Across the seas Queen Victoria, amid more than the usual palpita-

Tammany Nights 15

tions, was perched on a throne long grown sordid, shabby, ridicu-
lous. Promptly demanding a bedroom of her own, she met her
ministers with a promise to "be good*" Dickens in his Pickwick
Papers was splashing the British face with laughter and tears and
driving imprisonment for debt into limbo. Thackeray, with suavest
irony, was taking the grand bourgeoisie apart. Macaulay was stun-
ning Parliament with his spontaneous perfection of phrase. Words-
worth was in his lovely springtime never to make summer. Tenny-
son was tuning up. Browning had taken to visiting the Barretts of
Wimpole Street. Wheatstone and Cooke perfected the magnetic-
needle telegraph. Ericsson's new screw steamer made ten miles an
hour. The English Chartist movement demanding universal suffrage
-Jbled through riot and massacre. John Talbot first printed photo-
graphs on paper.

On the Continent, in these last days of the thirties, a rising ferment
of anti-monarchist agitation mingled with a fresh efflorescence of the
arts. Louis Philippe again narrowly escaped assassination. And
George Sand, Alfred de Musset, Gautier, Heine, and Victor Hugo;
Meyerbeer and his jealous rival, Rossini; Berlioz, Bellini, Chopin,
and the mighty Liszt were creating a new Maytime in music and
letters.

The nineteenth century was well on its way. And so was Dan
Sickles. The Tammany Tiger had its eye on him. He had his eye
on the Tiger, The question was who would swallow whom.

CHAPTER IV

Tammany Nights

AHE FANTASTIC FORTIES! The American populace, groggily re-
cuperating from a couple of panics, decided that it was time for a
bold assertion of the rights of man. The presidential election was

1 6 Dan Sickles

due. Van Buren proposed to succeed himself. But if we may believe
Congressman Ogle, of Pennsylvania, he was not at all the right man
to defend the rights of man, but was, in fact, an effete aristocrat
spending his days lolling on "arabesqued divans" in the "Blue Ellipti-
cal Saloon" of the executive mansion, spraying himself with Parisian
perfumes, sipping exotic wines, and gloating over the fabulous fur-
nishings with which he had surrounded himself at the public expense.
In a very remarkable speech Mr. Ogle recited the list of these fur-
nishings to a wondering and occasionally wandering House. It took
him two hours! But his effort keynoted a campaign.

Overnight the "Blue Elliptical Saloon" became metamorphosed
into a Red Rag. And rallying all the available political odds and ends
abolitionists, anti-renters, conservatives, Websterites, and so forth
the Whigs prepared for a mighty popular charge upon it. For can-
didate they selected General William Henry Harrison who so it
was said had dealt chastisement to the redskins' on the field of Tip-
pecanoe. Unwisely the Democratic press, perverting to a sneer what
was originally only a pleasant Whig estimate of the candidate, pro-
ceeded to damn him as a man who would be content with "a log
cabin and a barrel of cider." That was enough! Insurgent America
leaped to the challenge.

It mattered not that General Harrison lived handsomely on a
two-thousand-acre estate. In the facile fancy of a people bent on a
picnic he suddenly became the desire of their hearts an honest,
fighting fanner reeking not of Parisian perfumes but of good, ripe
manure; a man who loved his humble log cabin and drowned his
sorrows not in exotic French wines but in good, hard American
cider. It was a picture of the Plain Man to rouse every red-blooded
and cider-loving American to battle.

Soon, in hamlet and city, parades appeared in the streets, shouting
the mellifluous war cry, "Tippecanoe and Tyler too! " And the cabins
were no hollow subterfuges, but realistically equipped with chimney,
coonskin on door, and cider barrel by the steps. And as realistically
equipped with gentlemen attending to the cider. Democracy was on
the march and a very delightful march it was! The only platform
was the one that bore the barrel. The only issue "Log Cabin versus
Blue Elliptical Saloon!" And this gaily simple method of choosing
the Chief Executive amply proved its efficacy. On a sparkling sea of

Tammany Nights 17

cider Mr. Van Buren was floated out of the White House and Gen-
eral Harrison was floated in.

And when the young democracy finally sobered up (for devotion
to hard cider had become a political passion hard to quell), it found
itself with hardly time left to get dressed for the millennium. As
far back as 1832 a Mr. William Miller, with the aid of the Bible and
an astrological chart, had proven conclusively that the world would
come to the end it always had richly deserved, precisely on July 23,
1843; and, since that time, he and his preacher cohorts had been ad-
monishing careless Americans to prepare. With the passing years the
movement had gained enormous proportions. The great tents of
Millerite camp meetings mushroomed wherever city lot or village
green offered pegging ground. And, as the time drew near, scores of
thousands of crazed folk began casting away their worldly goods,
turning their cattle loose, closing their shops, and giving themselves
over to * Vatch-night" services that, often enough, lasted the clock
around. "Ascension Robes" were in great demand; and the more wily
haberdashers blossomed out with a great variety of cuts and styles.
Muslin, however, was the favorite material since it gave the wearer,
according to one advertiser, "a pious and purified appearance," cal-
culated, one may suppose, to deceive even Gabriel. Another adver-
tiser, plastering his window with the sign, "Buy an Ascension Robe
now while the stock lasts and be ready to meet the King of Kings!"
did a rushing business up to the last hour. The Hour came and
passed. A hardened old world insisted upon another round or two
yet. Mr. Miller, undaunted, announced a new date but not before
some thousands of simple souls who had gone to the hilfe and the
mountains "to watch for the Coming" had suffered severely from ex-
posure, exhaustion, destitution, while no few had slain themselves or
gone mad.

And so, in the forties, were educed, in a rather spectacular way,
two permanent idiosyncrasies of the national character: a passion for
hokum, and a tendency to hysteria. And with them appeared a third:
the lusty enjoyment of lofty speech. Sanctimonious grandiloquence,
of course, was a characteristic of the age here and abroad. But here
it reached Olympian levels beyond the powers of even a British
Chadband. The rising bourgeoisie, schooled but uncultured, got a
litde tight, in fact, on their first taste of the wine of words, and
wishing to impress the world with their new-found superiority, fell,

1 8 Dm Sickles

drunkardwise, upon a virtuous verbosity, amusing and amazing. And
in an epoch politically sordid, intellectually crass, sexually coarse-
press, platform, pulpit, the courts, Congress, disported themselves
with a tombstone diction suggesting nothing so much as robes and
wings, alabaster fingers pointing to the skies; and upon the slightest
provocation the air pullulated with "domestic altars," "chaste
bosoms," "sainted mothers," "virtuous females," "sublime heroes,"
"deathless deeds," and "elegant repasts."

But out West where sod must be turned often gun on back and
babes were thrust into the world with none to aid, there was laconic
stoicism, screaming silence aplenty.

Meanwhile America more than ever was on the move. The Cum-
berlandlongest and most direct highway in the world was thronged
from dawn to dusk with carts, coaches, cattle beneath a haze of dust.
The seventeen rail and steamboat routes out of Buffalo were blocked
with the migrant mass bound West. Overnight the Indian village of
Chicago had become a braggart, shanty metropolis with nothing to
sell but itself and selling it big. In Oregon, British and American
settlers squabbled over boundary lines; and the cry "Fifty-four forty
or fight!" made chesty shouting. In California long since softened
up for conquest by the infiltration of the Yankee mortgage shark
Fr&nont, with a merely token display of powder and shot, knocked
the Eagle off his Cactus perch and trussed him up in the Stars and
Stripes. And just in time! Only a few months later a ranch hand,
John Marshall, cleaning the race of Sutter's flour mill, found a hand-
ful of gold in the tailings. After all the cheat and despair El Dorado
at last!

In schooner keeled or wheeled, by fevered Isthmus, howling Horn,
prairie sprouting feathered death, the last, maddest, and most mag-
nificent of the great migrations set face toward the sinking sun.

At the same time a determined young fellow in the cutaway and
top hat, mustache and goatee fashionable in the period, was getting
his initiation into politics. And Tammany Hall was an exciting school.
Myers gives a picture of one of its energetic discussions: "A row
began in the ^bloody Quid Sixth' by the breaking of some ballot
boxes. Both parties armed themselves with stones and bludgeons, and
the riot became general . . . until the militia hastened upon the scene
and restored order."
Tammany at that time was going through a change in personnel

Tammany Nights 19

and administration. Hitherto it largely had been governed from above
by die sachems of the society; but its dependence upon the under-
world coupled with the vast increase of immigrant population rapidly
tended to transfer the seat of power to the saloon and the sidewalk
the "ward heeler" and his "gangs."

Against this type of civic administration, the decent citizenry,
scattered about in geographical wads, with only sporadic organiza-
tion, and unable to give more than odd moments to political affairs,
were virtually helpless. But the "heelers" controlling densely popu-
lated wards of ignorant immigrant voters were anything but helpless.
And for the rest, the bribe or the bludgeon soon persuaded opposition
into silence or collusion.

In the forties political morals were, perhaps, no lower than they
are today; but political methods were much more frank and crude. A
man who proposed office needed a strong stomach. And this young
lawyer-dandy and man about town, Dan Sickles, with his air of
fashion, honey-colored comb, lean hips and wide shoulders, keen,
singularly engaging gray eyes, ready lip and bold port, might be as
fastidious as he was assiduous in the matter of wine and women, but
when it came to politics his stomach was strong as the best. Tammany
he took in stride. It was something you had to go through if you
proposed to be President. And in the decrepitude of the other parties
it was obvious to the veriest neophyte that the Tiger guarded the
only path to the White House. That was enough for Dan Sickles.
That the Tiger had both stripes and claws he knew well enough;
but the fact did not deter him.

And at this time the stripes were rather clearly marked. Tammany's
complete control of the police department naturally immunized die
faithful from arrestno matter what the crime; and in the event
that some policeman proved stupid, Tammany's handmade judiciary
provided the necessary acquittal. But nothing is perfect in human
affairs. Tammany's control of the state and federal authorities was
not always complete; and as a result about half the Board of Alder-
men then in session were under indictment for various crimes. What
became of the indictments history does not seem to record. If occa-
sionally the Tiger lost the first round, he seldom lost the second.

The claws also were becoming full grown. The gangs were loyal,
efficacious, immune. Maiming 1 and murder, the bullet and bludgeon
were rampant in New York City, although most of the cases of

20 Dan Sickles

assault never reached the stage of official report. Within or without
his belly, the Tiger did not like indigestible persons. Dealing with
Tammany required toughness and tact.

And if young Sickles was tactful, he was as tough as the Tiger.
He was an American on his way. If this beast of stripes and claws
could be used very welL If not ?

But Tammany received him well. The Tiger was bland. Sickles
responded with blandishments. He stroked the striped hide with a
first and last issue of his only newspaper: a cleverly worded pamphlet
in support of Polk and Dallas, typeset (with boyish satisfaction) by
himself. On the platform he won favor instantly, despite a cool and
cultured diction that fell strangely upon ears accustomed to coarse
harangues. And for one so young he showed himself shrewd in coun-
cil. The Tiger purred. The Tiger could use him. And he was using
the Tiger.

Fundamentally Tammany represented the middle class the element
on the make. Needing the support of the working masses, however,
it loudly pretended to be their champion. But it was always secretly
subservient to High Finance; and its largest loot came from adroit
collusion with railroad and banking interests and the new powerful
corporations seeking franchises, charters, legislative favors. Conse-
quently it needed representatives capable of appealing to each of the
three classes. Of the mobster and middle-class type it had plenty;
but of men qualified to present a convincing front to the wealthy
and educated, it never had been able to secure enough. And for
years it had been endeavoring to entice into its parlor a few mem-
bers of the fashionable and literary world. Never did Tammany so
proudly boast as when it had succeeded in adding to its roster some
naive scion of an old family, some political innocent among the
writers and artists of the day.

And here was a find a fellow with the dress, manners, speech of a
Knickerbocker blueblood. And no fool! The Tiger put him in the
New York State Assembly.

For the next few years Dan Sickles levied hard on his Dutch
vitality. When he was not debating at Albany, his days were spent
in court or at his New York office, 74 Nassau Street, working up
one or other of the increasingly important cases that came to his
desk. His nights, when he was not attending some turbulent Tam-
many meeting or convivial powwow, were about equally given to

Tammany Nights 21

the pursuit of the feminine and to prolonged bouts of private study
in his chosen fields of law, history, political theory; and the uncanny
prevision again! in drilling with the National Guard and conning
Napoleorfs Campaigns.

Often he saw the stars to bed, yet morning found him at work on
time fresh, vigorous, fastidiously groomed. Sleep he did not seem
to need.

In law his career was clear sailing. Intellectually he was the athlete.
His muscular brains delighted in the tussle of legal exposition and
argument, craved the hardy satisfaction that comes of a premise well
taken, a definition precisely drawn, a chain of deduction carried to a
crushing conclusion. He approached an important case much in the
spirit of a general planning a battle plotting his strategy of position,
his tactics of maneuver, arranging his artillery of fact and infantry
of argument, and against crisis preparing cavalry forays and feints
of humor, pathos, irony, the whole co-ordinated to confuse and out-
flank the enemy and sweep him from the field. He loved the game for
its own sake; and, so long as it did not cut athwart his political ambi-
tions, it mattered little to him what the case might be. As a result
newly arising corporations soon began to seek him out. They needed
this type of front-line defense.

In politics he was even more successful

Speeches from the floor in any legislature, of course, are mosdy
made for home consumption and the record! Save on critical occa-
sions members very wisely seldom even pretend to take each other's
wind; and a house in session usually presents the spectacle of some
lone individual solemnly addressing rows of empty benches, a crowd
of colleagues off in a corner shouting and laughing about something
else, a bored Speaker furtively trying to catch up with his corre-
spondence, and a few gentlemen slouched in relaxed attitudes behind
newspapers. Nevertheless, now and again, the business of conducting
public affairs crops a speaker capable of attracting a corporal's guard
to hail or heckle him. Dan Sickles, from the first, was one of these.

When with Napoleon's Campaigns, Montesquieu's Esprit des Lois,
a battered History of Greece, and bound copies of the Federalist
Sickles arrived at Albany, the Assembly was struggling with a mass
of legislation arising out of the recently revised state constitution.
No few of the bills pending closely concerned Tammany interests
and were of a nature to require adroit shaping in committee. Also,

22 Dan Sickles

over and above the routine "fixing" and vote swapping, some of them
required unusually skillful defense on the floor. In work of this kind
Sickles was in his element. And with one foot on the political ladder,
he was not the man to miss a rung. He worked indefatigably, won
from his associates a slightly startled respect, and from Governor
Marcy the dictum, "As a debater he excels any man of his years in
political life." Acute in committee, cogent and crafty on the floor,
he soon proved himself, in fact, not only the youngest but the
sturdiest "wheel horse" to the dray of dubious Tammany legislation.

Also he was something of a novelty. So suspicious were his op-
ponents of his mystifying allusions that once when, in the course of a
speech, he happened to refer to France and her republican institu-
tions, several of them slid from the hall to consult an atlas and assure
themselves that such a country really existed and was not just one
of his wily fabrications. His pure English that sounded almost like
a foreign language his scholarship and culture set him apart in an
Assembly most of whose members had difficulty with the arts of
writing and spelling. In an atmosphere of vociferous rant, his level,
polished speech gleamed like a knife. Man of his time though he was,
he was curiously free from the customary hokum and grandiloquence.
Hokum as a play upon emotionalized tribal standards and ideas he
understood. But, while he had a sense of theater, he had no taste for
the cheap theatrical; and on the rare occasions that he resorted to
hokum, it was an intellectualized brand of his own more a gesture
to the mode than anything else. For the most part his speeches were
marked by simple statement, clear presentation, persuasive argument.
He liked to levy upon history for his illustrations; and from the files
of his card-index mind he could draw, at any moment, some apt
parallel in the annals of Greece, Great Britain, or early America in
support of his view. As for grandiloquence, he was too tough-minded
and intent to bother with it. What; he had to say he usually put with
shrewd choice and economy of words. Not yet had arisen the great
moments that would arouse him to classic eloquence.

But as a politician Dan Sickles was completely the realist. He
wanted place and power space for the exercise of the capacities he
felt in himself; and he was willing to use his gifts in the service of
any man or machine that could help him on has way. For the greed
and trickery of little men with little goals he had only contempt;
but to get to his own goal he had to deal with them and did. But

Tammany Nights 23

significantly he never was charged with complicity in the pecula-
tions of his time. Like Lorenzo Shepard, Tammany's most brilliant
young orator, he managed to wade the political slime and get ashore
with clean hands. As a matter of fact, in these early years he often
w T as hard pressed to pay his way. He had built a fair practice but he
was a generous spender. And he could not depend upon his father.
The two were not always on the best of terms. And amid the worries
of his vast, if fluctuating fortune, George Garrett Sickles had become
as careful of cents as his son was careless of dollars. Revealingly, in
the fall of his first year of legislative activity, we find Daniel writing
his father a little bleakly for the loan of fifty dollars, "for a warm
overcoat," and not omitting a concrete proposal to repay. A request
curtly evaded! A few years later we find the father, embarrassed by
a recent slump in the market, humbly writing his son for a quite
substantial loan. A request promptly granted!

The tremendous zest he brought to his work, Sickles also gave to
his pleasures.

Colonel Henry G. Stebbins, a gentleman full of martial and sar-
torialardor, had organized the Twelfth Regiment of the New York
National Guard as a corps <F6lite and had designed for its members a
uniform copied, with embellishments, from that ultimate of military
magnificence the costume of the Austrian Imperial Guard! If the
privates went clad in purple and gold, the officers plumed, sashed,
and sabered were arrayed in all the splendor of a Chinese cock
pheasant. Sickles, a friend of Stebbins, needed no great persuasion to
join the corps. He loved soldiering the whole atmosphere of it: the
massed power, blaring brass, throbbing drums, glittering steel, menace
of marching feet. And he loved the comradeship of it, the sense of
solidarity men don with a uniform, the coarse jollity, all the pride
and mischief of the masculine. But if to Sickles this amateur soldiering
were a sport, a welcome relief from caucus and court, it was more: an
opportunity to learn the rudiments of something that always had
fascinated him the science of war. He studied the military manuals
with the industry of a West Pointer and soon was brevetted captain.
At the same time he was sufficiently the primordial male to enjoy the
sartorial side of the show. He loved to array himself in his plumage,
sweat his men through their drill, and then display himself to die
girls.

And with the girls in a parlance vogue then as now he was the

24 Dan Sickles

accomplished "wolf." As the son of a sire who in his seventies was to
raise a kte crop of handsome daughters, he had rather more than his
share of the Van Sicklen virility that already had peopled New
Rochelle without much other masculine aid! Also he was magnetic,
engaging, adroit. Women went to him at a touch. A Knickerbocker
of the Knickerbockers, he was much in demand at social affairs
uptown. And as irresistible with the matron as with the miss, he soon
was trailing clouds of scandal that seemed to make him still more the
desire of women and the envy of men. Rumor has it that in the
course of these amours he fathered no few offspring some of them
afterwards distinguished in the world of fashion, sport, journalism.
Of course there were seasons when the social situation grew some-
what precarious and fathers and husbands uncomfortably alert; but
still there were the ladies of the theater, the opera, the caf&, and
certain houses both smart and discreet.

CHAPTER V

Teresa

ALL THE WHILE there was Teresa a little world apart.

Since, as a baby, she first had seduced him, his teasing delight in
her, her childish adoration of him, had brightened as she grew.
Almost unconsciously she had become to h?rn a pet, private posses-
sion, something particularly his own.

He often was at the Bagiolis'. They were his last link with the
Da Ponte tradition and the influences that had molded his mind; and
their gossip of books and music, their warm, haphazard hospitality
were pleasant relief from strenuous bouts of legal battle, political
brawl. In the old days Maria then a child-wife scarcely older than
himself used to help him in his studies. Now she made the house
home to him, would coax off his seriousness, whip him up a dish of

Teresa 25

her famous spaghetti. And the maestro, inclined to peevishness and
parsimony, would brace himself to be genial, bring out a bottle of
wine; and there would be talk of the opera a mutual enthusiasm
the brew pot of European politics, racy reminiscences of old Da
Ponte.

But even more to him were the moments that he could give
to teasing and entrancing Teresa. Always his pockets were full of
candy, but she had to plunder him to get it; she was a gamesome
sprite, and the ensuing fight would be uproarious. And there would
be gifts gay toys, bits of childish jewelry mischievously rewrapped
a dozen times to drive her frantic with impatience. Sometimes, as she
struggled on the floor with knots and seals, she would burst out, black
eyes brimming, "Dan, you are the worst friend I have! " Her gaminish
spirit released all the nonsense in him. When these two got together
the world was fun. It was laughter that did him good.

And through the hoydenish years it was the same with a differ-
ence. Teresa was a natural child, healthy, vital, in love with the open,
shinning up trees and tearing her clothes. Ever eager for adventure,
she would lure Dan to go berrying or bird-nesting with her, take
her to the circus, or the Battery Gardens to see the fireworks. Often
enough some client or Tammany colleague would be left to cool his
heels while Teresa had her day. At twelve she was demanding a pony
of her own. If it cost Sickles valuable time, he presently found her
a clever, reliable little mare. It was a gift that marked a change.
Completely fearless, she took to the saddle like a gypsy. There came
canters together along the woodsy banks of the Hudson. Just to ride
was nothing she wanted to race. Flushed and laughing, while he
snatched his breath she would gallop ahead of him to leap a gully or
a deadfall. Even while he scolded her he knew well enough that her
impetuosity echoed his own.

A creature of moods, she had a language for each one English
for happiness, Italian for excitement, French for banter, Spanish for
rage. To him it was an accomplishment that made her a small em-
bodiment of the Da Ponte culture. Drawn into some expedition with
her, he would make a stipulation not without an eye to practice:
"Today you must speak only Italian." Teresa on the instant would be
one protesting shrug, "Non, non, monsieur Jest impossible!" Sickles
would be indulgent. "Very well, then. Let's make it French." But
Teresa was not to be caught. "No, no, senor. Hoy hablo espanol"

26 Dan Sickles

Sickles still was amenable to suggestion. "All right, then it's Span-
ish." Eyes dancing, she would whirl away. "Why Spanish? I don't
feel mad today. Let's speak English." Then, demurely, "I want to
improve myself !"

Fourteen fifteen. And suddenly, with her early Italian maturity,
she was a voluptuous little beauty. And Dan Sickles noted, with a
flash of fierce male possessiveness, how men, startled, turned to stare
at her as she cantered beside him. A natural coquette, she made it
apparent to all the world that she had eyes for none but Dan. And
he knew that she was completely absorbed in him, never had had a
beau she was still too young for that. But how long would it be
before . . . He thrust the thought aside. It still tormented him.

Sixteen and she was a woman: a sprig of vivacious loveliness, the
dark eyes a bronze glow in happiness, black light in excitement
slightly odalisque, a little too large for the slim, clever face; the trim
lips, taut breasts, pouting, expectant.

The two were at crisis. The tiny spark born between a baby and
a boy, flickering between them through years of daffing companion-
ship, Sashed into flame. Dan, caught in his destiny, suddenly was the
mad, romantic lover. Teresa's heart sang.

Assemblyman Sickles, Tammany chieftain with presidential aspira-
tions, was not a man to make a penniless marriage. And by American
standards Teresa still was a child. But with him, as ever, it was
"Decision action! Reflection burned to an intuitive flash." He could
not wait a day to be wed.

The parents on both sides objected: the old Knickerbocker that
she was a "nobody"; Bagioli that she was "much too young." That
was enough to make it a runaway match. But within the year the
parents had relented; and Teresa had her supreme desire a church
wedding. She had seen herself, veiled and blossomed, walking up the
aisle between pews crowded with New York fashion toward a tall,
dignified figure at the altar. But when the moment came, she found
herself dissolved in music and light, aware of nothing but her Dan!

At the moment Sickles was at grips with a difficult political situa-
tion. For several years past, Tammany had been torn asunder between
two bitterly opposed factions: the Outs and the Ins. The first, known
as the ''Barnburners," supposedly were radical, reformist, and anti-
slavery. The second, known as the "Hunkers," were standpatters,

Teresa 27

with southern sympathies, and opposed to new policies that might
jeopardize the fat offices they now held. But neither had anything
in view but control of the municipal treasury. If Sickles served Tam-
many well, it was with the very clear intention that Tammany should
serve him better. Shrewdly judging the situation and its possibilities,
he steered a skillful course between the two factions and, backed by
his achievements at Albany, secured a pkce on the General Commit-
tee. From that vantage ground he watched for his opportunity.

As usual he proved himself astute in council and at the Baltimore
convention played a prominent part in the nomination of his friend,
Franklin Pierce, for die presidency. He was gaining power and pres-
tige, but not without cost; for in those days the career of a Tammany
committeeman had its inconveniences.

In obeisance to the Democratic tradition, it was the custom of the
Executive Committee to hold occasional "open meetings" for the
endorsement of their private conclusions in the matter of candidates
and policies. And it was in these meetings that the two factions gave
to the world some of their most vigorous exhibitions of the Great
Experiment in practice. Each side brought its gangs skilled in every
art of thuggery. Preliminary sessions were held in the basement of
Tammany Hall at that time a capacious saloon adorned with mighty
mirrors, fat nudes, and the portraits of the great and wise in American
history, including Aaron Burr and a line of sachems. Here conviction
and courage flowed freely from bottles supplied by both parties.
The result always was a series of spirited arguments driven home
with fists and bludgeons in which the police poor devils! in the pay
of Tammany today, but not so certain they would be in the pay of
Tammany tomorrow, discreetly took no part.

Once thoroughly loaded with loyalty, the gangs proceeded up-
stairs to the general meeting and threw themselves enthusiastically
into the real business of seating or upsetting speakers, endorsing or
downing nominations. In one of these affairs Sickles was tossed bodily
into the well of the spiral staircase leading to the upper chamber of
council and saved himself only by a wild clutch at the banisters. On
another occasion, when, in the midst of a speech, he was stormed by
a delegation of the prognathous, only a bold front, a hard eye, and a
hand to hip saved him .from further adventures. A litde later, es-
corted by a number of the most dignified sachems of Tammany, he

28 Dan Sickles

was compelled to make a somewhat acrobatic exit from the platform
by means of a window and a convenient fire escape.

Sickles took it all like a good campaigner. Nevertheless he was
beginning to get a little grim. And when the right moment came
when the "Barnburners" had nominated the popular shyster, Van
Schaick, for the mayoralty of New York, and the "Hunkers," hoping
to outwit them, had proceeded to nominate him themselves Sickles
gathered about him a small but powerful group of associates, includ-
ing the redoubtable "Alike" Walsh, and on the very eve of election
when no reply or counterstroke was possible issued a broadside
repudiating both factions and their candidate! In one pounce he had
the Tiger down! Tammany's bought-and-paid-for electorate, be-
wildered, ran amuck. The Whigs rolled over them.

Overnight four thousand key jobholders kcked a meal ticket. The
Tiger raged and wept, made public repentance, proposed reform
and secretly opened negotiations with the rebel "Democratic-
Republican General Committee," as the Sickles group styled them-
selves. After months of cautious poker, Sickles magnanimously
consented to reconciliation and a common platform. His reward was
the choicest financial and political plum in Tammany's gift the office
of corporation attorney of New York City. The question as to who
should swallow whom had been settled!

To Sickles, however, the new office despite its handsome salary
and much more handsome "emoluments" meant nothing but one
more rung on the ladder. And when, a few months later, his friend,
James Buchanan, minister to the Court of St. James's, offered him
the expensive and ill-paid post of First Secretary of Legation, he
accepted on the spot. Within twenty-four hours he was in Washing-
ton making the necessary arrangements with President Pierce.

But before relinquishing his office, Sickles was instrumental in
fostering a growing demand for an adequate park for New York
City and was personally responsible for persuading the Council to
take the present seven hundred and fifty acres in preference to a
much smaller and less conveniently located area thus earning for
himself the tide of 'Tather of Central Park." To quote from his own
report to the Council:

In place of a much smaller and inferior area which within a generation
will be utterly inadequate for a rapidly growing city, this park, which we

Teresa 29

have designated Central Park, will be one unsurpassed in convenience of
position; one which our citizens can with honest pride favorably com-
pare with the most celebrated grounds of the chief cities of Europe.-

On board, the thresh of the clean harbor breeze seemed good to
him . . . Over the prow hovered winged hope . . . And on the
dock eager to join him after the birth of her baby stood Teresa,
all soft excitement, a little close to tears, waving.

PART TWO: A KNICKERBOCKER AT THE
COURT OF ST. JAMES'S

CHAPTER VI

Dan Sickles Comes to Town

WHEN DAN SICKLES landed in London, what we like to call the
Victorian Age was in full bloom.

The well-married Queen and her conscientious Consort were
shaming the pertinacity of beavers patching a broken dam in their
efforts to strengthen the prestige of the Crown at home and abroad.
Spending Spartan hours together daily over piles of state papers and
a crushing correspondence, they still found time to supervise the
education of a growing crew of not very promising children, open
endless bazaars, lay countless cornerstones. Incidentally, they did
much more: they provided the British public with the novel and
edifying spectacle of marital devotion, royal decorum, industry,
dignity, piety, on a throne hitherto occupied chiefly by sots, simple-
tons, rakes, and rogues. Queen Vic had redeemed her pledge to "be
good." Prince Albert had gone her one better.

The spectacle had England enchanted and a little confused. The
Court always had set the social tone for the most part in some pet
key of depravity frivolous, coarse, or merely dull. Never had it
ordained Virtue the fashion! And neither the godless eighteenth
century nor the equally bawdy, hard-drinking, gambling first three
decades of the nineteenth had prepared the British public for that!
But, apart from certain elements of the highest and lowest classes
bent on their old unregenerate way, the great mass of the royalty-
infatuated bourgeoisie, once it appeared to them that Virtue was the

30

Dm Sickles Comes to Toivn 31

proper thing, hastened to don the robes of righteousness often
enough to quaint result. Lofty sentiments became as much a social
necessity as correct attire. Propriety was cultivated as a fine art.
Gentlemen were bland; ladies perpetually embarrassed. Trousers
could be designated only as "unmentionables." Beneath the bulbous
crinoline lurked a discreet vacuum without a name. Moralism chased
witticism off the stage and out of the drawing room. Eros, iridescent-
winged son of Zeus and Aphrodite, was given a coat of invisible
paint, and

that great force

Which swells and buds and breaks,
And 'will be life and love and sex and sin,
Adorable^ lascivious, sacrosanct,
Forever and -forever

was politely agreed not to exist. Nude statues were removed from
public pkces or decently swathed to the neck. The legs of the parlor
piano were chastely draped. When Lady Beatty, fresh from girlish
years abroad with her husband, confided happily to her old friend,
Gladstone, that she was expecting a baby, he reddened, turned away,
and, in solemn outrage, stalked from the room. Sanctimony reigned
supreme.

With the lamplighters' scurrying lope from post to post, London's
eighty thousand prostitutes crept forth to peddle used bodies for
bread.

Forty years of peace, colonial expansion, the industrial revolution
with its new machines and million new machine slaves, had brought
England in general, and London in particular, vast new prosperity,
vast new misery. If the gentry and upper bourgeoisie enjoyed a
mellow life, and the merchant princes and landed aristocracy
reveled in new, unguessed riches, down in the gruesome regions of
London's East End, in the colliery and manufacturing towns of the
Midlands the smoke-begrimed '"Black Country" the pittance paid
miner and mill hand for grueling shifts was not enough to buy meal
and potatoes for themselves, much less for a family. And so, in the
pits and factories, children of six could be found working ten hours
a day for pennies, while, in the piecework sweatshops, wan-faced
women treadled their looms from dark dawn to last light for a recom-
pense that seldom equaled the price of six loaves a week. Tom

32 Dm Sickles

Hood's cry, "Ah God! that bread should be so dear, and flesh and
blood so cheap!" was no sentimentality.

At the same time, however, the brutishness of the Machine Age
had begun to brew its own antidotes. Labor unions were arising.
Parliament began timidly to tinker with factory regulation. Thou-
sands of the working classes crowded the new emigrant steamships
to the United States. A few years previously some poor weavers of
Rochdale had bought a chest of tea at wholesale and divided the
contents among themselves at cost unknowingly founding the
greatest co-operative enterprise in history. In a Cheapside lodging-
house Karl Marx, driven from Germany for his activities in the
Revolution of '48, was toiling against the drag of disease and des-
titutionon his Das Kafitai and organizing the First Socialist Inter-
national.

And, somehow, amidst all this material expansion and callous ex-
ploitation there had come about a new renaissance of British genius.
Tennyson, Dickens, Thackeray, the Brownings, Charlotte Bronte,
a shy, intense creature who called herself George Eliot, were in full
flower. Rossetti, Millais, Holman Hunt, and others just had founded
the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, and, ditching formulae and the
pernicious imitation of the "masters,** had proceeded to work direct
from nature and in the open air with results most refreshing.
William Morris that minor edition of the great Leonardo driv-
ing seven arts abreast, already had linked forces with them in
an effort to make the British bourgeois home a litde less ornately
hideous; and in the Red House, his great studio with its separate
alcoves for painting, printing, weaving, carving, writing, illuminat-
ing missals, designing stained glass began creating furniture, wall-
paper, rugs, in terms of a comfort, composure, gay simplicity un-
known since the twelfth century.

Meanwhile Charles Kean, at the Princess, was producing Shake-
speare in a new mode and engaging his audiences with a natural
delivery free from rant. Balf e's pioneer English opera, The Bohemian
Girl, was charming England and the continent.

Dress and manners reflected the period. ... It was an interlude
of Watteau-Iike elegance touched with an affectation of culture
and piety, especially piety! when the writer and artist, even the
wretch '^without a grandfather," was in demand at the affairs of
fashion; and a Disraeli, albeit not without some comment, could

Dan Sickles Comes to TOIMI 33

appear before Parliament arrayed in slate-colored velvet coat, pur-
ple, strapped trousers seamed with gold braid, a scarlet waistcoat
grilled with glittering chains, white-gloved, beringed fingers hid by
lace ruffles. ... A time of wasp waists, crinolined flounces, be-
flowered coal-scuttle bonnets, tiny parasols meant to half-shield
nothing more ardent than a coquettish glance.

But across the water there was the European witch's brew! For
two thousand years it had seethed without one quiescent decade in
its hissing of intrigue, roiling of blood. And it was seething still.
The recent anti-monarchist Revolution of '48 had set it boiling from
brim to brim. The bubbles rapid, surface things quickly burst.
But beneath them greater bubbles stirred in France, Italy, Germany.
The caldron was getting ready for bigger and better brews: '70
1914 '39! And as though to keep the brew stirring meanwhile,
Russia her decadent aristocracy bored with French novels, Italian
opera, idle idiocy, sexual vagaries, and always dreaming of the Black
Sea as a Russian lake suddenly decided that the time had come "to
put the Sick Man of Europe to bed." On the pretext that Greek
Catholics in Turkish dominions were not treated with due respect,
Czar Nicholas, with a truly modern tenderness toward "oppressed
minorities," thrust his troops across the Pruth into Moldavia and
Walachia. The Lion had no intention of letting the Bear set his paw
on the Dardanelles, swallow his Levantine commerce. Louis Napo-
leon needed prestige, British support. Both promised Turkey their
aid. With nothing but an operetta army and a blue Danube to pro-
tect her, Austria wisely remained neutral to the vast disgust of the
English masses. But the Sultan, sure of his allies, ordered the Bear
back. The Bear was not impressed. The Crimean War with its of-
ficial ineptitude, its callous waste of gallant men, its fatuous charge
of the Light Brigade, its tart-tongued, magnificent nurse Nightingale
was on.

Soon after he had settled himself in his quarters at the American
Legation, the new First Secretary, accompanied by his chief, James
Buchanan, repaired to Buckingham Palace to be presented to the
Queen. For the occasion he wore as prescribed by the U. S. State
Department "the dress of a plain American gentleman"; but dis-
covering with disgust that this happened to be also the livery worn
by the royal flunkies, he hastened, at the last moment, to buckle on

34 Dan Sickles

a sword! Despite this unimaginative and rather odd costume he
seems to have made a distinct impression at Court. The Queen was
more than usually gracious to him. Her ladies, unaccustomed to
much personality or style in American officials, apparently were
agreeably surprised by his cavalier bearing, bold good looks. Some
of them saw further. His air of burnished masculinity struck the
Hon. Alice Jenkyns as "both elegant and faintly savage." Accord-
ing to a line or two in one of her gossipy letters, there was quite a
ripple of comment around her, most of it in the vein of light mock-
ery with which women usually veil an admiration they would prefer
not to show: ". . . Rather high and mighty for an American, I should
say! . . . Really, deerskins would be more becoming, don't you
think? . . . No, no, my dear a plumed hat, if you please sea-
boots, sash and cutlass!"

Feminine perspicacity, in short, found the First Secretary an un-
usually vital fellow born somewhat late. And feminine perspicacity
was right!

In truth, the hand Dan Sickles kissed should not have been the
soft, fat hand of Queen Victoria. In the right order of things it
should have been the sinewy talon of Queen Bess the dress sword,
a battered cutlass!

For centuries before the Van Sicklens took part in the founding
of New Amsterdam, their ancestors had played a strong hand in
that sea-ravaged, blood-soaked, and erstwhile mythological "king-
dom of the many waters," known as Flanders. From generation to
generation, with sword and battle-ax, pike and arquebus, musket
and cannon, they had been compelled to lead their bearded battalions
against the never ceasing attempts at invasion by the Germanic
tribes on the west, the Burgundians and French on the south, and,
at last, by the legions of the Spanish Inquisition under the Duke
of Alva.

At the same time there was the Sea and they must leash it with
dikes, master it with merchantmen. There were vast fetid marshes
they must reclaim them to flowering fields. Amid the menace of
flood and war and want there were cities to be built and they
helped to make them massive, clean, and beautiful. And, as a swift
slash at Spain for her cruel arrogance, there were slim privateers to
launch and man against the "silver galleons" of the Main. And out
of all this struggle with savage seas and savage men, as fighting

Dan Sickles Comes to T&UXI 35

barons, braiding burghers, the Van Sicklens had compacted into a
family breed fierce and virile as Vikings, stubbornly self-willed,
self-assured, indomitably bent upon independence, free scope.

And Dan Sickles was their son. Their vitality was in him; and
their stamp was on him the thrust and thwart of all his character
and career. Whether he realized it or not, he was a man fated to
pursue his ambitions helped by the power and hindered by the im-
pedimentathe behavior patterns and impulsions of a tenacious
ancestry who would not let him go.

To him this boundless vitality under his ribs was his daemon. As
might some ancient Greek, he trusted it and obeyed it unhesitat-
ingly. Its promptings were all the code he knew or cared to know.
Among men it easily gave him the biological leadership of the pack.
Among women its magnetic aura as easily pkyed havoc.

His cool, analytical brain, suave demeanor, were simply the
instruments and surfaces of this raw force that had its roots in cen-
turies behind him. And just as the pedigreed, gentlemanly Irish
wolfhound may revert at a touch to savagery, so Dan Sickles, of
the frock coat and immaculate white hands, had it in him to sky
with the quick ferocity of his bearded forebears of the Flemish
border.

Even his intelligence was the intelligence of vitality.

But beyond this and entirely crucial is the fact that this vital
overplus dowered him with a sense of inner invincibility, an unques-
tioning belief in his own rightness, that enabled him to ignore criti-
cism, sweep aside opposition, and, as often as not, impose upon his
colleagues and the crowd not only his own views but his own esti-
mate of himself! In an earlier age, as the bantering belles of Vic-
toria's court had divined, he might well have been a buccaneer, an-
other Drake, Frobisher, Hawkins. But Fate had cast him as a Tam-
many politician, corporation lawyer, diplomat at the most tight-
kced court in the world.

He had no realization of his plight, nor that only war itself
war raw, savage, improvisational, such as his forebears knew could
bring the sundered, conflicting halves of his inheritance together in
a unity of power: that only in war was he to come to the stature of
himself: that only in war was he to know peace.

Such, however, was the man who bowed low before Queen
Victoria while her kdies whispered together in his hip pocket a

36 Dan Sickles

letter from Teresa babbling of her baby, and, next to it, a crested,
scented, clever note from a conquest more recent, less naive.

For a few weeks there was no great pressure of affairs at the
Legation, and Dan Sickles had time to look about him. And first
there was the City itself. He knew something of her story. And,
as he strolled about her ancient cobbled streets, it stirred him to re-
member that she had been a busy mart before shepherds heard glad
voices from the cirrus wings of the moon; that she had been a citadel
of the dark-eyed, skin-clad Brythons, the mailed Romans, the
golden-bearded, battle-axed Saxons, the long-limbed, hawk-nosed
Normans the tortured vortex of plague, fire, war, rebellion. And,
driving from the Tower on the low east to the Druidic grove
of Burnham Beeches and Windsor Castle on the farthest west, he
marveled across forty miles of grandeur, grime, and quiet loveliness
at this corrupt and unconquerable Londinium, sprawling, relaxed,
immense, massively composed, assured, beneath here her innocent
skies, there her booming canopy of smoke, here her cloistered peace,
there her eternal uproar: home port of the seven imperial seas,
hearth of British government, trade, finance, fashion, art and letters
hutch of the foulest slums known to man. He drove and walked
and wondered at this that had endured two thousand years and was
the county seat for three fourths the world.

But what intrigued him most was the ancient, top-hatted town
meeting in its Tudor-Gothic habitation beside the Thames where
affairs from Africa to India, Athabaska to Malay, from ducal castle
to peasant hut, were settled with the casual dignity, crisp acrimony
of well-bred men in a favorite club. Fresh from Tammany brawls,
the hoarse harangues of Albany, these clear, cultivated voices, this
punctilious politeness, sardonic understatement of bitter issues, tone
of hardy good sportsmanship, struck him as nothing had struck him
since he had met Da Ponte. His first experience of Parliamentary
debate awaked in him dormant feudal overtones, made him believe
for a moment that in Europe, at least, monarchy had place and
meaning. He did not see that here was only a better-mannered Tam-
manya group of expensive gentlemen elected by a limited, bought,
or manipulated suffrage, beyond corruption personally, but never-
theless strictly engaged, under one party shibboleth or another, in
protecting their own interests millowner against landowner at the

Dem Sickles Comes to Town 37

expense of the great mass of the landless, job-dependent British com-
monweal. He saw only the manner. The manner was distinguished.
For the moment he was a man struggling with the rather chal-
lenging experience of being pitched, without preparation, not simply
into the citadel of an alien empire, but into that inmost heart of it
where a whisper from the Court shrouds shrewd faces in thought,
fashionable dinners decide political destinies, diplomacy weaves her
intricate webs, and the late ponderings of elderly gentlemen over
their port decide the morrow's spectroscope of Europe. . . . And
where women also .play their critical, if unscheduled, part. And
quickly he became absorbed and alert, aware that he had much to
learn in this game where crinkled hands moved peoples as pawns
across the chessboard of the world.

Recently there had been political upheaval Disraeli, Chancellor
of the Exchequer, had gone down, fighting with desperate brilliance,
before the mordant onslaughts of the apostolic Gladstone hence-
forth his gladiatorial enemy. Lord Palmerston, the most dynamic,
not to say dangerous, Foreign Minister in a century, had paid the
penalty of his final indiscretion the unofficial recognition of Louis
Napoleon's coup dfetat without consulting Her Majesty and had
been retired to the safe kennel of the Home Office. It was a new era,
stolid and respectable, eminently Victorian. To Lord Aberdeen,
cautious and commonplace, had fallen the post of Premier; to Lord
John Russell, that steady wheel horse of empire, the Foreign Office;
and to the disastrously incompetent Lord Newcastle, the critical
War Office. The one outstanding political fact was that William
Ewart Gladstone, the perfect pillar of propriety, soberly suited, deep-
collared, black-cravated, sat himself, not without a grim smile, on
the Wool Sack still warm from the poppy-colored breeches of the
dazzling, defeated "Dizzy."

And in the sedate West End squares where massive mansions,
monotonously alike as barracks, gazed blankly down on tiny, ex-
quisite green parks berailed as for wild beasts, but haunted only by
lascivious little nursemaids attending naughty children destined for
high places, the hoary British ceremony of Dinner performed its rites.
To be dined officially by an official personage was to be recog-
nized officially; but to be invited to break bread with the same per-
sonage privately and cozily was to be accepted socially. Between
the two lay the gulf betwixt Lazarus and Dives. With Buchanan,

38 Dan Sickles

Dan Sickles made the round of official dinners; and if the British
urbane detachment nettled the American in him, he enjoyed the
atmosphere of pomp and place, the sense of sitting at the board
with men who were shaping the destinies of a vast and ever expand-
ing empiremen with whom, he knew well enough, he soon must
match wits, cross swords.

But the other kind of dinners also soon were forthcoming. He had
been noticed. The men liked him especially Palmerston for his
fresh manner of envisaging stale diplomatic problems from a purely
American and practical point of view: "The Dardanelles are Russia's
front door. No man likes to sneak out of his backyard all the time.
The point is: would the concession be worth Russia's gratitude and
collaboration? . . . Politically the French are disgruntled Royalists
brandishing a broom of Republican feathers one should take account
of that in dealing with them" things dropped in the casual inter-
change of men over their wine, but such as frequently made the
cautious Buchanan quiver. Without knowing all the intricacies of
the trail, Sickles often trod where angels fear, but was not liked the
less. The women found his galvanic gray eyes, gallant manner, dis-
tinctly disturbing.

Just as it was blossom time in science, literature, technology,
painting, so, for some inexplicable reason, it was blossom time for
beauty. If the records and the miniatures are to be trusted, it was
a decade of English belles. There were the Sheridans mother and
three daughters, each more lovely than the other, and all adored
by Disraeli; and vying with them were the exquisite Marchioness
of Londonderry, the classic "nymph in crinolines" as Tom Hood
called her Lady Chesterfield, and those vivacious beauties, Mrs.
Anson and Mrs. Austen, and a host of others not so socially promi-
nent as these but any one of them sufficiently the Lorelei to throw
susceptible Dan Sickles into a state of romantic furor. Women such
as these were a new experience to him. Not simply their delicately
bred beauty, musical voices, humorsome manners, had him en-
chanted, but often enough their contact with political affairs, their
knowledge of personalities and the hidden side of events. If he
found the Court society rather stiff and uninviting, there was al-
ways at hand for relief that other group later delimited as the
Smart Set, where, under the very nose of Victorian propriety, a
sophisticated obedience to impulse had its day and illicit liaisons

Dan Sickles Comes to To*um 39

flourished in an atmosphere of consummate tact. And in that social
penumbra Dan Sickles found himself very much at home. , . . By
every packet he wrote to Teresa brief , gamesome notes. Yet often
enough there were moments when, caught in the spell of some new
charmer, he found himself wishing that Teresa were more like these
women, had something of their intelligent sparkle, sophistication
. . . moments when, under the blandishments of this new, exciting
world, wife and baby seemed very tiny, very remote indeed. But
when after some months Teresa, looking very chic and lovely in her
girlish motherhood, arrived with baby Laura, he was once again all
ardent devotion, admiration, delight.

It was the magical English May of violets and hawthorn, cowslips
and skylarks, and the London season in full swing, when Dan Sickles
found himself faced for the second time with sartorial dilemma.

The Crystal Palace a gigantic cruciform glass edifice originally
erected in Hyde Park to house Britain's first Exposition had been
removed to the crest of a noble ridge, Sydenham Hill, on the south-
ern border of London, and there was to be officially reopened by
the Queen and Prince Consort. Since the Palace was a pet royal
project the ceremony had been planned as a full-dress affair. And
that meant one of those rare occasions when the suppressed human
male is permitted to emerge for a moment arrayed in all the magnif-
icent plumage stolen from him long ago by his envious mate. It
meant smartly uniformed troops lining the streets for miles, the
jingle and glitter of beplumed and breast-plated Household Cavalry,
the haughty splendor of the Blue Dragoons, the scarlet, jet, and
gold of the Honorable Artillery, the vivid tartan of the Black Watch
a processional moving to the skirl of bagpipes, the thunder of
drums, the mellow brass of the Guards* Band; and, in the midst of
it, the royal coach-and-four with crimson-coated postilions, fol-
lowed in order of precedence by the carriages of the resplendent
royal dukes and the equally resplendent Diplomatic Corps all the
pageantry of a pageantry-loving people, stemming from ages past,
Tudor, Elizabethan, Georgian, a bekted burst of die ancient British
lust for pomp and color and pride, arabesqued by the breedy splen-
dor of die British officer on parade.

To attend a costume carnival of that kind attired in the meek
"dress of a plain American gentleman," to present himself a humble

40 Dan Sickles

crow among stately peacocks, gaudy macaws, dandified flamingos,
scarlet cardinals, was more than Dan Sickles could summon him-
self to endure. And yet, except by feigning illness, he could in no
wise escape the gracious royal "command." Dilemma complete!
Confronted with it, the unimaginative Buchanan saw no slightest
cause for agitation. He argued, a little irritably, that the modest
garb he had worn at the Court of the Czar, and for the past year
at the Court of St. James's, would serve well enough for the present
occasion both for himself and his suite. But Dan Sickles was not
so minded. He stormed and fretted, abused the State Department,
grew quarrelsome with his patient chief, and had Teresa in tears.
Then, at the last moment, a light appeared. Teresa, hushing a
squalling Laura in the American rocking chair Dan had imported
for her, suddenly looked up with a musical scream, "Dan! Dan!
Why couldn't you wear your beautiful State Guard uniform?"

Dan Sickles took one look at his wife and rushed wordless from
the room. Half an hour later he was at Buckingham Palace, closeted
with the Queen's equerry. Sir William Phipps was all gracious com-
pliance: "Her Majesty prefers that guests holding military rank
should appear in dress uniform." The dilemma dissolved in glory!
Out of the moth balls came the gorgeous costume. In the royal
procession it blazed like a Crown jewel among ordinary gems,
aroused the dazed and whispered comment of the staff officers in
charge of proceedings, and the equally dazed but by no means
whispered comment of the Cockney crowd.

The Crimean War was going badly for the Allies. Consequently
Austria openly suspected of connivance with Russia was in high
disfavor with the British from Queen to coster, and no invitation
to attend the Crystal Palace ceremonies had been extended to the
members of her embassy. And yet here, in the Queen's immediate
entourage, rode an officer of the Austrian Imperial Guard!

There was no mistaking the fact. Londoners, bred on royal pag-
eantry, are experts in the matter of regimental trappings; and at the
Coronation, the Wedding, the Opening of Parliament, the inaugura-
tion of the Crystal Palace Exposition in Hyde Park, this particular
uniform the most gorgeous in Europe already had become f anftiliar
to the crowd.

Approaching the Palace, the cheers, the trample of hooves and
marching feet, drowned out the hostile comments; but within the

Dan Sickles Comes to Toivn 41

gates, as the Queen and Prince Consort, afoot, followed by members
of the Court and the Diplomatic Corps, proceeded upon a formal
inspection of the exhibits and the grounds amid a dense throng held
at bay by ropes and police, the offending costume came in for
painfully apparent attention.

No perter being walks than your true Cockney; and no sooner
had the Queen passed and the Diplomatic Corps come in view than
there broke out a fervid babble and then a barrage of hoarse cat-
calls" 'Igh you wiv all dem fewahs! Wot yer bloody well doin'
'ere? ... Ye struttin' Haustrian cock-a-doodle why ain't yer
fightin'fer yer friend Nick? . . . Gaw blimme, if I 'ad a rotten hegg
I'd give yer a swat on the kisser orl right, orl right!"

Only slowly did Dan Sickles realize that the compliments of the
crowd were meant for him; and only when Buchanan snapped at
him, "It's that ridiculous uniform of yours, Dan they think you're
an Austrian," did his predicament dawn on him. But he kept a stiff
front, stalked ahead with irritating grandeur. The yelps grew
more menacing. The police were having trouble.

Puzzled, Queen Victoria turned and looked back. Quick as thought
she caught the situation. Not until that moment had she noticed
that for some reason or other the First Secretary of the American
Legation had tricked himself out in the dress uniform of the Aus-
trian Imperial Guard! To her equerry immediately behind her she
whispered a rapid order. At once he dispatched several policemen
to pass the word to their fellows guarding the lines, and through
them to the crowd, that the gentleman in the Austrian uniform was
not an Austrian at all, but a member of the American Embassy, and
wearing the uniform of a crack American regiment.

As the news flashed through the crowd, British good sportsman-
ship leaped to make amends. Someone shouted "Three cheers for
the Yankees!" And the roar that followed surpassed even the wel-
come given to the Queen! From that moment the crowd almost
forgot the stumpy little Victoria and her solemn Albert in its sudden
admiration for the handsome, chin-tufted, devilishly resplendent
representative of Uncle Sam!

Buchanan still remained caustic. But on the whole, Dan Sickles
found no cause to be displeased with himself. He had worn the
most gorgeous uniform of the day; he had beaten the British at
their own game; he had focused the entire attention of the crowd

42 Dm Sickles

upon himself and had emerged the only member of the royal en-
tourage to receive a personal ovation! So far as he was concerned,
the official reopening of the Crystal Palace was a distinct success.
One might add: a characteristic success.

A few weeks later the First Secretary again found himself caught
in dilemma.

This time the horns were provided by the abounding goodness
and the equally abounding naivete of Mr. George Peabody.

Following his lotig-established custom, that princely philanthro-
pist and merchant genius had invited a hundred and fifty guests to
celebrate the Fourth of July with him at the stately Garter Hotel
on the wooded heights above Thames-side Richmond. It was to be,
of course, the usual stag affair the honor guests, the members of
the American Legation. But for this particular occasion George
Peabody proposed an interesting innovation.

As an American of pure English descent, long resident in Lon-
don, and engaged in vast enterprises and benefactions on both sides
of the water, he had come to deplore the rather bellicose tone of
previous Fourth of July banquets and had conceived the genial and
completely lunatic idea of transforming the forthcoming celebra-
tion into an Anglo-American love fest! Accordingly he had invited
a number of distinguished Britishers to sit at the board and had been
at great pains to provide that the program should contain nothing
to offend, and much to flatter, their ancient susceptibilities.

To Dan Sickles, however, love-festing with the British seemed
by no means an appropriate way to commemorate the Declaration
of Independence; and, the moment that he heard of the project, he
sought out George Peabody to protest against it. But the benevolent
master of millions was not to be swayed. With gentle calm he as-
sured his visitor that "every honor would be paid to President
Pierce." And there the matter had to rest.

Naturally, when Dan Sickles alighted at the door of the Garter
that Fourth of July, the Van Sicklen gorge already was disposed to
rise. As he entered the lobby the spectacle of a hairy congressman
from Arkansas loquaciously croaking his views to a group of iron-
ically amused Britishers started that gorge on its upward course. It
rose higher a few minutes later when, entering the banquet hall, he

Dan Sickles Comes to To e wn 43

stood staring in dumfounded disgust at two magnificent life-size
portraits of the Queen and Prince Consort at the head of the table
on either side of a small, inconsequential portrait of George Wash-
ington, and noticed that there was not so much as a tintype of
President Pierce. It rose still higher when, seated, and wrathfully
studying the beautiful hand-painted program at his pkte, he ob-
served that it bore the royal, as well as the American, arms: that
the toast to the Queen preceded the toast to the President: that to
an Englishman, Sir James Emerson Tennent, had been assigned the
honor of proposing the toast to George Washington! . . . And it
rose to heights apoplectic when he discovered that the lines of "The
Star-Spangled Banner" and "Hail Columbia"- printed on the back
of the program for the convenience of guests American as well as
English had been revised to eliminate aU the good old belligerent
allusions to "the haughty host . . . that band who so vauntingly
swore . . . their foul footsteps' pollution ... the hireling and skve
. . . the rude foe with impious hands," etc., etc.

But the worst was not yet. In proposing the first toast, "To the
Day we Celebrate," George Peabody, not unmindful of Secretary
Sickles's recent protests and his present glowering countenance,
proceeded to make a few remarks for his benefit: "I am aware that
some of my countrymen question the propriety of inviting our
brethren on this side of the water to join us in celebrating the birth-
day of American independence; but these persons are few and
know little of the high esteem which, I have reason to believe,
English gentlemen have for our country and our countrymen."

Dumb, stiff, red-gorged, Dan Sickles stood staring at the wall
before him while the hundred and forty-nine love-festers, greatly
helped by the pious printed version, broke into a ragged and raucous
effort at "Hail Columbia." Then came the toast to die Queen. This
was George Peabody's great moment and he made the most of it!
After a nobly eloquent tribute to Her Majesty, he recited at length
how she had generously permitted the Throne Room yes, the
Throne Room! to be stripped of Winterhalter's famous portraits
of herself and the Prince Consort so that the Fourth of July feast
of friendship might be graced by the royal presences. According to
the newspaper reports, "the speech was received with deafening
applause"; and, as the orchestra struck up "God Save the Queen,"

44 Dm Sickles

every man, glass in hand, was on his feet one foot on the seat of
his chair in the traditional fashion; every man, that is, except Dan
Sickles. By now rage, too long suppressed, had rendered him red,
rigid, mute, motionless. At the moment not the prod of hot irons
could have stirred him.

Fortunately for the love fest, at least the great length of the
table screened by standing guests with outstretched arms, and the
fact that, while all eyes were turned toward the royal portrait, the
attention of most was also absorbed in trying to remember the words
of the ancient doggerel, very few seemed to notice that the First
Secretary remained both voiceless and legless. Certainly the Brit-
ishers present did not notice it a way they have! But George Pea-
body noticed it, was wrung by it, and sat down, at last, so wrought
that when, a few minutes kter, he rose to propose "The President
of the United States," voice and memory faltered. After the recent
tribute to the Queen, the little speech sounded strangely flat and
inept. It was the last drop in Sickles's cup. And when all arose once
more, and the band led off with "The Star-Spangled Banner," he
clenched his teeth, gripped his chair, then sprang to his feet and
strode from the room. It was supposed that he was ill. He was!

The London press tactfully skirted the incident; and while the
New York papers, in various conflicting versions, gave it some
attention, only the personally antagonistic Herald tried to feature
it as a major scandal. No one, however, seemed really to know just
what had happened; and Sickles's own lame report made in an
anonymous letter to the press did little to clarify the confusion.
Some held that he had refused the toast to the Queen, others that
he had refused the toast to the President, others again that he had
refused to honor either of them. But in the upshot once more an
awkward episode redounded to his favor. The great majority of
his countrymen concluded that, like a good American, he simply
had refused, as the Louisville Courier put it, "to play die fawning
minion to Royalty"; and they were inclined to give him three cheers
and a tiger!

Meanwhile there had been the Black Warrior affair, and compli-
cations looming complications highly intriguing to a young diplo-
mat with a name to make.

Cuba, for many years past, had been in a state of insurrection
against the complicated deviltries of Spanish rule. Forgetting their

Dan Sickles Comes to Town 45

own dealings with the red man, Americans, in general, had become
duly indignant over this exhibition of barbarism on their own door-
step. Also there were financiers among them who had discovered
that Cuba was rich sugar-growing territoiy and, geographically,
within the American sphere. Focused in the sizzling New York
headquarters of exiled Cuban revolutionists, a movement for the
annexation of the island had been growing steadily throughout the
States. In 1848 President Polk, indeed, had offered to purchase it
from the Spanish Government for the round sum of one hundred
million dollars to no result. But from that moment filibustering and
gun-running expeditions in aid of the insurgents had become an ex-
citing and profitable American sport. The gentlemen engaged in the
traffic were not always of the highest respectability, but they usu-
ally delivered the goods and prospered.

Very early in his political career Dan Sickles had realized that
decadent Spain's last foothold in American waters must be broken
and Cuba annexed. From the day he entered diplomacy he made the
project particularly his own, watching developments with jealous
care. He had been in London only some six months when, February
28, 1854, the American steamship Black Warrior was seized in
Havana Harbor by the Spanish authorities and confiscated on
charges of filibustering. The news swept the States with the electric
crackle of a broken high-tension wire, started editorial fulminarions
from New York to San Francisco, shocked Congress into crying for
immediate suspension of the neutrality laws. In no great while, how-
ever, the charge spent itself; and, less hectic counsels prevailing, the
clamor for vengeance simmered down to a simple demand for in-
demnity. But Spain, with her genius for guileful procrastination,
delayed the negotiations. Thereupon new filibustering expeditions
took on such proportions that President Pierce, in June 1854, had to
forbid them by special proclamation* It was a stopgap gesture that
loudly touted the necessity for decisive action of some kind. The
Cuban question, however, had become international dynamite.

The previous year, alarmed by American sympathy with the in*
suirectos, the governments of England and France had "invited*
the American Government "to decline now and forever hereafter all
intention to obtain possession of the island of Cuba and to discon-
tinue all such attempts in that direction on the part of any individual

46 Dan Sickles

or power whatever." A piece of tart impertinence that received from
Secretary Everett an equally tart snub:

The question affects American, and not European, policy; and does not
come properly within the scope of the interference of European cabinets.
The United States has no intention of violating existing laws; but the
American Government claims the right to act regarding Cuba independ-
ently of any other power; and it could not view with indifference the
fall of Cuba into hands other than those of Spain.

It was a stout assertion of the Monroe Doctrine that brought an
offended silence from France, a British grunt from Lord John Rus-
sell. Stalemate! It was plain enough, however, that unless the United
States Government was prepared to risk hostilities with England
and France as well as with Spain, any move for the acquisition of
Cuba must be made with consummate adroitness and in close con-
sultation with the powers concerned. Once more, therefore, tenta-
tive negotiations for the outright purchase of the island for a vast
sum most useful to the impoverished Spanish Crownwere set afoot.
But the decrepit Spanish monarchy was dependent on the good will
of Louis Napoleon, who in turn found it advantageous to take his
nod from the British Foreign Office and there sat die imperturbable
Lord John, not anxious to see valuable territory transferred from
a weak and subservient power to one that was neither. Faced with
dilemma, President Pierce suggested to Buchanan that he consult
with Mr. Mason, minister to France, and Mr. Soule, minister to
Spain, and submit him a report on the whole problem. In the sub-
sequent discussion Sickles took a vigorous part and, to his great de-
light, was commissioned to present the joint report in person to the
President. Taking fast steamer to New York, he spent a week
domiciled in the White House and attended to his business with
such dispatch that he managed to prepare a lengthy memoir of his
own, "On the State of Europe: Its Bearing on the Policy of the
United States," hold many conferences with President Pierce and
Secretary Marcy, and re-embark on the same boat! He sailed with
special instructions from the State Department for delivery in per-
son to the three ministers. After reporting to Buchanan in London
and Mason in Paris, he entrained for Madrid. There he met General
Espartero-recently premier-dictator by coup Ftatand gained from
him the veiled admission that a reasonable settlement of the Cuban

Dan Sickles Comes to To e wn 47

question could be made were it not for opposition elements who
would use the occasion to destroy the monarchy and restore a
republic. Incidentally, as a matter of routine courtesy, he had a brief
audience with Queen Isabella a fateful moment.

Ten years previously, Isabella and her younger sister had been
compelled to wed: the one, her malformed, impotent, feeble-minded
cousin, Francisco de Assisi: the other, the Due de Montpensier,
Louis Philippe's son. The scheme had been conceived to outwit
Britain. Louis Philippe lusted for a Bourbon heir on the Spanish
throne and wished to marry his son to Isabella, the Crown Princess
and heiress apparent. Lord Palmerston had objected in his usual hair-
trigger fashion. Louis Philippe had bethought himself. The Spanish
monarchywith a republican knife at its throat was existing pre-
cariously from day to day. Under the circumstances he could dictate
his own orders to Madrid. He therefore had demanded that Isabella
marry her drooling cousin, and that her younger sister marry his own
son. The result, he reasoned, would be no heir by the first marriage;
several heirs, probably, by the second a Bourbon on the Spanish
throne . . . Britain fooled!

But the young princesses Isabella was barely sixteen had shud-
dered at die proposal. Arguments, inducements, threats proving
useless, both had been trapped in a specially arranged Court orgy,
taken to the altar inebriated, and married in the same ceremony.

The younger sister had managed to make a forlorn something of
her marriage, for the Due was not quite as much a moral cadaver
as his father. But upon Isabella the trick had wrought spiritual dis-
aster. Banishing her pseudo-husband to separate quarters, she had
rebelliously turned madcap bawd and had scandalized her con-
scienceless mother, cynical advisers by openly flaunting her amours
not only with one courtier after another but with grooms and
guardsmen, any likely kd plucked from the street. In her late twen-
ties she torpedoed Louis Philippe's neat scheme by giving birth to
a son begotten of who-knows-whom. And while motherhood
brought a new passion into her life, she continued to outrage public
opinion at home and abroad by her irresponsible rule, reckless
promiscuity, until in 1868 she was banished from the realm.

When Dan Sickles met her she was as yet but twenty-four a
creature of undisciplined impulse, generous and self-willed, full of
bright kindness and fierce scorn, buxom, black-eyed, with free, forth-

48 Dm Sickles

right manners well matching her careless costume, picaresque speech.
Of what happened in that and several subsequent interviews there
remains only a fragmentary and cryptic account to indicate what
later developments amply proved that here again an unscheduled
flash of mutual recognition was to play a critical role in Dan
Sickles's career.

In the meantime diplomatic progress in the matter of the Cuban
purchase remained niL Espartero proved noncommittal; Napoleon
III gave an imitation of the Sphinx with an eye cocked across the
Channel; Lord John Russell was the Sphinx in person. But the Presi-
dent and Secretary Marcy had requested that the ministers compose
and publish a definitive statement of American policy in regard to
Cuba and thus end all futile shadow-boxing. Accordingly Buchanan,
Mason, Soule, and Sickles gathered themselves together at Ostend,
where, in season, the bathing, the beauties, and the wines were
accounted equally seductive. Diplomatically not one of them had
anything to show. They bathed and blathered, dined and discussed,
filled one wastepaper basket after another with tortuous solutions.
Finally they found themselves, heads together, over Secretary Ever-
ett's simple statement: "It is not a matter of European, but of Amer-
ican, policy.". . . It was like a meteoric burst of light in this dark
groping to find words ambiguous enough to make it appear that the
irreconcilable had been reconciled! Sickles was the first to break the
dazed silence. "If this is solely a matter of American policy then
let's state the American policy and be damned!" Four headaches dis-
solved in what was, probably, one of the most truly American, and
at the same time most undiplomatic, documents ever devised: the
Ostend Manifesto. It stated that "if Spain, actuated by stubborn pride
and a false sense of honor, should refuse to sell Cuba to the United
States, then, by every law, human and divine, we should be justified
in wresting it from Spain if we possess the power."

The document sent shivers throughout the chancelleries of Europe,
provoked hurried consultations between the heads of the French and
British admiralties. Secretary Marcy, aware that it stoutly repre-
sented the bulk of American street opinion, but that the issue was not
worth risking the reception of a demarche from London and Ver-
sailles, promptly disowned it.

Four gentlemen took their last dip in zebra-striped suits, sipped
their last glass of Barsac, shot their last regretful glance at the Ostend

"The Little Amedican" 49

demimondaines, and departed wordless and chastened. Dan Sickles,
however, soon recovered himself; and, on board the Dover packet,
he kept poor Buchanan awake with a masterly dissertation on the
pusillanimity of American foreign policy. But Buchanan was sixty-
three, a little tired and through with it all. He sank back in his deck
chair. "Don't worry, Dan when Cuba's ripe she'll fall into our lap
like a rotten pear." And sound diplomacy went soundly to deep.
Dan Sickles paced the deck.

CHAPTER VII

"The Little Amedican"

1VJ.EANWHILE, TERESA, managing her huge, fashionable crinolines
rather rompishly, sped about the massive old Legation trilling, and
sometimes-to the great scandal of the servants whistling, with hap-
piness. And there were many things to be happy about. There was tie
baby; she was glad that it was a girl found intimate comfort in the
cuddle of this small feminine flesh. There was Dan, every day seem-
ing more dashing, popular, important always terribly occupied, of
course, but always exuberant, indulgent. And every morning when
she waked there was the perennial surprise of finding herself in the
heart of this fabulous Old World of fashion, riches, power, lords and
ladies, mighty statesmen, hoary buildings, quaint customs. There was
the awesome delight of her presentation at Court, and all the excit-
ing business of preparing her costume: hours of driving hither and
thither in her smart brougham, diving into ancient, exclusive little
shops with diamond-paned windows sporting the royal arms, where
one was treated as a queen amongst courtiers, escorted to a high-
backed tapestried chair, and while Dan, with the decisive air of a
man of taste, hovered over every detail of the purchases the host-
proprietor, himself, wheeled up a wine-table set with cakes and fine

50 Dan Sickles

old sherry. But, perhaps, what she most enjoyed was the fashionable
early morning ride in Rotten Row between her two cavaliers Dan
curbing a breedy mount and his own high spirits with assumed non-
chalance, Buchanan stately as a statue exchanging greetings with
bewhiskered gentlemen in box hats, deep-skirted riding coats, gay
plaid waistcoats; relishing the appraising, and sometimes envious,
glances of ladies arrayed like herself in tightly buttoned black habit;
now and again catching a reflection of herself in the young girls
their faces, beneath their beplumed tricorns, dewy pink as the heart
of a dog rose with the thresh of damp air, the pulse of the canter.
. . . And always on her escritoire a stack of invitation cards teas,
dinners, theaters, balls, receptions.

A gay life! Separately or together, both spun on a social whirligig
pleasurably confusing numbing reflection. A busy life, too. Dan,
of course, always had seemed to have engagements the clock around.
And soon Teresa also found herself well occupied.

Buchanan, a bachelor, had come to be pathetically dependent for
feminine social aid on his niece Miss Harriet Lane. But that mistress
of the punctilios chill and firm, despite violet eyes, auburn hair had
returned to New York to adjust some important property matters.
Diplomatic custom decreed that the wife of the First Secretary
should assume her place as the official Legation hostess. But here
Buchanan needed no support from precedent. To him Teresa, with
her buoyant esprit, her easy command of half the languages of
Europe to aid his own weak smarter of French, seemed less decreed
by custom than by Heaven! And he insisted that she help him out.
To her alarmed protests that she lacked the necessary social experi-
ence he argued that all she needed was her own natural good sense
and tact plus a little schooling in the curiosities of British etiquette
something he could give her as occasion required.

And so it came about that this oddly assorted pair a tall, gray-
pated Pennsylvania-Scotch politician, timorous of soul but handsome
despite a squint eye, a head forever held askew above choker collar,
enormous white cravat; and an iridescent little Italian-Viennese
beauty not long out of school stood side by side at receptions,
presided together at Embassy dinners, attended functions, made calls,
and unconsciously if inevitably aroused a certain speculation.
Teresa met the challenge of it all with youthful verve; and if her
Latin blood sometimes prevented her from quite catching the casual

"The Little Amedican" 51

yet circumspect British tone, she nevertheless made an instantly
happy impression. In an age which confined women strictly to the
home she found in her position all the exciting novelty of a "job" a
rather royal one as to its trappings, but exacting enough as to its
duties. She enjoyed both the trappings and the duties, and was wildly
elated when her efforts brought some word of praise from Dan or
Buchanan. To her it was praise earned.

Fashionable London impervious to the native parvenue watched
the new Legation hostess cautiously, then as it has a way of doing
suddenly smiled. This "little Amedican," apparently so unsophisti-
cated yet able to converse freely in French, Spanish, Italian with the
foreign diplomats at her table, and who, without experience of
the beau monde, behaved as though she were born to it, had everyone
charmed. If her candor and freshness had a tang of the New World,
her great dark eyes, quick eloquent gestures, a touch of the exotic in
her jewelry, a trick of slipping, in excitement, from one language to
another, had all the flavor of the Continent. Not without some kindly
amusement, she was accepted as a law unto herself: in the British
sense an aristocrat. And when those social arbiters, Lady Clarendon
and Lady Palmerston, took her under their capacious wings, it was
conquest complete. The society columns greeted her lyrically, cre-
ated her third person of a new trinity; and, thereafter, the auburn
and alabaster Miss Lane, the gorgeous Mrs. Lawrence, and "the new
American beauty, Mrs. Sickles," were stylized in the press as "The
Three American Graces."

Curiously, however, praise of her beauty left Teresa cool She ac-
cepted her odalisque eyes, cleverly carven face, figurine physique as
something with which she had nothing to do. She was too much a
Latin not to be a coquette, with a dainty flair for dress and flirtation,
but, at heart, she had little personal vanity. There was, in fact, some-
thing boyish and forthright in her nature, a certain unguessed realism
and firmness of mind, that shielded her against playing admiring audi-
ence to herself. Beneath her deceptive air of slim fragility lurked a
lithe body and healthy spirit then called "hoydenish." There was that
in her that craved the outdoors, the wind across the heath, the long
ramble, the cross-country canter; that hated crinolines, corsets. Curi-
ously, just as there was much of the sixteenth century in Dan, so
there was much of the twentieth century in Teresa a spirit that
would have found itself much at home among our modern free-

52 Dan Sickles

mannered young Amazons of saddle and surf and golf course. But
Fate had doomed her to Victorian hoops, mincing modes ... de-
vout conventions discreetly ignored!

At The Hague and Paris accompanying Dan and Buchanan
on brief diplomatic visits Teresa's popularity was even more marked.
Here, as she had not in London, she felt herself instantly cbez elk.
The fact that her father had conducted the opera in both cities, and
that she often had heard him describe those events in nostalgic detail,
may have had something to do with it; or it may have been because
her blood was purely Continental. In any case, these cultivated Hol-
landers and Frenchmen seemed to her, in a sense, her own people.
They fascinated her, and she them. That Buchanan gallantly gave
her die spotlight particularly pleased the Parisians. The boulevardiers
drew their own conclusions.

But beneath all the pleasurable excitement of her new position,
social success, Teresa secretly was troubled, a little bewildered. The
trouble was Dan; the bewilderment, that she could not find herself
with him, that while everyone else treated her as a woman, he still
seemed to see in her only the child of other days. He was, she
realized, more indulgent, more lavish than ever when she saw him.
But then she hardly ever saw him save for a few minutes at breakfast,
and then he would be so gay, gossipy, full of solicitous questionings,
paternal advice so generally endearing that there was nothing she
could do but respond.

But always it was the same a kiss and a pat on the shoulder, and
he would be off again! And if she protested against seeing so little
of him, there would be some smiling evasion, "Diplomacy, Terry,
has no hours. Conference work has to be done late. You never can
see the important people during the day. Buchanan is not the man
he was, and I have to shoulder most of the load." And if she begged,
he would come striding over to her, toss her up in his arms. "All
right, then 111 risk an hour or two off duty. How about getting that
new bonnet for the garden party, eh?" And he would whisk her
away on a whirlwind shopping spree. And then, once again, with
that affectionate pat, he would be off about his affairs or an affair!

An affair! There was the rub. That side of his life she instinctively
shut from her mind.

Who was she to judge Dan the good genius of her days, Dan

"The Little Amedican" 53

the future President of the United States? Rather she blamed herself,
her own inadequacy beside these brilliant London women, for the
fact that he so often sought his pleasures elsewhere. It was a situation
that she could only quietly ignore. Nevertheless she had enough
feminine spirit to make a play for her own. She held but one card:
Buchanan.

For a variety of very human reasons, the infatuations of elderly
bachelors seldom are conducted discreetly. And Buchanan was both
elderly and infatuated. For him it was "last call" to romance in a
rather pallid and barren life; and like all lovers who have failed to
equilibrate their passion in private, he tended unconsciously to make
undue display of it in public. And Teresa, in pique, boldly played to
his lead.

Naturally their occasionally unguarded behavior aroused comment
comment that the sharp difference between the British and Amer-
ican psychologies made rather tart. Nothing horrifies the Englishman
so much as even a slight display of the more intimate emotions in
public; nothing bothers an American less! A British ambassador, en-
raptured with a pretty hostess, would have trod the social rounds
with no more manifestation of regard for the lady on his arm than
he would show for his umbrella. His studied indifference would be a
tacit "Damn your eyes and hold your tongue!" to all beholders
a signal that, in his own circles at least, would be accepted in the
spirit of noblesse oblige. But Buchanan, thoroughly the American,
behaved more naturally and, by his obvious attentions, innocently
invited his audience into a secret that they would rather not be bur-
dened with. The consequence was that while the ladies pounced
upon the supposed "affair," the men were irritated by what seemed
to them its needless exposure. The more sensible, of course, smiled
at the idea that a slightly shaky gentleman of sixty-Tour could be a
rival to the masterful, magnetic Dan Sickles. But Teresa's youth,
beauty, popularity with the men, had not failed to arouse the usual
meed of envy. And there were plenty of agitated kdies to make the
most of the gossip, and even to conjure up other lovers for good
measure. Teresa was a quite simple person. Only slowly did she come
to realize what a teapot typhoon she had stirred up. And the storm
was just beginning.

It happened that unpleasant rumors seeped back to Miss Harriet
Lane in Washington just as she was giving a little farewell tea for

54 Dan Sickles

her friend, Airs. Thomas, wife of General John A. Thomas, Assistant
Secretary of Staterecently appointed solicitor to the American
Claims Commission then sitting in London. Miss Lane was outraged;
Airs. Thomas, loyally furious. Both proposed righteous retribution.

Upon reaching London, Mrs. Thomas immediately went to see
Buchanan. Her mission was twofold: to ask him to arrange for her
presentation at Court and to get in a smashing slap at Teresa. The
affable Buchanan agreed to make the required arrangements and
added that, as was the custom, she would be sponsored by the Lega-
tion hostess, Mrs. Sickles. Airs. Thomas was waiting for that! In a
passion of propriety she demanded to be provided with a more suit-
able introduction. Buchanan, for once, was neither timid nor irreso-
lute. He smartly refused. The lady was not presented! But her social
entree was wide; and in the drawing rooms of her friends she took
luxuriant revenge.

Strangely late Dan waked to the growing gale of gossip. Then,
suddenly, he was jealous, alert. Bounding up the Legation steps, he
burst in on Teresa, dressing for dinner. For a moment she was terri-
fied. Often she had seen his gray eyes glint white flame but not when
he was looking at her! Then, as she caught the gist of his fury, her
heart sang again. So, after all, he did care! She could afford to pky
with the moment, equivocate, taunt. "I don't know what you mean,
Dan. I have to take care of everything for Jim. And if he seems to
appreciate it, what can I do?" It was a feeble attempt, but the tone
was stab enough. The retort came like a bullet, "You don't have to
be with him day and night behave like a hussy in public make a
fool of me!" Teresa was demure. "But I hardly ever see you, Dan
and you can't expect me to live like a nun." Dan stopped dead. "What
was that?" On the instant Teresa knew that she had overplayed her
hand. The man who stood over her was a stranger. She cowered.
"But Dan, Dan, what have I done? What do they say I've done?"
The ingenuous cry quivering to tears, the crumpled, crinolined figure,
were answer enough. They choked the words in his throat made
him feel ridiculous. In a breath he found himself patting a sleek, jet
head. "It's all right, Terry it's all right. I know you didn't mean any
harm. But you're too impulsive, my dear. In a position like yours, you
can't be too careful. And you really must be more circumspect,
Terry. This isn't New York, you know. It doesn't take much to set
all London talking." Wet, obsidian eyes were half smiling up at him.

Iceberg in the Sun 55

"I see it now, Dan, I just didn't understand. After all, they talk about
you, too, don't they?" Dan, startled, turned away with a forced
chuckle. "I suppose they do the damned cats!"

CHAPTER VIII

Iceberg in the Sun

JL|AN AND TERESA what of them really? One can only say that at
this moment they were like twin peaks of a glittering 'emerald and
turquoise iceberg drifting southward in the sun, unmindful of the
hidden, already creviced mass beneath lord of their ways, threaten-
ing to break them asunder.

Beneath the scintillant surface these two presented to the social sun
lay something very different something fateful, dark, unheeding:
the hidden reality of a marriage that never was a mating; and, that,
because it was seemingly predestined, was only the more poignantly
mistaken.

In the subde realm of the erotic emotions, it is very easy to mistake
the true nature of a relationship: very easy to mistake a gay child, a
charming schoolgirl, for something entirely different a wife; very
easy to mistake the generous, playful benefactor of one's rompish
days for something equally different a husband. Very easy, in short,
to mistake a marriage for a mating! For the one is a matter of the
romantic emotions; the other, a matter of dictatorial molecules.

Precise as the kws of the test tube are the laws that govern the
coalescence of man and woman. Far below a surface attraction,
"compatibility," lies that master and mystery of human life-biologic
rapport. Where that spontaneous, molecular recognition, with its
rhythmic mutuality of need and response, exists between lovers, peace
descends, quest is transformed into fusion and new growth. Where
it does not exist there is no peace and whether one will or no the
quest goes on; it goes on even when it appears to die in mutual

56 Dan Sickles

flaccid friendliness or mutual dull endurance. In the unconscious it
never dies but persists as long as life itself.

Had there been this real rapport between Dan and Teresa, then
nothing else would have mattered.

It would not have mattered that the one was nearly twice as old
as the other; that the one was sophisticated, the other naive; the one
complex, the other simple; the one mature, the other undeveloped;
the one keenly aware of his own demands upon life, the other barely
awake to her own womanhood. It would not have mattered that Dan
was decisive, resistant, resilient, while Teresa was pliable, impression-
able, easily crushed. But as it was, these contrasts of temperament,
that otherwise might have proven happily complementary, merely set
these two at poles apart.

Swept by Teresa's virginal loveliness, Dan genuinely had thought,
for the moment, that here at last was the end of his search, the end
of an overprolonged youth filled with fleeting affairs. Naturally
enough, under the circumstances, Teresa was equally swept. And
what was and should hafre remained virtually a charming godfather-
child relationship suddenly ignited in a brief, fallacious lover relation-
ship; and theri inevitably began to revert to its original pattern.

Dan was too instinctive not to realize almost at once the true
nature of his marriage. He knew that no one else ever could take
Teresa's place in his heart, that she always would be his cherished
charge, an esthetic delight; but he also knew that she never could be
to him the wife he craved, that he never really could be to her a
husband. And from that moment, regretfully, he lavished upon her
everything in his power everything but himself.

Over and above all this, it would seem that Dan Sickles was a man
constitutionally unfitted for marriage. Like many men of unusual
caliber a Goethe, a Liszt, a Guy de Maupassant, an Aaron Burr, a
Pancho Villa, to cite wildly contrasting examples his restless vitality
and tremendous erotic energy apparently made it impossible for
him to confine himself within the bounds of a relationship with one
woman. To him marriage was simply a fetter.

For Teresa given her simple, natural, ardent temper it was, of
course, a marriage situation more intricately tragic, delicately damn-
ing than fiction has yet dared to propose. A child had become a
child-wife-the "child" still pampered, petted, adored by all the
ardor of a dominating nature; the "wife" ignored!

Iceberg in the Sun 57

But Teresa, in the midst of her new distractions, was only vaguely
aware of a haunt in her heart, a lack in her life; for Dan, with his
prodigal kindness, simply muffled her mind. Immature, plastic, accus-
tomed from childhood to take her cue from him, she now, in her
dawning womanhood, responded to his masterful lead as does a
rhythmic but unschooled dancer to her partner on the floor ... a
Dance of Death!

Under the circumstances hers was inevitably a precarious predica-
ment. Unconsciously she was savoring the girlhood she had never
known with the disadvantage that she was a married woman
spiritually unprotected. And she would not have been a warm-
blooded daughter of the South if she had not enjoyed a sense of her
own allure, the admiration of the men about her, her obvious con-
quest of "Minister Jim." Yet, at the same time, she was mystified by
the response she provoked in men. They not only gathered about her
wherever she went, but seemed to regard her most innocent sallies as
deliberate enticement. Often she was afraid to play too much, more
often was gkd that she had the superficial refuge of a social position,
a husband. She did not know, could not know, that a woman whose
marriage is incomplete consciously or unconsciously carries about
her an atmosphere of quest; and that there is nothing so patent to the
masculine instinct as a woman erotically aroused but emotionally
unappeased. And thus there were moments when, guiltily, she won-
dered how it could be that the touch of a stranger's hand could
arouse in her a response that Dan, with all his ardor and adresse, never
had aroused.

Suddenly, with the air of a man trying to think of a dozen things
at once, Dan was bursting into Teresa's dressing room. "Jim wants
me to go back at once and start the campaign for his nomination.
With Jim in the White House I'm next! . . . Hurry up, Terry!"

PART THREE: MASQUE OF DEATH

CHAPTER IX

Fighting Escalade

JLHE PERPERvro FIFTIES! bom with the Gold Rush, dying amid the
bruit of Civil Havoc. . . . Years of social fever, political ferment,
sibling crusades, rant and riot. . . . Mad years!

Slavocracy and Plutocracy; the agrarian South and the industrial
North; chattel slavery and -die wage system, were about to fight it
out with the States for prize. No one wanted to believe it. The gold
of die Incas was pouring into New York! And a people torn between
a cladding get-rich-quick excitement and a stifled foreboding of
Things-to-Come gave itself over, on the least excuse, to such out-
bursts of mass emotionalism as could not be matched even in its own
phrenetic history.

At the dawn of the decade New York City was rent by so simple
a thing as jealousy between the English actor, Macready, and the
American actor, Edwin Forrest. Argument concerning the respective
merits of the two grew to bloody, feuding proportions. On the night
that Macready attempted to play Macbeth, the opposing faction
stormed the Opera House and then turned on the militia summoned
to restore order. The ensuing battle strewed Astor Place with a score
dead, filled the hospitals with the 'wounded.

Healthier vent for the popular need to emote was "the furor." It
was the age of Barnum in mind and scene, and of clever "managers"
quick to cash in on die American attitude of doting adoration toward
any foreigner of note-duly advertised. As in the preceding decade,

58

Fighting Escalade 59

Dickens, Ole Bull, Fanny Elssler, Jenny Lind, Kossuth, each in turn
were met and feted by enormous outpourings of howling humanity
such as no victorious warrior king ever encountered. Thackeray,
appealing only to the intellectual class, escaped being mobbed but
did extremely well!

At the same time there was the drama of the Atlantic telegraphic
cable. Its completion marked by the exchange of Alorse-code com-
pliments between Queen Victoria and President Pierce sent the
nation wild. Promptly the tortured cable broke to lie silent while
a palpitant public waited.

Politically it was a decade of perpetual crisis. Abolitionism, at first
the field of a few fanatics, rapidly had become the major escape valve
for the repressed passions of a people still largely cowed by the crude
moralism, morbid theology of Puritanism. No piston-and-cylinder
for a steaming unconscious like a good excuse for righteous indigna-
tion! And the same force that could blast a Cellini from a fevered
bed to the casting floor, a Schicklgruber from a Vienna slum to the
throne of World Dementia, was driving the whole North blindly on
the road to war. All Boston turned out to liberate a single bewildered
Negro escaped from the South, imprisoned and reclaimed. "A lot
of folks to see a oolored man off!" he muttered, as, escorted by a
powerful detachment of over a thousand cavalry and infantry at
a cost of $40,000 he gloomily headed back to Dixie. Hordes of Bos-
ton's jobless mill hands hunger-gnawed men and women, work-
weazened children watched and wondered; wondered, perhaps, that
black flesh and blood could be so dear, white flesh and blood so
cheap.

From day to day the headlines crackled the news of a rending
social structure. In "bleeding Kansas" the struggle between Free
Soiler and Slavocrat reeled from riot to raid, from mobbing to
massacre. Both Congress and Senate witnessed bitter brawling, fisti-
cuffs. Senator Butler, of Sduth Carolina, was ill and absent from the
House when Senator Sumner, of Massachusetts, singled him out for
an unusually vituperative attack. Whereupon young Congressman
Preston Brooks, Butler's nephew, sought out die acrid old abolition-
ist and, catching him bowed at his desk, beat him into insensibility
and years of invalidism with the butt of his heavy, gold-headed cane.
In the ensuing months, Brooks's stately plantation became cluttered
with heavy gold-headed canes sent him by his Southern admirers.

6o Dan Sickles

There was the fateful Dred Scott decision "The black man has no
rights which the white man is bound to respect" striking the States
asunder with apocalyptic sword. . . . And, presently, there was
John Brown's mad, moronic raid on Harpers Ferry.

In literature, likewise, it was crisis. With the appearance of Walt
Whitman's Leaves of Grass, Thoreau's Walden, Melville's Moby
Dicky Hawthorne's House of the Seven Gables, Emerson's Repre-
sentative Men, the early fifties witnessed the last sundown flair of
America's "Golden Day." At the same time, headstones carven with
names destined to become familiar to every schoolboy began to dot
American graveyards. James Fenimore Cooper, John James Audu-
bon, William H. Prescott, Washington Irving went their way . . .
and among them others day, Calhoun, Webster the oratorical
"elder statesmen" of an age born to the beat of the British drum and
about to die to the skirl of the Rebel yell.

A decade of death and birth: death of the sober years of New
England strength, intellectual passion: birth of the hectic years of
Blather and Best Seller. Like fireweed amid a burnt-out forest there
sprang up a lush crop of propagandists abolitionist, temperance,
feminist cracker-barrel- humorists, lachrymose female fictionists,
petty versifiers. And the crop throve mightily. While Leaves of Grass
sold not one copy, and Thoreau had to take back and store in his gar-
ret the unsold first edition of his immortal pond-side report (with the
dry remark: "I now have a library of four hundred and fifty volumes
each one written by myself!"), the new effusions ran into printings
of hundreds of thousands, and in half a dozen instances into the
millions.

Fanny Fern's Fern Leaves a delicious decoction of tear-bedewed
fronds from Fanny's mental fernery sold seventy thousand copies
off the press and held a place among best sellers throughout the
decade. The Lamplighter, by Maria S. Cummings ("There was a
sweet soft moan of tender unrest, and she flung herself on his heaving
bosom") sold, naturally enough, over a hundred thousand copies the
first few months and continued to do land-office business down the
years. Susan Warner's The Wide, Wide World and Queechy with
a freshet of tears to the page deservedly did better. Timothy Shay
Arthur's soul-saddening Ten Nights in a Bar Room surpassed both.
All four made the "million mark.

And then, of course and at last, there was Uncle Tonts Cabin and

Fighting Escalade 61

Hiawatha the Plantation as imagined by a kdy who never had set
foot on one: the Red Man as observed from a Harvard window!
Longfellow, in fact, knew no more about the Indian and the West
than Mrs. Stowe knew about the Negro and the South. But the sob-
bing saga of slavery and the tepid, epicurean epic of the tepee out-
bested all the best sellers of the day.

Despite their reformist tendencies-not forgetting a bravura at-
tempt at bloomers, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton's bold foray for
Woman's Rights die fifties wanted to feel, not think. They were
uncritical years!

And Sickles felt and shared the tumult of the time. Returning to
New York clad in the eclat of his recent diplomatic jousts, he plunged
at once into a campaign for the state senate. The odds were all against
him. Tammany at this time was rent into viciously feuding factions.
The "Soft-Shells," comprising the cream of the criminal element,
were preparing to strong-arm their leader, the lean, lecher-faced
Machiavellian, Fernando Wood first of the tough dynasty of Tam-
many "bosses' into the mayoralty. The "Hard-Shells," avid for
office, sported fake reformist policies under a less accomplished cor-
ruptionist, Wilson G. Hunt. At the same time the Native American
Party or "Know-Nothings," springing to life again, put forward
another candidate, James W. Barker; while the Whigs supported
John J. Herrick. "The ensuing contest," remarked the polite Har-
per's Magazine, "was the most bitter and relentless ever waged in
New York." Gustavus Myers was more detailed:

The competition for the millions of city plunder was so terrific that
the Wood and anti-Wood men fought savagely. In the Sixth Ward the
Wood partisans, upon being attacked, retreated for a while, and coming
back, armed with brickbats, dubs, axes, and pistols, set upon and routed
their foes. The police, meanwhile, calmly looked on.

It would not have been the fifties, of course, if the brawling had
not been a little more fervent than usual! And Sickles, once more,
had to Bear the full brunt of it. With the Whigs, the Know-Nothings,
and half Tammany against him, he waded into the melee; and, with
no organized backing worth mentioning, made his campaign a test of
the endorsement of Buchanan's nomination by the New York elec-
torate. It was a critical moment in his climb. If he failed to gain a

62 Dan Sickles

seat in the state senate now, it would dim his prestige at the forth-
coming Democratic convention, detract from his influence in aid
of Buchanan's nomination, vastly diminish his chances of election to
the next Congress. And to enter Washington an "Honorable" aboard
the presidential train of his own victorious nominee was for him a
maneuver essential to his ultimate march on the White House. It
was a moment not to be missed. It needed all his wiliness, energy,
eloquence, personal popularity, all the support a few stanch friends
could give him. The combination served him well. He emerged from
a chaotic, unpredictable campaign an elate, if rather breathless, state
senator the vital rung secured.

But there was no time to lose. In the view of his friends, the color-
less Buchanan's chances of receiving the presidential nomination were
decidedly slim. Arrayed against him were: the popular President
Pierce, the volcanic, rhetorical Stephen A. Douglas, the cautious and
astute Secretary William L. Marcy candidates long in the public eye,
wielding powerful political influence, and each boasting a large per-
sonal following. But in the preconvention caucuses Sickles cleverly
used Buchanan's very defects as convincing persuasions in his favor.
He argued that Pierce, Douglas, Marcy were strong personalities,
jealous of each other and easily able to split the party ranks if brought
into opposition; and that all three were much too involved in the
fierce factional disputes created by the disastrous Kansas-Nebraska
bill to be trusted with the task of consolidating the Democratic vote:
that Buchanan, on the other hand, was a quiet, sensible man, with no
pronounced views on anything; that his prolonged absence at the
Court of St. James's had removed him from all contact with the
caldron of domestic politics; that, in short, there was nothing to be
said against him a supremely important qualification for a successful
presidential nominee. Secretly and persistently, in season and out,
Sickles pressed his friend's claims. His efforts proved effective. When
the Democratic convention opened in Cincinnati in June 1856, the
result already was foreknown. Quickly the delegates by-passed all
rival candidates and chose the inoffensive and highly esteemed "Old
Buck" to lead them to victory at the polls. Five months later the
country endorsed their decision. It was a narrow squeak, however.
The newly arisen Republican party, skippered by the opera-bouffe
"conqueror of California," John C. Fr6mont, polled only half a mil-
lion less votes.

Fighting Escalade 63

Meanwhile, at Albany, Dan Sickles found himself condemned to
opposition the leader of a small minority. But, with his aptitude for
guerrilla tactics, it was not long before he had harassed the Senate
into the conviction that it could get little business done without him.
And, as usual, there was nothing of bravura in his manner. In oppos-
ing a measure not to his liking, his attitude was, in fact, rather amus-
ingly akin to that of a skilled surgeon excising a tumor for the
instruction of a group of raw medical students. The dissection fin-
ishedalways to the last fine filament there remained, as a rule, small
room for further discussion.

A typical instance of this was his treatment of the Registry bill
There had been much outcry against the abuse of the polk particu-
larly against the wholesale frauds practiced by Fernando Wood and
his acolytes. To still the clamor, the astute mayor of New York,
certain Tammany chiefs, and a few purchasable Whigs themselves
had engineered the introduction of a bill drawn ostensibly to pre-
vent illegal voting. The measure actually was a most ingeniously
camouflaged device for delivering the power to qualify voters
entirely into the hands of the Wood machine. Forced through the
Assembly, the bill was well on its way to endorsement in the Senate
when Dan Sickles rose to speak. He was in his most polite and surgi-
cal mood. Before the eyes of a silent, uneasy audience he proceeded,
with quiet, exasperating thoroughness, to dissect the measure and
expose it fragment by fragment for exactly what it was a cleverly
conceived fake. When at last he sat down no one seemed anxious to
rise; and the bill was shuffled off into committee for "reconsidera-
tion," surreptitious burial.

But it was the Trinity Church bill that gave Sickles his first out-
standing parliamentary victory.

Under a grant by Queen Anne, Trinity Church had been char-
tered in colonial days as a parish of the English Episcopal Church
with, as was the custom, a substantial "glebe" for its support. In the
course of New York's Jack-o'-the-Beanstalk growth, the "glebe"
once innocent pasture and tilth had become metamorphosed into
blocks of enormously valuable real estate in the city's heart. At the
same time a thrifty board of directors nominally elective but vir-
tually self-perpetuatinghad steadily improved the property with
buildings commercial and residential, and now was drawing princely
income from its leaseholds and rentals, while expending only very

64 Dan Sickles

modest sums for charitable and religious purposes. Naturally the
newer, smaller, less fortunate Episcopal churches of the diocese began
to feel themselves entitled to representation on the Trinity Church
vestry with a corresponding share in its swollen emoluments. In
1847, in fact, they had submitted their claim to the state legislature
in a measure known as the Trinity Church bilL Eventually it had
been killed in committee; but Sickles, then an Assembly neophyte,
had attended the discussion with alert interest. Now, once more,
with powerful support, the measure was re-introduced. And, as the
senator for the district served by Trinity Church, Sickles was impor-
tuned by the vestry, and even by his own devout mother, ta secure
its defeat. It was an opportunity not to be missed and Trinity a
political power not to be despised. Technically the case was clear;
and, in tie course of a brilliant ten-hour speech, Sickles not only
defeated it, but in so doing established an "opinion" as to its illegality
that, a hundred years later, still remains, for good or ill, unquestioned.
Trinity Church, of course, was, and is, an anachronism a frag-
ment of the English state church left thriving on American soil,
drawing its income from British grants, re-established by Congress
in 1784 and 1814. And whatever may have been its Christian duty
toward the smaller churches, its status as a business corporation,
subject only to the electors of its own parish, was legally unassail-
able. And Sickles wisely centered his attack on the purely legal
aspects of the bill. But, understandably enough, there was a vast
amount of sentiment in its favor. Cleverly, therefore, he begged the
whole case, treating his auditors not as a legislative body with power
to enact, but simply as a court with power to try a procedure that
inevitably threw into the sharpest relief the legal decrepitudes of
the measure. At the same time, with consummate wile, he masked his
tactics with a display of sentiment, sarcasm, ridicule such as seldom
crept into his speeches. Did the proponents of the measure weep for
the plight of the small churches? Sickles, too, could draw tears:

I was born and reared within the bosom of this church, and in this
parish. The graves of my humble ancestors lie within its sacred enclosures.
The marriage vow, the baptismal blessing, were pronounced upon those
from whom I sprang, by die side of its altars. It is the only church that
now remains within my district to take care of its poor; to relieve their
wants, to visit them when sick, to clothe them when naked, and to guide
them to a happy immortality hereafter.

Fighting Escalade 65

Was the behavior of Trinity Church unethical, non-Christian? Very
well! Not content with the clear, legalistic proof that the parishioners
of the complaining churches had no electoral rights in the Trinity
vestry, he mischievously embellished his argument with an amusing
word picture of the disastrous results likely to befall their own
Christian behavior were they given the vote.

You array churches that should be the sisters of Trinity, against her.
The friends of Trinity in the other churches will be eager that Trinity
shall be sustained in the elections. A majority of some congregations will
be for Trinity, and a majority of others will be hostile to her. Thus you
will array church against church, congregation against congregation. St.
George will be against die Holy Innocents; St. Matthew's will be against
St. John's; Grace against St. Paul's; St. Luke's against All Saints 9 ; St.
Mary's against the Annunciation; and the Holy Evangelists, perhaps,
against them all!

Well, sir, here we have fifty-four angry ecclesiastical elections going
on in one day in New York an exciting issue, a heated controversy, a
bitter conflict! It is not too much to fancy that we see die omnibuses
rattling through the streets, crowded with eager voters, and vocal with
strange election cries: "Three cheers for Grace Church! . . . Hurry up
more votes to Ascension! . . . Trinity is ahead! . . . Ho! for the Evan-
gelists!" See die inflammatory handbills, "Up with Trinity! . . . Down
with St. George!" Ah, it will be no longer die St. George we have been
accustomed to regard, but St. George and the Dragon eager to enter
die field of strife, burning for die foray! But let us hasten to the churches,
hear die crowd around the doors the police vainly endeavoring to pre-
serve order give three cheers for the Low Church, three groans for the
High Church, and a tiger for die Bishop! Now approach the door and see
die eager ticket peddlers pay their respects to each newcomer: "Are you
against Trinity? . . . Can't you give us a vote for Grace Church?" Mark
how they follow that opposition voter along the aisle; how closely they
watch him to see that he is a duly qualified voter; how spitefully they
challenge and wrangle with him about his vote! . . .

Followed a note of solemn mock reproach:

And -what a time have you chosen for these extraordinary proceedings
in the Church? The season of Lent!

Then, suddenly, he is majestic:

Sir, I would maintain always and everywhere, by my voice, my vote,
and my best labors, vested constitutional rights; and if there be any

66 Dan Sickles

nation on earth if there be any form of government devised if there
be any people under the sun that more than any other must be dependent
on the scrupulous preservation of private rights and constitutional guar-
antees, it is this government of ours. It is a people who believe in the
democratic faith, in the capacity of man for self-government.

We have a government which has surmounted all other dangers. We
have a constitution under which we can hold elections, choose legisla-
tures, elect and install presidents, and in one brief hour transfer the power
of a mighty empire from one hand to another without tumult, without
resistance, without the presence of a single bayonet. We have educated a
people to a point where they can intelligently exercise the exalted func-
tion of electors. But, sir, we have yet to undergo a higher test whether
or no we can respect, preserve, and maintain inviolate the vested rights
of citizens and communities. If we can do this, then, indeed, shall we have
triumphed. Then our august experiment stands out to mankind a victory
an example to be followed by all other nations and by all other races
throughout time. But if we fail here, we send an arrow through the very
heart of free government, and the whole magnificent fabric falls.

The defense rested its case. It is still resting!

1856. The presidential election. Buchanan swept into power-
largely by Sickles's efforts. And, after a brief and brilliant campaign
against the forces of Whigs and Wood-ites, Sickles himself emerging
congressman from the Third District of New York City. Feeling
himself well on his way, he purchases a beautiful estate at Blooming-
dale, New Jersey.

A few more rungs well won. Washington at last! And a fashionable
residence within pistol shot of the White House!

Swampoodle Palmyra 67

CHAPTER X

Swampoodle Palmyra

THAT A PEOPLE sporting the eagle for oriflamme, and long
nurtured in a log-cabin tradition, should have chosen a malodorous
mud flat as the site of its capital and a pseudo-Greek type of archi-
tecture for its national edifices! The resulting melange bewildered
the visitor, touched off many a quip. Henry Adams, revisiting it
after twenty years, found it, ". . . the same rude colony set in the
same rude forest, with Greek temples for workrooms, and sloughs
for roads!" Dickens, with genial sarcasm, hailed it "the city of mag-
nificent intentions." To Thackeray it suggested "the ruins of Car-
thage." And Anthony Trollope, complaining that, to explore it, one
must have "breeches tucked well above knees," dubbed it "the new
Palmyra." . . . Swampoodle was its aboriginal name.

In the fifties, in fact, Washington, already fifty years a-building,
still was a forlorn embryo. Most of the streets marked on its pre-
tentious map remained rabbit runs and cowpaths; and such as actually
existed on earth were deep in muck when not deep in dust. Pigs
wallowed and goats browsed on Capitol HilL The disused Canal,
riving the city's heart, and now a popular dumping ground, was
foul with offal, excrement, dead dogs and cats; and the southern half
of President's Park was rendered unusable by the stench from the
neighboring swamp formerly the sewage outfalL Pennsylvania
Avenue, the one important thoroughfare much affected by flocks
of peripatetic geese frequently was impassable afoot. Nevertheless
its broad-brick northern sidewalk peopled promiscuously by poli-
ticians in Yankee stovepipes, southern broad-brimmed Barcelonas,
western sombreros, by behooped ladies 'and colored maids, liveried
Negroes lounging around hotel doors, red-shirted river toughs,
dandified gamblers, government clerks and fancy-girlsformed the

68 Dan Sickles

only fashionable promenade. Even the lonely, incongruous, unfin-
ished temples, spotted haphazardly about, stood knee deep in their
own debris; and, with all the embarrassment of maimed and naked
Greek statues exposed to public view in some dejected shanty town
of the lower Mississippi, gazed upon each other across blowsy vacant
lots, patches of pristine brush, rubbish heaps, open sewers, dingy
boardinghouses, saloons, and brothels.

For all its malaria-stricken, mosquito-infested dreariness, however,
Washington could boast, at least, one ultrafashionable district and
that, at the moment, quite the most important, not to say explosive,
spot in the highly disunited States. North of Pennsylvania Avenue,
and the littered lawns of the unfinished White House, stood blocks
of solid, handsome residences. A sprinkling of these belonged to
northerners among them Stephen A. Douglas, Charles Sumner,
Charles Francis Adams, William H. Seward. But the great majority
of them were owned by planter-politiciansmen such as William M.
Gwin, the proslavery senator from California; Jacob Thompson, of
Mississippi; Aaron Brown, of Tennessee; Justice Campbell, of the
Supreme Court; Senator Toombs, of Georgia; Senator Slidell, of
Louisiana; those social arbiters, the Riggses, Clays, Parkers, Tayloes;
the Washington Croesus and art collector, W. W. Corcoran; Vice-
President John C. Breckinridge, of Kentucky; and Jefferson Davis,
of Mississippi Southrons (their pet self-styling) knit in a tight pha-
lange. And it was here, in these ponderous homes, amid an at-
mosphere of prodigal hospitality, revel and vaunt and intrigue, that
the whole social and political power of the South clotted in cease-
less watch over its own.

Chattel slavery, of course, long had ceased to pay. Cotton sold at a
profitless six cents a pound. But a prime slave might cost as much as
two thousand dollars. The average plantation failed to net one per
centum on its investment. And southern adoption of the northern
wage system plainly would have proven much more efficient and
profitable if less merciful than the patriarchal exploitation and sup-
port of the unwaged black man. But the South was besotted of its
own institutions and stood ready to rend the Union to preserve them
and establish the right to expand them upon the western territories.
Significantly, as the rumblings grew louder and the earth began
to crack between states and parties, between friend and friend, father
and son, brother and brother, the Washington whirl of balls and

Sivampoodle Palmyra 69

banquets quickened with the gathering pace of a tarantella. And if
the pace was set by the southerners, the northerners were not slow
to follow. The Blairs kept open house for the young Republican
party; Stephen A. Douglas and his bridethe famous Washington
beauty, Adele Cutts entertained the Free Soil Democrats. And the
dinners given by Adams and Seward and Sumner were second to
none. In these homes, too, often were held certain "secret suppers"
where anxious discussion aided by cold duck and Rhenish brooded
deep into the night. In the teeth of the abolitionist threat from the
North, the secessionist threat from the South, the opening years of
Buchanan's administration were by far the gayest the capital ever had
known.

Political hospitality, indeed, had become so lavish that the Presi-
dent, to maintain his own standing, had to draw largely upon his
private account to supplement his meager salary of $25,000 a year.
And so the Executive Mansion, too, blazed with light even if the
light were a little austere, Miss Lane's ideas of etiquette a trifle stiff
for Washington taste.

Much of die social life centered about the three fashionable hotels
Brown's, intimate, southern, exclusive; the National, favorite spot
for political conferences; and Willard's, large, noisy, always over-
flowing, famous for its cuisine and ballroom, every night the scene
of informal hops. And since not everyone wished to be bothered
with the upkeep of an establishment, many politicians preferred to
live at one or other of the hotels; and their wives and families often
formed congenial groups "messes" in the local idiom.

Desolate and deserted throughout the long, unhealthy summer,
with the autumn reopening of Congress, Washington leaped to life.
The grimy little station thrummed with the incoming crowds of
northern and western congressmen and senators with their families,
political hangers-on, office seekers, lobbyists, salesmen, gamblers,
government clerks, and a due proportion of befeathered girls and
enterprising thieves. The wharves were crowded with southerners
arriving by every steamer from Aquia Creek, surrounded by darky
retainers and piles of baggage. Pennsylvania Avenue swarmed with
hacks, smart broughams, lumbering wagons loaded with produce for
the markets; and its flyblown shop windows newly polished off made
bold display of the latest wares from New York, London, Paris; while
the sidewalks, cluttered with the influx of boxes, barrels, crates, were

70 Dan Sickles

rendered almost impassable to the hurrying throng. In a day or two
the lone Washington theater would open; perhaps with a minstrel
show, possibly a dubious opera company; or, with luck, there might
be Joe Jefferson or Charlotte Cushman, Edwin Forrest or Edwin
Booth to lend a New York touch to the still rustic capital. And, at
night, mansions that had stood silent and dark for months would
become battlements of glowing windows; the sedate avenues would
echo the trample of blooded horses, the growl of carriage wheels;
massive doors, long locked, would swing ceaselessly in the hands of
liveried darkies grinning welcome to streams of guests ladies with
the silhouettes of hand bells, gentlemen still arrayed much in the
fashion of "Uncle Sam."

And what if the Treasury lacked steps; the White House, pillars;
the Capitol, a dome it was of no consequence. For the actual gov-
ernment long had been handsomely housed elsewhere in a score or
two of Washington's bemirrored and chandeliered drawing rooms.
Let Congress puff and palaver as it might, Washington society re-
mained tie government. And Washington society was the southern
hostess.

Seldom, indeed, have feminine hands daintily wielded more dan-
gerous power or afforded a more cogent anti-feminist argument for
woman suffrage! For if it remained for the twentieth century to dis-
cover that a woman in Congress is just another politician, prewar
Washington amply proved that a diplomatic fragility in the drawing
room was more than a match for a dozen politicians!

Amidst rancorous debate in the House and Senate, laughter and
wine, dining and dancing in the great homes, the North and tie
South were preparing for the death grapple in a struggle old as
burgher and baron. Brewing for five hundred years, blazing out in
the prophetic British civil war between Cromwellian Roundhead and
Stuart Cavalier, transplanted to the New World in the guise of
Yankee against southerner, it was essentially a struggle for political
supremacy between the rising industrial bourgeoisie and the old feudal
aristocracy between the masters of steam and the lords of the manor.
And what lent shrewd edge to the feud was the human fact that just
as the curled and cultured Cavalier had been the hated darling of the
shaven, uncouth Roundhead battling for pkce in British life, so now
the leisured, romantic South was no whit less the hated darling of the
husding, money-mad North while, most curiously, soil and climate

Sixampoodle Palmyra 71

had served sharply to accentuate their divergencies of temper. Set-
tling on the bleak shores of New England, the hard-fisted, psalm-
singing Puritans had grown still more acrid and parsimonious in their
wrestlings with the red man, with rain and snow and frozen ground;
and their tone pervaded the whole North. On the other hand, the
indolent, roistering, hard-riding British thoroughbreds pledged to
Prince Charlie, establishing their plantations in the sunny, fertile
South, had simply re-created the old feudal regime and, taking the
Negro for serf in place of the rebellious English yokel, had continued
to develop a luxurious and prideful way of life.

Side by side, Cavalier and Roundhead had ventured the Great
Experiment together the ancient issue between them still unsettled.
But now the hour of final accounting had come. And in the paneled
library of many a Washington mansion men such as the defiant
Georgians, Toombs and Iverson and Clay; Louisiana's haughty Sli-
dell; Wigfafl, the bleak-faced Texan; the cool, scheming Jefferson
Davis gathered to plot secession, pore over maps, prepare for war.
And what was equally important in the adjacent parlors their
wives and daughters artlessly wove a seductive web for the unwary
opponent, the possible influential friend.

Even more fiercely than their men, southern matron, southern
belle reacted to the North's impending threat to their seignorial
traditions, cherished culture, political power. For them it was a
blood issue. And their beguiling ways hid many a subtle deception
practiced in loyalty to their own. National coquettes, they under-
stood their lure, deftly exploited their prestige in northern eyes.
Experts in the masculine, they knew how to touch the keys of am-
bition, inferiority, vanity, greed in veteran and neophyte alike and
set them to harmonizing on a Dixie theme. And to them, in larger
measure than history accords, was due the fact that even now, as
the Union approached its zero hour, the Administration continued
to be what it always had been since Independence virtually a
southern preserve. The amiable Buchanan's southern predilections
were obvious. Vice-President Breckinridge was a proslaveiy son of
Kentucky. Minister of War Jefferson Davis, an avowed secessionist,
was already dreaming upon a conquest of Mexico and Cuba that
should make the Gulf the "mare nostrunf' of a new slavocratic
empire. And while proslavery Democrats had a clear majority in
the House, practically all the important army posts had been as-

72 Dan Sickles

signed by the deliquescent old General Winfield Scott to what he
admiringly called "southern rascals" among them a certain Robert
KLee.

And Dan Sickles, entering Washington as he had proposed on
the train of his own presidential nominee, was quick to sense the
new milieu. If, in New York, political advancement depended upon
strong-arm mobs, mayhem, and ballot snatching, here he saw
clearly it would depend largely upon social prestige, and that from
the conquest of Ward and Wigwam he must now proceed to the
conquest of the Drawing Room.

Politically, of course, as a Democrat, a protagonist of states* rights,
Sickles already was persona grata to the southern representatives. But
socially well, in their eyes that was another matter. He was a
''northerner." It was a situation that he did not grasp at first. He never
had met and, Knickerbocker that he was, he never expected to
meet such a thing as a social barrier. He could not know that while
the planter-politician noblesse might exchange routine courtesies
with northern Democrats sympathetic to their cause, they rarely
welcomed them into their own inner circles; that, clannish by tra-
dition and snobbish by temper, their attitude toward anyone so un-
fortunate as not to have acquired a grandfather among one or other
of their reigning families was simply: "Paul I know, and Peter I
know but who are ye?" All that Sickles saw was the prospect of
a political game tinged by the glamour of a social tourney some-
thing very agreeable to his taste and talent. And he entered upon it
with more than his usual zest and assurance.

His first need was an impressive address. Luckily, while staying
as a guest with his old friend Jonah D. Hoover, ex-United States
marshal, he managed to secure the fine old "Stockton Mansion" on
Lafayette Square-practically a part of the White House grounds.
Here, around a tiny green park adorned with a grotesque equestrian
statue of Old Hickory, stood some of the most fashionable and
historic homes in Washington including the dignified pile where
Commodore Decatur had lived and died, now the British Legation;
the Dolly Madison house; the home of Thomas Swann, wealthy
Baltimorean, now the Russian Legation; Corcoran's imposing man-
sion; and the handsome residences of the Tayloes, the Blairs, the
Slidells, and the Adams family not to omit the Cosmos Club,
rendezvous of masculine fashion, and St. John's Church, punctil-

Dragon Couchant Gripping a Key 73

iously attended Sunday mornings by the President and the Wash-
ington elite. For Sickles, the aristocratic locale and substantial old
house were ideal. And purchasing for Teresa a handsome brougham
and pair, he prepared to match hospitality with the best.

CHAPTER XI

Dragon Couchant Gripping a Key

HELip BARTON KEY stood at crisis. Six f oot of astidious nonchalance,
his clear, well-bred features, large blue eyes, luxuriant sandy hair
and mustache, rather Byronic speech and manner, contrived an
effect highly disturbing to the feminine. Washington knew him as
United States attorney, dilettante politician, modish captain of
the crack green-and-gold Montgomery Guards, but better as
eligible widower, dean and darling of lie drawing rooms. Keener
eyes, however, might have divined, beneath the pallid skin, the
drooped lids of disillusion, sad disdain, the gifted drifter and phi-
landerer, confronting invalidism and the "dangerous forties" with
nothing but an emotional fatalism to aid.

Of distinguished pedigree, his family relationships ramified
throughout Washington society. His father, Francis Scott Key, also
United States attorney, leader of the Maryland bar and some-
thing of a hymnist and minor poet had become identified with
the national spirit as the author of "The Star-Spangled Banner." John
Ross Key, his grandfather, descendant of a fine old Highland-Stuart
family, had distinguished himself in the Revolutionary War and
subsequently had married the daughter of the governor of Virginia.
Congressman Phil Barton Key, his granduncle, was still remembered
for his, eloquence and parliamentary ability. One of his father's
sisters had achieved some fame as a poet before her marriage to
Senator Blount. And another, in marrying Chief Justice Taney of

74 Dan Sickles

the Supreme Court, had become a Washington institution as the
leading hostess of the Judiciary set. His sister, a woman of notable
charm and intelligence, had married the genial "Gentleman George"
Pendleton, congressman from Ohio, and now reigned over a coterie
of her own. Fourteen years before, he himself had married Sophie
Swann, daughter of a wealthy Baltimorean whose capacious mansion
on Lafayette Square subsequently housed the Russian Legation.

Eight years of a love-match marriage and Barton Key had stood
distraught over the body of his dead wife, while in the next room
four small children played. It was a loss that had left him too nerve-
less and disordered for family cares; and leaving his young son and
three little daughters in charge of a competent housekeeper at his
home on C Street, he had taken up quarters with his sister and her
husband. The Pendletons were a charming, congenial pair. He was
devoted to them both, and they to him; but even their companion-
ship, warm and cheery as it was, had not been able to prevent him
from falling into prolonged spells of depression. Presently heart
trouble had intervened. Too weak to make his grief a way of
growth, he had sought to evade it with social distractions. But, at
last, his one real sokce was his horse Lucifer a nobly bred, dapple-
gray hunter.

Those were days when Washington's winter mud made riding or
driving a necessity for those who objected to being mired to the
knees. But to Barton Key, riding was not simply a matter of trans-
portation. With a true horseman's instinct, he sought in the saddle
a peace and sense of health that he could find nowhere else. And
for riding, his location gave him plenty of opportunity and excuse.
The Pendletons' big rambling house stood far out on the city's
outskirts. Thence customarily he rode to his engagements unless
they were such as made the use of his carriage imperative. And
thence, when his hours were free, he could canter north along the
virgin trails of the beautiful Rock Creek country. In horseman-
ship, as in everything else, he displayed his characteristic flair for
style, grace, distinction. Astride Lucifer, arrayed in the ultimate of
equestrian fashion, in white whipcord breeches and top boots, plum-
colored hunting coat and flat-topped white cap, his was one of the
most familiar and picturesque figures on Pennsylvania Avenue. Rid-
ing kit became him well and he knew it. In daylight hours he rarely
appeared in anything else. And Washingtonians long had agreed to

Dragon Couchant Grippmg a Key 75

be only pleasantly shocked at meeting him at court or at afternoon
teas and at-homes, looking much like an English huntsman crop
still tucked under arm. On the other hand when he appeared afoot
he was always impeccable in frock coat, silk hat. No one could swing
a gold-headed cane with more grace. And at a time when, in even
the most correct Washington circles, men made little distinction
between their day and evening attire, he invariably changed for
dinner British fashion into black broadcloth, ruffled white shirt,
and white cravat.

And so Barton Key had lived, horseman and man of fashion,
dividing his time with increasing ennui between his slender official
duties and the onerous social round, playing up to a role he had
come to despise but had no energy to change. Not a matron with
a marriageable daughter but had her net spread for him. Well aware
of it, he walked warily, amused himself with a flirtation here and
there, and passed on, evading capture. None of these buxom Wash-
ington belles seemed able to touch the springs of his nature. Per-
haps his recurrent ill-health gave him pause. He was like a man
waiting for some new tide, some renewal of life, some passionate
adventure or death. Too intelligent for his trite round, lacking
heart to seek anything more meaningful, he had exhausted the pres-
entwithout hope of the future. With the indecision of the frustrate,
he even had begun to dally with the dream of joining the westward
pioneer stream to hunt buffalo, face life afresh in the raw.

Actually he merely pursued his usual role as in Mrs. Clement
Clay's enthusiastic dictum "the handsomest man in all Washington
society," a romantic figure with his sad eyes, languid charm, deft
touch upon the feminine, and, by way of salty contrast, his hunts-
man's garb, his often ironic brusqueness of address. His mysterious
malady which a modern diagnostician might have found to be
mainly psychologic haunted him with the shadow of death. He
could not forget his dead wife or his two dead brothers one killed
on the frontier, the other shot in a duel over a woman. And often
when he sat down to write in his small scratchy hand on his ele-
gant buff stationery, he found himself brooding over the embossed
family crest a Dragon Couchant Gripping a Key.

In the fall of '56, as the result of an unusually bad spell, Barton
Key decided to take sick leave and try what a few months in Cuba

j6 Dan Sickles

might do for him, but first since he was a Pierce appointee he must
make sure that Buchanan would maintain him in office. Just then
his old friend and confidant, Jonah D. Hoover, formerly United
States marshal, invited him to attend a stag whist party. Among
the players was a dynamic, stylish fellow, one of Hoover's Tam-
many cronies, recently elected to Congress and now in Washington,
alone, seeking a house for the forthcoming term. Barton Key and
Dan Sickles already knew each other by repute. Now on sight they
took to each other and before the evening was over had arranged
to meet again. Shortly, thereafter, Sickles, who was having some
legal difficulties in the matter of the Stockton Mansion lease, en-
gaged his new friend as counsel. In the ensuing weeks, at Willard's
or Brown's, at Attorney General Black's, or at the home of the ever
hospitable Hoover, the two men saw a good deal of each other.
Politician and social arbiter had valuable hints to exchange. Liking
grew to warm comradeship. And when, presently, Sickles gathered
that Key was concerned over his reappointment to office, he
promptly undertook to intercede for him with Buchanan; and a few
days later brought him the signed confirmation in person.

Anxious now to be gone, out of this cold slush and sleet, Barton
Key made his preparations for departure. Racked by a cough,
dogged by fatigue, his heart playing tricks, he longed for lazy days
by palmetto-fringed beaches under the healing warmth of soft
Cuban skies. But at the last moment he hesitated. He had been too
ill to attend the Presidential Reception. And to absent himself from
the Inaugural Ball as well might be interpreted as a discourtesy to
Buchanan. And then, he had not missed an Inaugural Ball in twenty
years; and who could tell if he would live to see another? The
change in plan would detain him only a few days and by the next
boat he would be off.

Barton Key left the Inaugural Ball profoundly perturbed. He
could not believe that in one glance as might some callow lad he
had lost his wits over a woman. Back at his quarters, far too excited
for sleep, he paced the floor, restlessly poked the fire, poured him-
self one whisky peg after another, conning again every moment
of the evening. It was not just that she was petite and dark, incompa-
rably lovely; it was the extraordinary sense of rapport that had fused
them the instant their arms had encircled for the waltz. Suddenly

Washington Hostess 77

he was standing very still. "Dan's wife, by God!" Slowly, absent-
mindedly, he began packing his traveling bag.

The dawn was up. He had bid good-by to the Pendletons the
night before so as not to disturb them so early. His carriage, piled
high with trunks, was at the door. It was a haggard Barton Key
who stepped in. He had been looking forward to this holiday for
months. Now he felt like a man going into exile.

CHAPTER XII

Washington Hostess

A HE NEW HOME, standing a little aloof from its neighbors on the
west side of the pretty, tree-shrouded park, had been built by Com-
modore Stockton during the administration of John Quincy Adams.
And everything about it the primly symmetrical architecture,
severe chimney stacks, fashionable whitewashed brick, the paneled
library, carved staircase, heavy, bronze chandeliers bore the stamp
of the old sailor's taste for shipshape, solid distinction. Secretary of
the Navy Woodbury and, quite recently, Speaker of the House
James L. Orr, of South Carolina, had occupied it entertaining in
the grand manner. And a few years earlier the wife of a certain
scholarly statesman, adorning it extravagantly with imported paint-
ings and tapestries, had made it the pet resort for the members of
the various foreign embassies before flitting away, with mysterious
suddenness, to her former gay life in Paris and Vienna. In one way
or another, the Stockton Mansion, as it invariably was called, had
become something of a legend. And Washingtonians, impressed by
the hospitalities of its line of hostesses, its antique span of two gen-
erations, always referred to it politely as both "famous" and "his-
toric."
But to Teresa, the morning after the Inaugural Ball, as she stood

78 Dan Sickles

amid half-opened crates of new costly furnishings still quivering
from the touch of a hand, the pulse of the dance the old place
seemed chill and menacing, a little like the unlit stage of a dress re-
hearsal to a leading lady absorbed in something else, and, even so,
by no means sure of her part. For the moment she could think of
nodding clearly. But at best she felt no confidence in her ability to
play the role of Washington hostess particularly here, where so
many accomplished women had presided before her. It was a role
more critical than she knew.

In Washington of the time, the wife's social enterprise was a vital
factor in her husband's political success. Particularly was this true
in southern circles. Reared in a matrix of chivalrous masculine adula-
tion, trained from infancy to be homemaker and hostess, the south-
ern woman usually brought to marriage not merely the sparkle of
well-nourished femininity and a keen social sense, but an alert in-
terest in her husband's affairs. Transplanted to Washington, she
naturally re-created for him her own atmosphere of warm and win-
some hospitality and as naturally made it a means of furthering his
ambitions. Who can say how much Senator Clement Clay of Ala- .
bama owed to his lovely Jinny "the belle of the fifties" with her
bountiful kindness, quick intelligence; the harsh, unscrupulous Slidell
to the graceful, tireless efficiency of his French Creole bride, Mile,
de Londes, formerly the toast of New Orleans fashion; the sturdily
unsocial Senator Fitzpatrick to the energy and popularity of his
youthful Clara; the jolly epicurean, Secretary Cobb, to the intel-
lectual little beauty, nee Clara Lamar; or Senator George E. Pugh
to the grave and gracious Therse Chalfant, "the most beautiful
woman in Washington"? We know only that wives such as these
created and maintained a golden social background for their men,
and that whether they confessed it or not, the gay southern quip,
"Friendship is the better part of politics," was writ on their rings.
, But of marriage of this kind, marriage as a working copartnership,
Teresa had no conception. Her experience in London on the arm
of a popular diplomat, bemothered by great British ladies was small
preparation for a Washington, where the social life so largely was
concerned with the enmeshment of political support. Furthermore
she never even had been called upon to play a part in Dan's public life.
Nor, as a matter of fact, had she shared more than a small, if de luxe,
compartment in his private life. Thus inevitably her marriage rela-

Washington Hostess 79

tionship lacked the needful experience of teamwork, the still more
needful spark of spontaneous co-operation so manifest in many of
the rich unions around her. It was a spiritual lack that could not be
hid, and that neither skill nor unusual effort on both sides could
overcome.

But this was only one of the handicaps. Washington was a honey-
comb of cliques. There were, of course, the usual highly exclusive
circles of the Cabinet and the Supreme Court. But, apart from these,
House and Senate were viciously divided on the overarching issue
of states' rights and the extension of slavery, and splintered again
into warring factions, centered about certain dominant personalities,
a Douglas, a Sumner, a Breckinridge, a Davis, representing every
shade of the controversy. Under such circumstances even the ex-
perienced hostess often found herself in a quandary over her guest
list where a single faux pas might bring embarrassing consequences.
To Teresa, with her bohemian background, it was a situation utterly
confusing. To her, people were simply people, to be honestly liked
or disliked for themselves, and quite apart from their views. And
when Dan tried to sketch for her Washington's social-political
topography, she found it terribly complicated and a little boring.
Willing as she was to try to do what was required, she felt help-
lessly dependent upon him for- guidance. But when it came to the
feminine sphere of social strategy, Dan himself for all his personal
polish was more or less the average helpless male. Two babes in the
Washington wood!

Also there was the matter of family. Dan, at least, was a Knicker-
bockerand, at a pinch, the Southrons might condone that. But
Teresa, despite the fact that she was the daughter of a notable
maestro of grand opera, was to them a "nobody."

And, at last, there was Miss Lane. Buchanan never had forgiven
Mrs. Thomas for her London scandalmongering. And, despite her
friendship with his niece, one of his first acts in power was to dis-
miss General Thomas from his position as Assistant Secretary of
State. It was a gesture that gave Dan the keenest satisfaction. But
Teresa received his report of it with pure dismay. "Don't tell me
that! I shall be blamed for it all and they'll be spreading their
poison about me again!" Not till then had Dan realized how much
the London affair had unnerved her. For an eloquent hour he tried
to reason her out of her fears: Buchanan's action only showed what

8o Dm Sickles

a loyal friend he was; Miss Lane would have to take her cue from
him; Mrs. Thomas was a gossipy nobody and out of the picture.
As for friends, they had a host of them. They had a home distin-
guished as any, perfect appointments, a smart turn-out. She was far
more lovely than any of these plump Washington belles, her gowns
and jewels not to be matched in Paris. All she had to do was to
pluck up heart, let Gautier do the catering, dress her charming best
and she would be the most popular little hostess in town. It was
as if Dan were trying to reassure a child a child he himself had
kept from growing up.

But Teresa knew the intensity of Dan's ambition, knew that be-
hind his efforts to encourage her ky his own urgent need of her co-
operation; and she was woman enough to respond. She bit her lip;
and with Dan's supervision, Buchanan's discreet support, Gautier's
superb catering, and a staff of efficient servants to aid, gamely essayed
her role of political hostess.

And so, every afternoon, the modishly dressed Mrs. Dan Sickles
daindy maneuvered her crinoline into the crimson-leathered
brougham and set forth upon her round of calls-a dutiful gesture,
even if, for the most part, she merely left her card. Her small din-
ners, wisely grouped, at first, around intimate friends among the
northern Democrats-such as the Hoovers, Haskins, Secretary
Lewis Cass and his wife, the massively bearded and bespectacled
Edwin Stanton were in the best Stockton Mansion tradition; and, as
hostess, her girlish warmth and naturalness won even the captious
inclined to deplore her lack of discrimination in showing as much
attention to a raw western congressman as to a cabinet minister. But
her at-homes the real social barometer met with only a faint re-
sponse from the notables. True, Mrs. Slidell might graciously de-
scend now and again for a few moments possibly with Mrs. day
and some of her friends of the Brown's Hotel "mess." But this was
a feather not to be flaunted too much. Dan recently had been giv-
ing Senator Slidell expert counsel in the framing of a measure for
the purchase of Cuba, and etiquette prescribed a wifely courtesy
of the kind. Also, despite Buchanan's unfailing friendliness, his
offer to stand godfather for Laura, there was no escaping the fact
that an invitation to a formal Executive Mansion dinner that

social accolade customarily delivered in Miss Lane's precise callig-
raphywas not forthcoming.

Tarantella 81

That first season Teresa's social success could not be called more
than modest. Dan likewise had failed as yet to set the Potomac
afire. The political tension created by the ever impending crisis be-
tween North and South threw all lesser questions into the discard.
Burning to make a record for himself, he could find no dramatic
measure to his hand. And to take open sides in the main issue was
still premature. His sole contribution to the record was to secure the
passage of a bill providing for the observance of Washington's birth-
day as a national holiday.

For both Dan and Teresa, recess and a long vacation at quiet
Bloomingdale came with a sense of relief. For Dan it was an oppor-
tunity to catch up with much overdue legal work. For Teresa it
meant leisure at last to play with Laura to her heart's content, enjoy
an occasional canter over the hills and dream disturbing dreams of
a tall, pallid figure. From time to time she entertained a few of
Dan's friends, played hostess to her gentle, emotional mother, the
crotchety maestro, burly, dogmatic Sickles Sr. the simple kind of
thing that delighted her. For the most part she felt like a girl out
of school, Washington and its problems forgotten.

CHAPTER XIII

Tarantella

THE SEASON OF *57-*58, Washington's pulse quickened
giddily. Never had the capital witnessed, never would it witness
again, such a vivid and feverish social display. Southerner and north-
erner vied in a carnival of balls and banquets. If Postmaster General
Aaron V. Brown's extravagant wife led the dance, surpassing all
others in prodigal entertainment, she was closely followed by the
cabinet hostesses Mrs. Lewis Cass, Mrs. Howell Cobb, Mrs. James
Thompson, by the great southern families the SlideHs, Tayloes,

82 Dan Sickles

Toombses, Parkers, Qays pivoted about Jefferson Davis; and by
the northern and western cliques attached to Seward, Stanton,
Adams, Sumner, Douglas. The usually rather staid legations also
flared with the general spirit of revelry. The at-homes of the gifted
writer, Mme. Calderon de la Barca, wife of the Brazilian minister,
and of the Comtesse de Sartiges formerly Miss Thorndike wif e of
the French minister, were not unworthy of the First Empire; and
their dinners and dances among the gayest. The Baroness Stoeckl,
wife of the Russian minister, played hostess with Slavic opulence
at the old Swann house. And even the unworldly Lady Napier, pre-
siding shyly over the British Legation, found herself swept into the
glittering swirL

The fall session of '57 scarcely had opened with a virile exhibition
of nose punching, hair pulling, spittoon hurling on the floor of the
House than Mrs. Gwin, wife of the millionaire senator from Cali-
fornia, decided to inaugurate the season with a fancy-dress ball. It
was the first event of this kind in Washington annals, and the an-
nouncement caused a great scurrying to dressmakers and tailors,
much anxious searching of the Congressional Library for authentic
pictures of classic and medieval costumes.

Unprofited in health, Barton Key just had returned from Cuba.
Scarcely had he reached his quarters and changed to correct attire
when he was driving nervously to Lafayette Square. Dan Sickles
gave him a royal welcome, insisted that he was looking splendid,
made him promise to stay to dinner. Teresa's hand in his trembled
a little. The three talked late into the evening: Dan of the dangerous
Kansas-Nebraska situation, the increasing political bitterness, the
gathering strength of the Republicans; Key a little of his experiences
in Cuba, but more of the forthcoming season. With tactful sugges-
tions here and there he made it clear that he wished to be useful
Dan, realizing what his sponsorship would mean, was frankly ap-
preciative. Teresa glowed with delight. The talk turned on the Gwin
balL Dan chuckled that he would go as a pirate if he could get the
costume in time. Key, with a mock serious bow, suggested that
Teresa would make a matchless Titania. She caught at the idea, but
when he added that he thought he would adopt a fancy version of
his usual English fox-hunting kit, she seemed to lose interest in it.

The night of the ball found Dan Sickles in bed with lumbago,
but propped up with pillows and still struggling his law books

Tarantella 83

about him to make notes for a forthcoming speech in the House.
Key arriving for the three had agreed to go together promptly
went upstairs to see him, full of sympathy. But Dan was quite
cheery and matter-of-fact: "Barton, my boy, you'll have to do the
honors for me tonight." Then critically conning the cherry velvet
coat, white satin breeches, lemon-colored riding boots: "You damn
Britisher! A smart outfit if ever I saw one. But I'd have knocked
you sidewise with that Laffite costume of mine." At that moment,
a chic Louis Quatorze duchesse, equipped for the deer hunt in
green velveteen habit and white-plumed tricorn, appeared smiling
mischievously at the door. Key gave a light unconscious gasp. Dan,
with a chuckle, eased himself up in bed: "M on Dieu-^voitt Madame
la Duchesse!" He watched her quizzically as she went to shake hands
with Key. "You certainly will be the belle of the ball, Terry. Damn
this lumbago. You two what a pair!"

Washington, since it rose out of the swamp fifty years before,
had not witnessed such a throng as filled the ballroom of the Gwin
Mansion knights and troubadours, sultans and savages, crusaders
and clowns, nymphs, houris, harlequins, gypsies, fairies, priests and
pierrots waltzing, quadrilling, galloping in a motley, iridescent maze.
And none seemed to enjoy the nonsense more than Teresa and
Barton. If La Duchesse was all vivid delight, her huntsman escort
seemed entirely to have forgotten his semi-invalidism, and every
now and again would raise his sflver bugle to his lips and blow a blast
that echoed around the room most jollily. And often, as the two
passed in the dance, other couples would pause a moment to watch
them.

"Barton," said Mrs. Slidell, "you are surpassing yourself tonight
evidently Cuba was good for you."

He turned mockingly. "I find Washington much better, thank
you."

It was after two in the morning when Barton and Teresa took
carriage home. Reluctant to part, they directed a rather scandalized
coachman to drive them by side streets about the city for an hour
or more. When at last they alighted at the Stockton Mansion steps,
they separated quickly without a word.

Thereafter, on one pretext or another, or with none at all, Barton
Key was a constant visitor at the Sickles home. With his passion for
the saddle, his need to spend the early hours in the open, he tried to

84 Dim Sickles

lure Dan and Teresa into joining him on riding jaunts. But Dan pro-
fessed himself much too busy. Unwilling, however, to deny Teresa
the pleasure of an occasional canter, and knowing that she could not
well do without an escort, he suggested that now and again, when
circumstances permitted, she invite Barton to ride with her. There
was nothing unusual in such an arrangement. Not a senator or con-
gressman but was bedeviled with the constant conflict between
masculine political duties and feminine social engagements. When
debate was hot in the House, or important measures pended, the
Washington wife a dance or dinner invitation in hand often enough
found herself a "Washington widow," without escort unless some
friend of her husband's would obligingly come to her aid. And, as a
matter of simple necessity, emergency courtesies of this kind had
become quite customary and en r&gle. As a consequence the society
matrons of the capital enjoyed a freedom quite unknown elsewhere
in the States at that time. So long as they preserved the amenities of
the situation, they might appear shopping, riding, at hops, teas, and
at-homes with any of their husbands* acknowledged friends without
exciting remark. Barton understood this even better than Dan; and
at every opportunity he calmly constituted himself Teresa's cavalier.
Before the last days of Indian summer died in sleet and slush,
fanners on the city outskirts sometimes stopped to stare at a striking
couple cantering bythe one in plum-colored riding coat and white
breeches, the other in severe bkck riding habit and wondered that
folk could so laugh and talk and seem to enjoy being splashed to the
eyes with mud. At the same time Washington drawing rooms also
noted, with no more than an appraising smile, how sedulously the
uncapturable Barton Key danced attendance upon the charming Mrs.
Dan Sickles. And soon the southern elite, playing follow-the-leader,
began appearing frequently at Teresa's Tuesday at-homes. Barton
likewise saw to it that her Thursday dinners, smartly catered as
any, now should include more of his own set the Pendletons, the
Slidells, Chief Justice Taney and his wife, the Comte and Comtesse
de Sarriges, the Breckinridges, Tayloes, Parkers. And Dan, gratified
with the changing social complexion, Teresa's poised, blithe manner,
gave credit where credit was due. Barton appeared to think nothing
of it.

After the Christmas holidays and the President's New Year's Day
Reception, the season started off again fortissimo with the long-

Tarantella 85

remembered Napier Ball. The popular British minister had been re-
called by his government, and Senator William H. Seward promptly
had organized a subscription farewell ball in his honor. It proved to
be the most prodigious affair of its kind in Washington history. On
the great dance floor of Willard's Hotel, over a thousand celebrants
jostled one another in relays of several hundred at a time. The
corridors, parlors, bars were jammed with a crush highly promiscuous
for while Napier's personal friends were all on hand, anyone who
had the price of a ticket could attend.

Among the guests was George B. Wooldridge, one of the assistant
clerks of the House. And with him had come two young friends,
Marshall Bacon and S. K. Beekman, junior clerks in the Interior
Department. All three, as Tammany henchmen indebted to Sickles
for their present jobs, had been visitors at Stockton Mansion. And
Beekman, a callow product of Albany, with a little New York pave-
ment polish, had fallen into a mooncalf infatuation for Teresa. In
the course of the evening he made several attempts to claim her for
a dance only to find each time that a supercilious Barton Key had
forestalled him. Gloomily, at last, he retired to the bar to souse what
he deemed to be a most magnificent jealousy. A trifling episode
with consequences!

Came February with clearing skies. Dan, summoned to New York
on an important trial case, left hurriedly. And the next morning Bar-
ton Key on his dapple-gray was at Stockton Mansion. Teresa, expect-
ing him, already was in her riding habit. Not until late afternoon did
they return to take a snack in the little study. The next day, and
die next, it was the same. But before the week was over, douds
began to gather. Determined, however, to snatch one more ride ere
the March rains should bog the trails, they set out on a jaunt to
Bladensburg, intending to lunch there before returning. But well on
their way, the already threatening skies clotted in a black, driving
downpour. Disgustedly they wheeled and started homeward at a
gallop. A few miles of this and they were wretchedly sogged in their
saddles, scarcely able to catch their breath against the threshing sleet.
The Greystone Tavern, looming up ahead, was a welcome sight.
With a burst of speed they reached its shelter, turned their horses
over to the groom. Amid the stares of the loungers at the bar, Barton
engaged a room for Teresa and bade her tuck herself into bed while

86 Dan Sickles

her habit was dried. At the same time he asked that he might be
allowed to warm himself in the kitchen. The landlady ushered them
both through a door at the end of the bar. And while Teresa trailed
her wet garments 'upstairs, Barton sought the kitchen range and
draped his coat over a chair before it. Then he ordered tea and toast
sent up to Teresa and settled himself by the stove with a hot whisky
punch. An hour and a half later, the storm lifting, he called for their
horses. It was not until then, when they were passing through the bar
together, that he caught the snickering glance of a slight, dapper
f eUow drinking with a group at a corner table. Faintly he remem-
bered him as the aggressive young man at the Napier Ball. He knew
then that there would be malice afoot; but he shrugged it aside.
Nevertheless, on the canter home he broke a long silence to remark
casually, "I think you should tell Dan about this." Teresa's tone was
limpid: "Why of course, Barton I expected to."

When Dan returned, Teresa, in the course of breakfast chatter,
casually mentioned the episode of the storm and the tavern. But Dan,
deep in the Globe, listened more politely than attentively. "Too bad
Lucky you found shelter. Might have caught a beastly cold."

Beekman, however, could not wait to pour his version of the affair
into Marshall Bacon's ear. With vengeful chuckles he recounted how
he had seen the high and mighty Barton Key and Mrs. Dan Sickles
come dripping into the Greystone bar, engage a bedroom, and dis-
appear for over an hour and a half together, and how, when the
kitchen door had swung open, he had caught sight of their clothes
drying before the stove. And as Beekman knew very well he would,
Bacon, garnishing the story with his own relish, promptly passed it
on to Wooldridge.

Meanwhile Sickles had gone to Baltimore for a week. Upon his
return Wooldridge sought him out and, speaking as a matter of duty,
hesitantly confided to him Beekman's gossip. To his astonishment,
Sickles waved it aside. "Oh that? Teresa told me all about it long
ago." Wooldridge, suddenly wishing that he had kept out of the
affair, urged Dan to examine Beekman himself and get the facts. "I
don't believe it myself, Dan, any more than you do. But the point
is that Teresa is being slandered. And if this story gets around, it
won't do you any good either. It has to be scotched right now."

Summoned to Stockton Mansion, Beekman, first confronted by the
irate Airs. Bagioli, crawfished, evaded, denied that he had done more

Tarantella 87

than make a few joking remarks on "the feminine sex in general'*
Scared by the mounting menace in Sickles's manner, he threw the
entire blame on Wooldridge and Bacon, accused them of distorting
and falsifying his statements; and, finally, throwing out a panicky
screen of righteous indignation, fled the room. Feeling that the whole
thing was a miserable canard, Sickles called in Key and frankly pkced
the facts before him. Key was icily furious, retorted that anyone
who made such an assertion would have to meet him at the point of
a pistol. His decisive "Let me handle this" sounded completely con-
vincing.

Commissioning Hoover to act as his personal messenger and secure
replies, Key dispatched formal notes to Wooldridge, Bacon, and
Beekman in turn, demanding in each case an immediate explanation
in writing. Wooldridge, of course, merely cited Bacon as his in-
formant. Bacon, in an insolent note, cited Beekman. Terrified, Beek-
man once more flatly denied having made any of the accusations
attributed to him, pretended to challenge Bacon to a duel, and wrote
an elaborate apology to Sickles. Key pinned the correspondence to-
gether and turned it over to Hoover for delivery at Stockton Man-
sion. Then, to clinch the matter, he sent a verbal message to Dan
through their mutual friend, John B. Haskin. In it he was at pains to
explain very precisely that he regarded Teresa simply as a child, felt
for her only paternal affection, considered himself as standing toward
her to use his own legal phrase in loco parentis. It was an attitude
cleverly calculated to win Dan's sympathetic comprehension. Then,
returning wearily to the Pendleton home, Barton changed into rid-
ing kit and rode off along the Rock Creek trail.

The crisis had unnerved him. He needed space and peace to settle
his course. So far he had managed to preserve the technical proprie-
tiesby the skin of his teeth. But he knew that he could not preserve
them much longer; and that if he could, Teresa would not. Their
bodily need of each other had become such as to reduce all other
considerations to dust. They had been wrongfully accused once.
They probably would be accused again. But the next time would
he have the boldness of, at least, his own conventional rectitude? He
doubted it.

The next day Dan, after a talk with Haskin, and feeling that he
had been made the fool of busybodies, sought Key out in his office.
His tone was ingenuous and disarming. "Barton, my boy, don't let

88 Dan Sickles

this thing make any difference between us or between you and
Teresa. I want everything to be just as it was. I know you're a man
of honor. I've never thought of you as anything else. But for Teresa's
sake, and for yours and mine, I simply had to run this damned gossip
to earth. I know you understand." A strong, vital hand crunched a
hand moist with cold sweat. Key was gracious but very pale. To hide
his inner wretchedness he complained of his heart, suggested they go
over to Brown's together and get a julep. The drinks served, Dan
insisted they cross glasses through linked arms pledge Bruderschaft,
German fashion. Then, as though nothing had happened, both fell to
talking politics. The two men parted, apparently, with more warmth
than usual. But never again, they knew, would it be with them as
once it had been.

CHAPTER XIV

Mad Honeymoon

FAR AS THE feminine portion of Washington society was con-
cerned, Teresa, with her dark Latin beauty, fluency in foreign
tongues, aura of scandal, remained something of a curiosity not to
be cultivated too closely. And Teresa herself was aware of it. After
a year of conventional social acceptance she still could not name a
woman in Washington whom she truly could regard as friend, and
had come rather wistfully to prize her gendehearted mother's occa-
sional visits. Then, at a tea, soon after die Napier Ball, she had met
Octavia Ridgeley, a sensible, liberal-minded New York girl, now
living with her parents quite close to Lafayette Square. The attrac-
tion between the two had been instant; and, from that moment,
Octavia had become almost an inmate of Stockton Mansion, often
calling in the morning, running over for dinner two or three times a
week, and sometimes staying all night. The sudden friendship gave

Mad Honeymoon 89

Dan a distinct sense of relief. He had been bothered by the fact that
Teresa seemed to make little contact with her own sex and that when
business took him away he must leave her without feminine com-
panionship. Now that problem was solved. Nevertheless, when, just
after the Beekman episode, his practice called him back to New
York for several weeks, he asked Haskin faithful henchman that he
was in a casual but guarded way to drop in on Teresa now and
again and see if she needed any help. On the surface it was a natural
enough request, for Teresa was not too expert a manager; and Has-
kin, a constant visitor at Stockton Mansion, was always craftily alert
to put himself at the service of the man he expected to see President.
But there was more to it than that. Dan trusted Teresa's good faith
but he did not trust her judgment. He knew that just as her youthful
naivete and impulsiveness had gotten her into several predicaments
provocative of scandal, so they might again. And scandal was the one
thing he could not afford. There must be no more of that! And
without stressing the point, he was plainly asking Haskin to keep
a friendly watch over her.

The situation for Barton and Teresa now had become dangerously
tense. Suspected, made the target of malicious attack, surrounded,
wherever they went, with whisperings, they still had refrained from
the find step. Now suddenly, by ironic decree, while all eyes seemed
centered upon them, and tantalization had keyed their passion to
torture, they found themselves alone in the stolid privacy of Stock-
ton Mansion, With Dan gone, Octavia absenting herself soon after
dinner, the servants assumed to be safely asleep, the little library with
its deep divan, cozy fire, and double-locked doors offered treacherous
security. Restraint fled down wind and, down wind, the simplest
sense, the plainest caution.

Haskin was a diligent fellow, but a coarse and crafty son of the
Wigwam hardly the man to be entrusted with a mission of tactful
surveillance. The day after Dan's departure, returning from a shop-
ping trip with his wife to Georgetown, he espied a dapple-gray
horse hitched outside Stockton Mansion and suddenly decided that
this would be an excellent time to pay a call. Driving up to the stoop,
he hurriedly assisted his wife to the pavement, ran with her up the
steps, quietly opened the unlocked door, crossed the empty parlor,
and burst without knocking into the little library beyond. The door
flung wide on Teresa and Barton just come in from a canter and still

90 Dan Sickles

in their riding clothes, standing at a little table discussing light lunch
and champagne. Teresa, in the midst of tossing the salad, looked up
with a startled gasp, flushed with confusion. "Why, Mr. Haskin!
Has anything happened?" Haskin was all facile apology: Dan had
asked him to drop in. ... He just happened to be passing by was
in quite a hurry couldn't find anyone about and so ... His voice
trailed off a trifle sheepishly. Barton, refilling the glasses, had quietly
put down the bottle and now was standing very still, subjecting
Haskin to a relentless blue stare. Teresa, recovering herself, was
greeting Mrs. Haskin, endeavoring to smile into a fat face just now
twisted to a nervous smirk. Hastily she introduced Barton to her,
then was offering both visitors wine. Conversation distinctly lagged;
and so, with more shambling apologies, the pair backed out. Cham-
pagne and salad d deux, at four in the afternoon, seemed evidence of
deviltry enough. But Haskin, cowed by the cold challenge in Barton's
eyes, thought better of reporting the matter to Dan. Mrs. Haskin,
scrambling into the carriage, snapped open a tight jaw. "She's a bad
woman, John a bad woman!"

Now it was mad, stolen honeymoon. For the next two or three
weeks the lovers were inseparable. There were long rides in the
forenoon, cozy teas together as the day drew down, sometimes the
theater at night and then the library until dawn. And perhaps with
a sense of the close kinship between love and death, often they
trysted at the still half-wild cemetery and wandered together among
its trees and tombs while Teresa's coachman snoozed on his seat or,
waking, grumbled his disgust to the pricked ears of the two blooded
bays. For the nonce two tragic beings moved in a happy delirium,
rapt beyond fear, and by that very fact stilling all titterings to an
expectant silence.

When Dan at last returned, Washington was already emptying;
and Teresa's hours were prosaically crowded with supervising the
rolling up of carpets, the covering of furniture, mirrors, and the
packing of multitudinous trunks. It was time for Bloomingdale again
and the long vacation.

As for Barton, his world on the instant had become a complete
blank, with but one living image Teresa. Dan he had not seen and
hardly dared face. But on the morning of their departure, in his role
of friend of the family, he rode over to the shabby little station to
bid them good-by. One last glimpse of Teresa he must have. And

"Who?n the Gods Would Destroy " 91

then there was the aching, shamefaced hope that possibly Dan might
invite him to Bloomingdale. When he arrived he found Dan in the
midst of a back-slapping group of politicians who had come to see
him off. A hurried farewell to Teresa, and there came the cry "All
aboard!" Dan, breaking away from the group, for the first time spied
Barton and came forward with outstretched hands. "Barton! I was
hoping you'd show up. We want you to come and see us this sum-
mer. I'd like you to see my place." The engine was tooting loudly.
As he dashed toward the already moving train, he shouted over his
shoulder, "And bring your boots it's fine riding country!"

Pale and shaken, his ears still ringing with Dan's warm voice, Bar-
ton stood motionless, oblivious of the greetings of friends, watching
the train vanish down the tracks.

CHAPTER XV

"Whom the Gods Would Destroy *

NOVEMBER, Dan Sickles would have to stand for re-election; and
in face of the rapidly growing power of the Republican party, the
vicious Tammany feuding between Wood-ite Soft-Shells and Tie-
mann Hard-Shells, and the ever-widening split in the Democratic
ranks over the extension of slavery, his political chances seemed
completely unpredictable. Under the circumstances he decided to or-
ganize his own support and conduct a virtually independent campaign*
Soon Bloomingdale began to take on the air of a busy country
resort. From early morning to late evening, groups of Siddes's many
friends Tammany chieftains, Democrats of every shade, ranking
members of the New York bar such as James T. Brady and Thomas
Francis Meagher, and, significantly, even a sprinkling of Republicans,
including the pontifical Edwin McMasters Stanton crowded his
library or roamed with him over the lawns in close discussion. All day

92 Dm Sickles

long, Mose, the colored boots, ran hither and thither with trays of
cooling drinks. Lunch, often served in relays for late-comers, loafed
along into midafternoon. And usually a knot of guests stayed to dinner.

Dan Sickles was a thoroughly social being. He enjoyed people,
liked to be the hub of a crowd, loved to play host, was indefatigable
in doing favors for his friends. If he had the trick of popularity, he
also had its substance and, with it, a magnetism that knit men to
him with a curiously strong devotion. Throughout his public life
he had spent himself freely in friendship. Now that friendship was
flowing back to him. The tide of response surprised and touched
him, stimulated all his energies. Never was he more heartsome, more
impressively keen, assured. And few of those who visited Blooming-
dale that summer failed to arrive at the conviction that Dan Sickles
was the coming man.

For Teresa the long vacation was a period of respite respite from
the exacting duties of Washington hostess and, what was far more
imperative, respite from her own inner tumult. At last she had a
chance to rest and collect herself. And, relaxed in the knowledge that
Dan was happy and unsuspecting, she let herself drift through the
long lazy days, fending off, with a kind of animal instinct, the shock
of realizing that Barton had taken possession of her entire being. To
her the interlude of half-somnolent peace seemed a gift from the
skies. And she was Italian enough, youthful and sensuous enough^to
ibandon herself to it: to enjoy while she might her hours with Laura,
ber morning canters along lie woodsy Jersey paths, the quiet eve-
lings en fanille. The household management gave her little concern,
"or the servants, under Mrs. Bagioli's watchful eye, took care of that.
Jut she was always on hand to play her part in greeting newcomers
often, with as much pride as Dan himself, would show them about
the rose gardens and orchards, the greenhouses and well-kept stables.
Outwardly her life seemed placid as the ornamental lake beyond the
lawns, , . . Then one morning a tall, fastidious figure came slowly
up the steps, followed by a coachman laden with bags. Peace fled
with her smothered cry!

There were few formalities at Bloomingdale. Dan greeted Barton
heartily, saw to it that he was comfortably quartered, then, with the
injunction to make himself free of the place and pick his own mount,
amicably left him to his own devices

However, amid a house full of guests, including the Bagiolis and

"Whom the Gods Would Destroy " 93

Grandfather Sickles, the situation for Barton and Teresa was full of
constraint. Their only opportunity to be alone together was in the
saddle; and, even so, after the first few rides, they often found them-
selves jogging along together in silence, oppressed by a sense of
foreboding they could neither admit nor shake off. And so, after a
few days, Barton, not wishing to overstay his visit, took moody
departure. And, with the exception of a brief meeting at the Atlantic
Cable celebration in New York some weeks later, they saw no more
of each other until the reopening of Congress early in October.

In a final burst of campaigning, "as brief as it was brilliant" to
cite a contemporary issue of Harper's WeeklyDon Sickles piled up
a decisive majority at the polls. The victory won amid the wild
enthusiasm of his supporters and against all the predictions of the
wiseacres now definitely established him in national politics. And
upon his return to the House, the fact was signalized by his appoint-
ment to the Committee of Foreign Affairs. It was an assignment
peculiarly advantageous for him at that moment. It not only enabled
him to exploit his diplomatic experience abroad, but what was far
more important to a man with his eye on the presidency it saved
him from embroilment in the bitter feuding at home. Also it put him
in a strategic position to promote his pet project the acquisition of
Cuba. And, for a while, completely absorbed in his new duties, he
had eyes and ears for little else.

Made more reckless than ever by their recent separation, Barton
and Teresa now again were seen everywhere together. As soon as
Dan left home usually about noon to attend the House, Teresa
would run upstairs to make a hasty afternoon toilette and then would
order her brougham. By one o'clock she would be on her way; and
almost always, within the first few blocks, would be met by Barton,
ostentatiously ceremonious with his "Good morning, madame!"
Thence the two would drive off together, sometimes on a shopping
expedition, sometimes on a round of calk among their more intimate
friends, the Slidells, Claytons, Browns, Thompsons, and the intri-
guing Mrs. Greenhow, occasionally even dropping in for a chat with
Old Buck himself, as he sat erect and immaculate at his desk, still
patiently endeavoring to portray a gentlemanly President beset by
political ruffians. Or sometimes they would direct the coachman to
take them to their old rendezvous, the Congressional Cemetery, or
the burying ground at Georgetown, where among the tombs and

94 Dan Sickles

trees they could enjoy a secluded hour. Scarcely a day passed that
they did not meet to spend most of the afternoon in each other's
company, and, when Dan was away, most of the evening also.

They could not escape noticing, of course, that they were stirring
up a fresh outburst of gossip, and that even the Stockton Mansion
servants particularly Bridget Duffy, the Irish chambermaid, and
John Thompson, the Scotch coachman had begun to assume an
impudently knowing attitude toward them. But they paid no heed.
Nothing mattered to them but to be together and for that no risk
seemed too great.

Their friends began to become worried about them. Presently
Hoover took it upon himself to drop Barton a kindly warning. But,
although it startled him into recognizing his own inner tension, Bar-
ton shrugged it aside. No longer was he the philandering poseur who
once, at the Cosmos dub, had boasted of his taste for "French in-
triguewith a spice of danger." For the past two years his passion for
Teresa had led him to play dice with his office, his social position,
even his life. And now, with the bravado of a proud weakling, he
still held on his course. And Teresa, ductile, enamored, blindly fol-
lowed his lead.

But a little later came a warning that could not be shrugged aside.
Casually but decisively, Dan made it plain to Teresa that he wished
her to refrain from inviting Barton to the house except when he
himself could be present. He offered no explanation, and in her panic
she dared not question him. And, what sharpened the significance
of his request, he now made a point of accompanying her to market
himself ostensibly to select the Madeira and Rhenish from Gautier's
or consult with butcher Emerson on the choice cuts and game for
the increasingly distinguished Stockton Mansion dinners.

Now, at last, and too late, Barton and Teresa began to make a
feeble effort at circumspection. To everyone's amusement, when
paying calls or attending teas they would arrive and leave separately;
and, when rettirning from a drive with Teresa, Barton would be
careful to alight before entering Lafayette Square naive measures
that deceived none, and only added to their own dejection as they
watched their former means of privacy vanish one by one. Stockton
Mansion was barred. The rains forbade ricjjbg. The coachman's
suspicious surliness ruled out their long drives into the country. Only
in die gossipy drawing rooms of their friends could they meet. And

V $i#3i3

' -i >" . V 1 iiV"; , '"' 7^1 "'''
^frtUv^ffS

From harper's Weekly.

PHILIP BARTON KEY

"Whom the Gods Would Destroy " 95

there, they soon realized, their sheer frustration trapped them into
betraying themselves in every glance and gesture. They had arrived
at impasse complete. And with that, they began to lose their wits.

So far as its residential districts were concerned, Washington of
the fifties was a quilt of satin rags and sackcloth patches. Here an
ukrafashionable section ended abruptly in a foul slum; there, a solid,
middle-class locality changed, in the width of a street, to a colored
shanty town.

And within three minutes' walk from Lafayette Square, going
north on Fifteenth Street, suddenly one came upon a quarter once
decent enough but now badly run down and taken over by Negroes.

Two blocks up the street where it makes a slight jog between K
and L streetsstood a narrow, two-story house flanked by vacant
lots, and with a large rear yardstoutly fenced to the height of a
tall man opening on a filthy alley. The flyblown, warped "To let"
sign in a lower window suggested that it had been untenanted for
some time.

Barton, roving the neighborhood meditating a mad plan, espied it;
and, apparently unmindful of the fact that he was one of the best-
known figures in the city, alighted, tied his horse to a tree, and
proceeded to make inquiries about it from a Negro woman next door.
Nancy Brown scanned his stylish riding clothes with suspicious ap-
praisal, tartly reminded him that it was against the law to use her
tree for a hitching post, and somewhat grudgingly told him that the
owner of the house, a colored man named Jonathan Gray, lived on
Capitol Hill. Barton, apologizing for using her tree, thanked her and
rode off. To the puzzled owner he naively explained that he thought
of taking the house for "a friend a congressman." After examining
it and assuring himself that it was usably, if scantily, furnished, he
paid down one hundred dollars for the first two months' rent, re-
questing that it be thoroughly cleaned for occupancy by the first of
December,

If the appearance of a dandified horseman seeking a house in the
colored quarter had aroused the curiosity of the block, his reappear-
ance three weeks later in overcoat and silk hat, entering by the front
door, did nothing to lessen it. And when, on his subsequent visits, a
puff of smoke soon was seen to belch from the chimney, and hands
from behind the drawn blind of an upper window tied a piece of

96 Dan Sickles

white string to the shutters as though to make a signal, and a slight
figure in plaid dress, black cloak and bonnet, a black velvet shawl
half shrouding her face, presently hurried in after him, the neighbor-
hood was all agog. But when, after a while, the lady came no more
to the front door, but was seen furtively picking her way through
the muck of the alley, creeping into the house by the back door, the
whole street became electrically watchful, convinced that "dem white
folks was up to no good."

A curious place for the amour of two fastidious beings! a shabby
old house, a drab bedroom with mildewed paper, ancient iron bed-
stead, dubious mattress, and only a wood fire in the grate to give it
some cheer while outside, on the pavement, at every door and win-
dow down the street, great blackberry eyes rolled on each other
knowingly, and Mrs. Nancy Brown cursed the blinds that were
always drawn.

But to the lovers this was the way it had to be. They never had
contemplated a future together, for they knew there was none, that
for them was only the hour they could snatch. To Teresa divorce-
on the only admissible grounds: adultery obviously was out of the
question. Elopement was equally so. She was as incapable of leaving
little Laura as she was of taking her and so depriving Dan in one
stroke of wife and idolized child. And Barton, with his pampered
soul, sick body, was hardly the man to play Lochinvar and boldly
take his woman West child or no. They dared not think beyond the
fact that, at last, they had a hideout where they could be alone
together. That it was in a quarter where they ran small risk of
meeting anyone they knew, and that it yet was near enough to
Stockton Mansion for Teresa to reach it alone afoot without need
of summoning her coachman seemed boon enough for the moment.
And the very complications they faced in arranging their meetings,
their naive set of signab-rthe string at the window to say, "At home";
Barton's flourished handkerchief, as he passed Stockton Mansion, to
telegraph to Teresa behind her blinds, "All's well, will be there as
agreed" the very excitement of watching, dodging loungers, schem-
ing to arrive unseen, gave to each tryst a thrill of surreptitious, tragic
adventure that, despite the bleared wall paper, musty odor, creaky
bed, had its own fatalistic fascination.

And Dark Town watched . . . and Dark Town talked.

"/ Have Killed Him?' 97

CHAPTER XVI

"I Have Killed Him!"

JLHB CHRISTMAS HOLIDAYS came and passed. And again a gray wisp
of wood smoke hung above the chimney of No. 383 Fifteenth Street;
and again a piece of white string dangled from an upper shutter; and
again a veiled figure picked her way through the muddy alley and
darted in at the rear gate while pickaninnies peeked around the
corner behind her, and Mr. and Mrs. Seeley, churchgoing colored
folk, whose house commanded a view of the yard, took scandalized
note of the visitor's dress even to the bugles on her velvet shawL

But now the wisp of smoke was seen more often. And Barton and
Teresa, emboldened by their apparent immunity from detection,
sometimes would arrive hurriedly together. The last time that they
dared this piece of indiscretion, however, the interested scrutiny of
two policemen on the corner caused them at the last moment to stroll
on past the house without a glance at it. And the mammies gossiping
on their stoops, peering knowingly from the policemen to the elab-
orately unconcerned couple sauntering down the street, smothered
chuckles behind their aprons. And Mrs. Baylis who ran a rooming-
house across the way, watching the ruse with a mingling of caustic
comment and Scriptural quotation, called upon her shambling son
Crittenden to witness that "dem white folks sho' act mighty guilty."

That night Teresa sat down to struggle with her weekly problem,
the guest list for the Thursday dinner. When at last she had finished,
she handed it to Dan for his approval Running his eye rapidly over
the names, "Slidells, Claytons, Parkers, Pendletons," he paused at the
initials P. B. K. "Don't you think we are rather overdoing Barton,
Terry?" Teresa was flustered. "But Dan, you said that you wanted
to invite those who had entertained you, and Barton has had you to

98 Dan Sickles

lunch at the club several times. Besides, he lives with the Pendle-
tons." There was no mistaking Dan's indifferent, "Do as you choose,"
as he tossed the list back to her. But the hand that began scratching
out monogrammed notes still trembled a little.

The following Sunday, Laura was to have been christened with
Mrs. Slidell as godmother and none other than Old Buck himself as
godfather. But in the meantime she had developed a temperature,
and the ceremony had to be postponed. From day to day her condi-
tion worsened. The doctor was noncommittal. Dan and Teresa, tak-
ing turns in watching by her bedside, remained tense with anxiety
until on the morning of the dinner party the case was diagnosed as
nothing more than an attack of measles. That night, host and hostess
were all relief and laughter. The guests quickly caught their tone.
The dinner was long remembered. It was the gayest Stockton Man-
sion was to know.

Four or five times, during these last days of February, Barton and
Teresa foregathered at their shabby rendezvous but each time with
mounting trepidation. No longer could they hide from themselves
that their comings and goings were closely watched. On Wednesday,
February 23, quite early in the morning, they met at Maury and
Taylor's bookstore, on "the Avenue.'* Teresa little Laura, now fully
recovered, trotting beside her was finishing her day's marketing.
Barton accompanied her to the butcher's to help her select a joint,
and thence to the dairy. But, taut as they were with the sense of
impending crisis, they found it impossible to talk to any purpose in
public; and, presently, Barton took Laura over to the nearby home
of the Hoovers to play there awhile, arranging to meet Teresa at
No. 383 as soon as she finished her shopping. Twenty minutes later
he was letting himself into the house aware, more than ever, of heads
slewed to watch, faces peering from windows, dusky figures appear-
ing at doors. And when, shortly, Teresa arrived by die rear entrance,
she was breathlessly agitated. On the way she had run into several
people she knew; a group of darkies at the corner had burst into
insolent chuckles as she passed; pickaninnies, whispering and pointing,
had followed her right to the yard gate. Barton cursed his own
nerves as he tried to soothe her.- But it was plain to them both now
that these walls, that once had seemed so shelteringly opaque, had
turned to glass. Feebly Barton declared that he would set about
finding a safer place. It was an empty gesture. Both knew it. Fatalisti-

"/ Have Killed Him.*" 99

cally they soon ceased to talk, . . An hour later they parted with
the premonition that they would never meet there again.

The next day Teresa, accompanied by Octavia, set out to pay some
overdue calls. On their way to Mrs. Greenhow's they encountered
Barton on horseback. After chatting for a moment he dismounted,
tied his horse to a hitching post, and joined them. It was late after-
noon when the brougham drew up beside an impatiently pawing
Lucifer. Barton seemed loath to leave, and with foot on. step, elbow
on knee, remained, stooping forward into the carriage, earnestly
scanning Teresa's face. Her distraught appearance had been troubling
him all the afternoon. His solicitous, "Your eyes look badly, my
dear," carried more than the words implied. Shakily, Teresa admitted
that she was not feeling very well. Since it was Thursday, and he
knew that after the usual Stockton Mansion dinner, it had been
agreed that the whole party would attend the hop at Willard's, he
asked if he would see her there. She drew a deep breath. "If Dan will
let me go." Octavia, a self-effacing shadow in the background, pre-
tended neither to see nor hear. But John Cooney, the new coachman,
already put on the alert by belowstairs talk, listened with cocked ears.

After dinner that night, as the whole party was preparing to leave
for Willard's, the butler brought Dan a letter. The cheap, yellow
envelope suggested nothing of any importance, and he stuffed it into
his pocket unopened. When most of the guests had driven off, he
found that a couple of out-of-town friends who had come in hacks
had no conveyance. Promptly he seated them with Teresa in the
brougham, cheerily declaring that he would follow on foot, since it
was a matter of only a few blocks.

When, a little later, he entered the ballroom, he noticed Barton
and Teresa sitting on a sofa in close conversation. The curious seri-
ousness of their manner was something that he remembered only
later. As he came toward them Barton jumped up as if he had for-
gotten something and, with a bow, hurried away. Just then Dan was
intercepted by Wooldridge; and when he saw Teresa again, she was
dancing with Senator SlidelL Barton had disappeared.

Returning from the dance well after midnight, Teresa, exhausted,
went off to bed. Dan, however, still had work to do; and poking up
the fire in his own combination of study and bedroom, he sat down
to con over the speech he was to deliver the next day on the Navy
Yard appropriation bilL It was not until the task was finished and

ioo

Dan Sickles

he was emptying his pockets to undress that he came upon the for-
gotten yellow envelope. Opening it carelessly, he suddenly went
still, staring blankly at a few precise, incredible lines, written rather
illiterately in a distinctly literate hand:

S

'

FACSIMILE OF THE ANONYMOUS LETTER INFORMING HON.
DANIEL E. SICKLES OF THE INFIDELITY OF His WIFE

Washington February 24th 1859
Hox. DANIEL SICKLES

Dear Sir with deep regret I enclose to your address these few lines but
an indispensable duty compels me so to do seeing that you are greatly
imposed upon.

There is a fellow I may say for he is not a gentleman by any means by
the name of Phillip Barton Key & I believe the district attorney who rents
die house of a negro man by the name of Jno. A Gray situated on ijth
street btw'n K and L streets for no other purpose than to meet your wife
Mrs. Sickles, he hangs a string out of the window as a signal to her that
he is in and leaves the door unfastened and she walks in and sir I do
assure you

with these few hints I leave the rest for you to

Most Respfly

Your friend ILP.G.

"/ Ham Killed Himr 101

Dan crunched the note to a wad, tossed it on the desk. "Damna-
tion! What do they take me for?" His mind flashed back over the
Thomas affair, the Beekman affair ... He had risen to the bait
twice; they wouldn't hook him again. Anonymousof course! He
reached for a cigar and, chewing on it, strode about the room irrita-
bly. Then involuntarily he was straightening out the wadded paper,
scanning it again "a negro man by tie name of Jno. A Gray . . .
ijth street btw'n K and L . . . hangs a string out of the win-
dow . . ."

Like most public men he had received the usual meed of anony-
mous notes abusive, insinuating, driveling and always had destroyed
them without a thought. But he could not blink the fact that this one
was different. Here was no threat, no innuendo only a factual state-
ment that could be checked in an hour. Again he was pacing the
room, chewing savagely on his cigar. Very well, he would say noth-
ing about it. First thing in the morning he would check the trash
and be done with it!

But even as he started again to undress, the detailed circumstan-
tiality of the note began to claw at him. Who would invent such a
thing? Was some political enemy trying to trick him into making
a public ass of himself? Possibly. He must be on his guard about
that! Of course, he could take the note straight to Teresa and clear
up the matter at once. But the Thomas episode had come close to
shattering her social confidence for life, Beekman's scurrilous talk
had caused her days of wretched humiliation. He was not going to
expose her again to anything of that sort. Then suddenly, with a
queer mixture of relief and grim amusement, he was reflecting that,
in all likelihood, Barton was meeting one of the fancy-girls about
town at that address, and some snooping idiot had mistaken her for
Teresa! It was a mistake easy enough to make, too, for of course
Barton and Teresa had been seen together often enough. The more
he thought of it, the more he felt that this was the real explanation.
And with that he went to bed to lie wide-eyed while, despite all he
could do, a hundred hitherto unremarked incidents in Teresa's asso-
ciation with Barton paraded before him a dance of devils clad in
new, and torturing, significance*

In the morning, without waiting for breakfast, while Teresa slept
late, he went on foot to the address given in the note. A few seem-
ingly casual inquiries among the Negroes of the neighborhood as-

I02 Dan Sickles

sure J him that it was none other than "Phillip Barton Key" who had
rented the house, also that the owner indubitably was "a negro man
by the name of Jonathan Gray/' Shaken with misgiving,^ he rushed
to the telegraph office. Well lie remembered how once, in stress of
violent grief, he had gone completely out of hand; and now, like a
nian facing an emergency operation yet still collected enough to send
for the right surgeon, he wired his old friend, Collector Hart of the
Port of New York. His message was brief, "Please come at once. I

need you."

It was already eleven o'clock; and snatching breakfast at Willard's,
he walked to the Capitol. The House was just about to go into session,
but he knew that it would be an hour or so before he would have to
speak. To avoid conversation he went to his chair and pretended to
be absorbed in making notes. Presently a page brought him a telegram
from Hart, regretting that he could not get away for a few days.
Able to stand the suspense no longer, Dan sent for George B. Wool-
dridge. For the past year that good friend and efficient congressional
clerk had been intimate in all his affairs even to the point of taking
over much of his correspondence. Now at the summons he promptly
appeared, leaning on his crutches, at the door. Dan led him into a
foyer behind the Speaker's chair and, struggling to keep a calm front,
drew the note from his pocket. "George, I want to speak to you on a
very painful matter. Late last night I received this letter." Steadily
he forced himself to read aloud. But at the words, "and sir I do assure
you," he choked. Handing the note to Wooldridge, he turned away.
And it was a minute or two before he could control his voice enough
to explain that he had just come from Fifteenth Street and had estab-
lished all the facts but one the woman's identity. His tone turned
firm. "My hope is that it is not my wife but some other woman. As
my friend you will go there and see whether ... it is or not. Get
a carriage I'll show you the house." During the drive, Wooldridge,
his arm about Dan's shoulder, declared that he would rent a room
opposite the house and remain on watch until he could ascertain
definitely, as he hoped and believed, that the woman was not Airs.
Sickles. After pointing out the house to Wooldridge, Dan, a litde
comforted, returned to the Capitol, to labor, like a man in a dream,
through a long and tedious analysis of the Navy Yard bill.

That same afternoon Barton met Teresa again accompanied by
her Ktde chaperon, Laura at Green's, the cabinetmaker's. A mo-

"/ Have Killed Himr 103

ment before, a colored messenger had thrust a cheap yellow envelope
into his hand. He had only just opened it, and while Teresa and Laura
went on into the shop, he lingered outside to read it. ... Across
the street two curious loafers, a William Ratley and a Frederick
Wilson, watched him. Presently, when Teresa reappeared, and he
strolled on down the Avenue with her, still frowning over the folded
sheet, Wilson, with a remark that set Ratley chuckling, crossed over
and nonchalantly planted himself against a lamppost where the two
must pass. Just then Barton, without a word, handed the note to
Teresa. She read it swif tly, gave a quick gasp, and turned it back to
him. And with Laura holding a hand of each, they walked on past
the loiterer by the lamppost, unseeing, blanched, speechless.

Upon reaching the house, Teresa, pleading indisposition, imme-
diately went to her room. Dan Sickles dined alone. Aid Barton Key,
feeling himself a man foredoomed, went to his house on C Street
and spent an hour with his children.

The next day, haggard and hollow-eyed, he haunted Pennsylvania
Avenue for hours, mechanically returning greetings, pretending haste
when anyone tried to detain him. But no Teresa appeared. He could
not know that she ky abed, stunned and still, awaiting the stroke.
Finally, in desperation, he went to the Cosmos Club, and taking an
upper room facing Stockton Mansion across the square, he remained
frozen to the window, watching through his litde French opera
glasses for some glimpse of her.

Meanwhile Wooldridge, returning to the room he had rented from
Mrs. Baylis, had been prosecuting his inquiries. From Crittenden he
gleaned among a lot of inconclusive details one fact that seemed
important: it was on the previous Thursday afternoon that the kdy
last had been seen entering No. 383. With this he went at once to
Stockton Mansion, taking the young Negro with him for further
questioning. Dan, at the mention of the word Thursday, stopped
pacing the floor and sank into a chair. "Thank God, George, it
wasn't Mrs. Sickles! Thursday afternoon she was paying calls with
Miss Ridgeley I know that. And now I must ask you to be very
careful in your inquiries not to mention her name the mere suspi-
cion could be as bad as the terrible reality."

The next day, Saturday, Wooldridge again went back to talk to
Mrs. Baylis. But now he had no need to ask questions. Word had
spread around the block that the white folk at No. 383 were being

104 & m Sickles

investigated; and the Negroes, eager to tell all they knew, crowded
around him, talking each other down. Most of what they told him
he already knew, but from Mrs. Baylis and Mrs. Seeley he obtained,
for the first time, a minute account of the lady's dress. Darkly he
realized that the description tallied all too closely with some of
Teresa's elegant costumes. Then suddenly both women were correct-
ing Crittenden, affirming that the lady's last visit was not on Thurs-
daybut on Wednesday! Insistently Wooldridge questioned them on
the point. But they could not be shaken. All the colored folk around
agreed with them that it was Wednesday; and at last Crittenden
himself admitted that he had made a mistake.

Wooldridge knew then what he had to do. Returning home to an
early dinner, he found a note from Dan, stressing his previous re-
quest: "Please be very tender in your inquiries; for I am satisfied
now that Mrs. Sickles is not involved." Sick at heart, Wooldridge
forthwith took a hack to the Capitol and sent in for Dan. Silently
the two walked down the corridor, away from the congressmen
clotting the lobby. Then Wooldridge rested on his crutches. "Dan,
I am afraid I have bad news for you. Crittenden was wrong about
the day. It was on Wednesday, not on Thursday, that the lady was
last seen at Gray's house. All the colored folk of the block say the
same thing." Doggedly he sketched the costume, reading from his
notes, "plaid dress, handsome bkck velvet shawl with bugles, beaver
hat.*' Before he had finished, Dan with a hoarse cry flung himself
against the wall, bursting into such a convulsion of sobbing that
Wooldridge hastily drew htm into an anteroom.

It was half an hour before the tempest died down. Then a spent
Dan Sickles was quietly asking Wooldridge to bring his hat. A few
minutes later, striding down the Avenue, looking neither right nor
left, he failed to notice the greeting of the Reverend Smith Pyne,
who was to have officiated at Laura's christening. Puzzled, the clergy-
man remarked to his son, "Mr. Sickles certainly has a peculiar appear-
ance." Looking back, he added thoughtfully, "I never saw such an
air of desolation . . . defiance."

At Stockton Mansion dinner already was kid. But Teresa did not
come down; instead she sent word by Bridget that a headache kept
her abed. Mechanically Dan took his pkce at the table, then, with a
groan, jumped up and ordered the dinner sent upstairs. The bedroom
was empty- When Bridget had set down the tray and closed the door

"/ Have Killed Himf' 105

behind her, Dan called sharply, "Teny." Wan and disheveled, she
came from the dressing room. One glance and she knew! Despite his
effort at control, his voice blasted from him like a pistol shot, "Where
were you Wednesday afternoon?" Teresa blenched, swayed, sank
down on the little slipper chair at her side. "Why . . . I I think I
was shopping, Dan." In two strides he was standing over her, his fists
knotting and unknotting spasmodically. 'Weren't you at a house on
Fifteenth Street with Barton Key?" Teresa drooped her head. Stoop-
ing, he shouted, "Tell me!" He shook her violently. cc Were you?"
Her nod was almost imperceptible. A hand seized her left wrist.
A wrench and her ring was gone. She slid to the floor, fainting.

A little later the servants heard loud voices in the room tones of
fierce rage, wild protestation, broken pleading, shrill weeping, gut-
tural sobbing.

Presently all was quiet. Teresa, a lifeless image, sat at her escritoire
preparing to write, fip and pen aquiver. Dan deliberately opened the
door wide, then came and stood beside her. Hair shagged, face
streaked, vest torn open, he looked like a maniac, but his manner was
tensely alert, collected. "Now write write down in your own words
what you have just told me." The pen dropped on the desk. "Dan
... I can't." He picked up the pen, put it in her hand, and as though
she were a child, closed her fingers over it. His voice was terrifyingly
quiet, emphatic. "You must. You owe it to me. It is all you can do
for me now. God knows what may come of this! "

Slowly, laboriously, hypnotically, in a quaking, almost indecipher-
able hand, Teresa began to write halting, disjointed dabs of words.
But Dan, now seemingly galvanized by his agony, remained clear-
minded, focused on what must be done. Two lines, and Teresa's
mind refused to work further. And again, as though she were a child
at her lessons, he prompted her, by question, suggestion, correction,
to set down just those precise details that he knew would be required
in any legal statement of the facts. But he wished that statement to
be her own; and only when her crawling pen came to a dead halt
did he offer her a word, a phrase. It was a slow, crucifying process.
But at last the blotched scrawl ky between them:

I have been in a house in Fifteenth street, with Air. Key. How many
times I don't know. I believe the house belongs to a colored man. The
house is unoccupied. Commenced going there the latter part of January.
Have been in alone and with Mr. Key. Usually stayed an hour or more.

106 Dan Sickles

There was a bed in the second story. I did what is usual for a wicked
woman to do. The intimacy commenced this winter, when I came from
New York, in that house an intimacy of an improper kind. Have met
half a dozen times or more, at different hours of the day. On Monday
of this week, and Wednesday also. Would arrange meetings when we
met in the street and at parties. Never would speak to him when Air.
Sickles was at home, because I knew he did not like me to speak to him;
did not see Air. Key for some days after I got here. He then told me he
had hired the house as a place where he and I could meet. I agreed to it.
Had nothing to eat or drink there. The room is warmed by a wood fire.
Air, Key generally goes first. Have walked there together say four times
I do not think more; was there on Wednesday last, between two and
three. I went there alone. Laura was at Airs. Hoover's. Air. Key took and
left her there at my request. From there I went to Fifteenth street to meet
Air. Key; from there to the milk woman's. Immediately after Air. Key left
Laura at Airs. Hoover's, I met him in Fifteenth street. Went in by the
back gate. Went in the same bedroom, and there an improper interview
was had. I undressed myself. Air. Key undressed also. This occurred on
Wednesday, 23rd of February, 1859. Air. Key has kissed me in this house
a number of times. I do not deny that we have had connection in this
house, last spring, a year ago, in the parlor, on the sofa. Air. Sickles was
sometimes out of town, and sometimes in the CapitoL I think the intimacy
commenced in April or May, 1858. 1 did not think it safe to meet him in
this house, because there are servants who might suspect something. As
a general thing, have worn a black and white woollen plaid dress, and
beaver hat trimmed with black velvet. Have worn a black silk dress there
also, also a plaid silk dress, black velvet cloak trimmed with lace, and a
black velvet shawl trimmed with fringe. On Wednesday I either had on
my brown dress or black and white woollen dress, beaver hat and velvet
shawL I arranged with Air. Key to go in the back way, after leaving Laura
at Airs. Hoover's. He met me at Air. Douglas', as we would be less likely
to be seen. The house is in Fifteenth street between K and L streets, on
the left hand side of the way; arranged the interview of Wednesday in the
street, I think, on Alonday. I went in the front door, it was open, occu-
pied the same room, undressed myself, and he also; went to bed together.
Air. Key has ridden in Mr. Sickles' carriage, and has called at this house
without Air. Sickles's knowledge, and after my being told not to invite
him to do so, and against Air. Sickles' repeated request.

TERESA BAGIOLI

This is a true statement, written by myself, without any inducement
held out by Air. Sickles of forgiveness or reward, and without any menace
from him. This I have written with my bedroom door open, and my

: 7 Hare Killed Him.*"

107

maid and child in the adjoining room, at half past eight o'clock in the
evening. Miss Ridgeley is in the house, within call.

TERESA BAGIOLI
Lafayette Square, Washington, D.C., Feb. 26, 1859.

Mr. and Mrs. Pendleton dined here two weeks ago last Thursday
with a large party. Mr. Key was also here, her brother, and at my sugges-

FACSIMILE OF PART OF TERESA SICKLES* CONFESSION

io8 Dan Sickles

tion he was invited because he lived in the same house, and also because
he had invited Air. Sickles to dine with him, and Air. Sickles wished to
invite all those from whom he had received invitations; and Air. Sickles
said "do as you choose."

TERESA BAGIOLI

Written and signed in presence of O. AL Ridgeley and Bridget Duffy.
Feb. 26, 1859.

Octavia, aware of grave trouble impending, had kept close to
Teresa all day, and still lingered downstairs in the library, pretending
to read, but actually listening dry-mouthed to the ebb and flow of
the storm overhead. It was eight o'clock when Dan appeared and in
a strange voice asked her to come upstairs for a moment. Tremulously
she followed him. At the top of the stairs he looked into the nursery
and beckoned Bridget Duffy just then putting Laura to bed. Care-
fully covering the main part of the confession with a blotter, he
asked both girls to witness Teresa's signature. Now at last his forced
composure gave way. And as Octavia, and then Bridget, in embar-
rassed silence put their names to the strange document, he began
pacing the floor, fingers pressed to his temples, moaning, in a brutal,
husky staccato, "Laura! My little Laura! My little Laura!"

When the girls had gone, Teresa, dazed, feeling her way as though
she were blind, staggered across the hall to Octavia's room and,
closing the door, stumbled to the floor, her head on a little Victoria
chair by the bed. Unable to obtain any word or sign from her,
Octavia tried to lift her. But it was as though she struggled with a
creature turned to lead. Far into the night she crouched by Teresa's
side, patting her, talking to her without sign. At last, utterly
wearied, she undressed and lay down still, between broken patches
of sleep, maintaining her vigil. In the morning Teresa still ky where
she had fallen. And Octavia, thinking now that, perhaps, in God's
mercy, it were better so, left her. And Bridget, coming to make up
the room, took one glance at her mistress and tiptoed out.

Dan, meanwhile, had gone to his room. All through the night, from
time to time, his bursts of grief shook the house. Presently Laura
began whimpering. And Dan, suddenly shamed, stilled, crept to her
room, took her up and carried her to his own bed. And as he held
the tiny replica of Teresa against him, he began to realize in more
dread clarity that what had come upon him was more than loss a

"7 Have Killed Him?' 109

rending mutilation. He knew now that Teresa was not to him what
she might have been had he met her a woman, but that from infancy
through childhood, girlhood, wifehood she had become meshed in
his fiber, a private delight, a pet possession, secure in a special place
in his heart a place so secluded from all his passing affairs with other
women that he never even had thought of them as touching her skirt.
Bitterly he realized that sometimes he had neglected her, been im-
patient with her immaturity. But no more than he had ever dreamed
that another man could supersede him had he dreamed that another
woman could take her place as his wife and he knew now, too late,
that no woman ever could. And it was as though he saw a Great
Hand reach out and take her and with her, child, home, honor,
place, leaving him in howling darkness, all ambition turned to dust.

Yet he knew there was something to be done.

Sunday morning, while Octavia breakfasted with Laura, Dan
mournfully roamed the house, upstairs and down, rambling aimlessly
from one room to another, every now and again breaking out into
wild weeping, and Bridget, meeting him on die stairs wringing his
hands, fled tearfully to the kitchen. Presently, realizing that he must
have some human help or go mad, he sent for Wooldridge and that
much-trusted Tammany friend of his, Samuel F. Butterworth, just
then visiting Senator SUdelL When Wooldridge arrived, Dan thrust
the confession into his hands and rushed upstairs to his room. There,
a few minutes later, Butterworth found him prone on the bed in a
state of incoherent grief, able only to wail, again and again, "I am a
dishonored and ruined man, I cannot look you in the face." Finally
dragging himself to his feet, apologizing for his behavior, Dan wearily
recited the story, ending despairingly, "What shall I do what shall I
do?"

In contrast to the silently sympathetic Wooldridge, Butterworth,
a hardheaded practical politician, was quick with his advice. "If I
were you, Dan, I would send Mrs. Sickles immediately to her mother
in New York, It's near the end of the session, and her going would
excite no remark. It will be half a year before the House meets again.
What you should do is take a trip to Europe meanwhile arrange a
separation. I don't suppose the affair is known to more than two or
three persons although doubtless a good many may have their sus-
picions. Think of your own future, man."

Dan listened to the cold, matter-of-fact tones with bitter disbelief.

no Dan Sickles

"It's no use, Sam. They were too utterly reckless. All the Negroes
in the neighborhood know about it and God knows how many
others."

Butterworth seemed to hesitate, then rose. "Fd like to talk to
Wooldridge about this." In the library, Wooldridge handed him the
confession. After prolonged scrutiny, he put it down. "I don't know
what to say. Think I'll go over to the clubhouse tell Dan I'll be back
soon."

Across the square Barton, fruitlessly watching Stockton Mansion
through his binoculars, could stand the suspense no longer. For two
nights he had not slept, scarcely had eaten, sustaining himself with
whisky that affected him no more than water. Now he plunged out-
side, flourished his handkerchief three times, peering through the
screen of budding trees at Teresa's window. There was no answer-
ing signal. What had happened? Had Dan ? Trying to think what
to do, he jerkily walked a few blocks, turned back. Passing along the
south side of the park, he waved thrice again. Still no sign. Hopelessly
he entered the clubhouse and went to his room, snatched up his
binoculars and watched and watched. Several times he was on the
point of going boldly over and meeting whatever was to be met.
At least he would know . . .

When Butterworth entered the library again, Wooldridge hastened
to tell him that he had just seen Key pass and repass the house on
the opposite side of the square, waving his handkerchief. And
Bridget, in the kitchen basement in the front of the house, witnessing
the waving, had called the cook, crying, "There's Disgust signaling
his Disgrace again."

In the meantime Barton, with a last desperate ruse in mind, had left
the club and, circling the eastern end of the park, had mingled with
the stream of worshipers coming from St. John's Church, hoping to
use some of them for cover. Singling out a young couple, slight
acquaintances, sauntering in the direction of Stockton Mansion, he
linked stride with them. Despite his affected casualness, his pallor
and his bloodshot eyes startled them. Solicitously they asked if he
had been ill. Barton clutched at the passing sympathy. <c Yes, and I
am not feeling very well." Then, with a last gesture of bravado, C 1n
fact, I have a mind to go West and hunt buffalo. It would either cure
me or kill me and I don't care much which."

Abreast now of Stockton Mansion, Barton, with a wide flourish,

^ Z

-

Si?

27 s

il

TERESA SICKLES

"7 He Killed Himr in

whipped out his handkerchief. At that moment Dan's little Italian
greyhound, Dandy, ran across the street and began to frolic about
him in greeting. Cleverly pretending to play with the dog, he flicked
his handkerchief at him three times while keenly watching Teresa's
window. Still there came no sign. ... At the corner, half a block
away, he bade good-by to his friends and continued around the park
to the club.

At the same moment Dan was stumbling downstairs, bursting in
upon Wooldridge and Butterworth in the library, shouting wildly,
"I just have seen the scoundrel making signals. My God, this is
horrible!"

In a curiously unconvincing tone, Butterworth urged him to sane
consideration of the matter. "Calm down, my friend, and look this
thing squarely in the face. So long as there's a possibility of keeping
it quiet, you must do nothing to destroy that possibility." Then very
deliberately, "You might) you know, be quite mistaken in your belief
that the whole town knows about it."

Dan, goaded, cut him short with a grim gesture toward the win-
dow. "After that? All Washington is talking about it."

Butterworth's shrug was spark to the tinder. "If that be so, then
there is but one course left to you. As a man of honor, you need no
advice."

It was sentence of death. Suddenly Dan knew it knew now that
nothing but blood could wash this smirch from his life. With no
more ado he made for the door, beckoning, "Come on. I am going
to the clubhouse."* In the hall, however, motioning Butterworth
to go ahead, he ran downstairs to the room in the basement where
he stored his saddles, guns, and heavy New York winter wear. There
he hastily charged a large-bore, single-shot Derringer deadliest of
short-range weapons; and a clumsy, muzzle-loading Colt revolver
discharged by means of separate caps affixed to the butt of each
chamber.

Slowly making the necessary half-circuit around the sleepy, de-
serted, little park, Butterworth, at the southwest corner as by some
fateful decree met Barton just coming from the clubhouse not forty
yards away. Courteously Barton greeted him. "Good morning, Mr.
Butterworth what a fine day we have," and was passing on, but a

*In his own report of the matter, Butterworth pretended not to know Dan's
intentions obviously to clear his own skirts. It was not credited.

ii2 Dan Sickles

hand detained him. "Have you come from the club?" The reply-
was curt. "I have." Butterworth drew out his words. "Do you
know ... if Air. Stewart ... is in his room?" and moved on a
pace, forcing Barton to turn around as he answered, "Yes, Mr.
Stewart is in his room, and he is quite unwell." Looking past him,
Butterworth saw Dan rapidly approaching, and noticed that, al-
though it was a warm day, he had donned a heavy ulster. He bowed
pleasantly. "I am going up to see him. Good morning." Turning, he
walked deliberately, ears alert, toward the club, then suddenly
wheeled, backing against the park rails. A tenor scream split the
silence: "Key, you scoundrel! You have disgraced my-house you
must die!" There came the crash of a revolver shot. Barton, stagger-
ing, instincrively reached in his inner breast pocket. But he had
changed his coat a few minutes before. His hand closed on a little
pair of French opera glasses! Dan placed a fresh cap in his Colt,
aimed. But the trigger clicked harmlessly on a dud. In a wild effort
to forestall a third shot, Barton lunged at him, grappled him, weakly
endeavoring to batter his face with the binoculars. But Dan flung him
off, thrust the revolver in his pocket, backed away into the middle
of the street, and whipped out the Derringer. Reeling, Barton re-
treated backward toward the club and desperately hurled his binocu-
lars at the approaching muzzle. But blasting, "You villain! You have
dishonored my house! You must die diedie!" Dan came on, and
within ten feet, fired. Mortally wounded, Barton doubled up,
lurched toward a tree, clutched it, crying, "Don't shoot don't
shoot! " Remorseless as fate, Dan tossed the Derringer aside, drew his
Colt again, set a cap, and still blasting "You must die you must die!**
fired once more. Crouching, gripping his guts, Barton slumped to
the ground. Grimly as an executioner Dan, setting a fresh cap, strode
down on him and put the barrel right to his head. But a member of
the dub, running up, stopped him. "Mr. Sickles for God's sake!"
And Butterworth, coming forward, took Dan by the arm. Without
a word, they walked away together.

It was done! Suddenly as calm as he had just been frenzied, Dan,
thrusting Butterworth quietly aside, announced that he was going
over to the home of Attorney General Black to give himself up. At
this, Butterworth turned back and followed amid the rapidly gather-
ing, excited crowd as Barton was carried to the clubhouse and laid
on the parlor floor his head propped on the rung of a tilted chair.

"I Have Killed Him.*" 113

There Butterworth waited until the dying man's last faint gasps had
ceased and the doctor had pronounced life extinct. Then he walked
over to Judge Black's with the news.

Meanwhile a hastily organized coroner's jury prepared to hold
inquest over the blood-dappled but still dignified figure on the floor
the face strangely composed as though the reft spirit were already
aware of atonement, release. It was hours before the troubled jurors
could agree on a statement. Guardedly they concluded that "the
deceased met death from the effect of pistol shots fired by the Hon.
Daniel E. Sickles.",

After a prolonged and painful interview with Judge Black, Dan
and Butterworth took carriage to Stockton Mansion to find an
excited crowd about the steps and a group of friends and newspaper-
men in the hall. Dan, a tousled demoniac, pushed through the crowd
and went immediately upstairs. Alarmed at his murderous appearance,
a young Tammanyite, McCluskey, followed him halfway up, then
hesitated, listening. At that moment Mayor Berritt and Chief of
Police Goddard, with several officers, arrived from the clubhouse.
Upstairs Dan went straight to the front bedroom, closed the door.
Teresa, still in her dressing gown, her black hair wild about her,
turned from the window, her great dark eyes one crazed question.
His stare was as crazed. "Yes, I've killed him!" The door slammed
on a scream.

Heavily he went downstairs. There he briefly greeted some of his
acquaintances Senator Slidell, J. H. McBlair, and several others but
at sight of his beloved friend, Congressman Robert J. Walker, his
voice broke. "A thousand thanks for coming to see me at a time
like this." Unable to say another word, he gripped Walker's sleeve,
prilling him into the back parlor. Butterworth followed, closing the
door behind him. Ensued a terrifying scene. With the howl of a
wounded wild beast, Dan flung himself upon the sofa. For some
minutes his hoarse cries, unearthly sobbing, screaming protestations
to God, rang through the house while, in the hall and parlor, talk
died down and men looked uneasily into one another's eyes. Before
such paroxysms of despair, Walker and Butterworth stood helpless,
aghast. At last Mayor Berritt strode into the room and, taking Dan
by the shoulders, sternly bade him compose himself and get ready to
go to jaiL With a tremendous effort at self-control Dan rose and,
accompanied by Walker, Butterworth, and the mayor, re-entered

ii4 an Sickles

the parlor, where Chief of Police Goddard awaited him. As he ap-
peared at the street door the crowd outside burst into hoots, jeers,
catcalls. Seeming not to know what he was doing, he vaguely waved
to them; but Mayor Berritt at his side sharply warned him not to
attract attention and hustled him into Senator Gwin's proffered car-
riage.

At the jail, after a cursory examination, he was committed on a
charge of homicide, and, refusing bail despite many urgent offers-
he walked resolutely to his cell with Walker and Butterworth. Once
more he broke down but now quietly, in utter emotional exhaustion.
And saying little, his friends stayed with him until, just before dusk,
he became more tranquil.

CHAPTER XVII

Tragic Interlude

JLHE DISTRICT JAIL was a foul hole, swarming with vermin, destitute
of sewage, bath, water, ventilation, and so inadequate to its purpose
that often a dozen or more prisoners were herded into a single
narrow cell. That in refusing bail he was consigning himself to
intolerable filth and stench was something that had not occurred to
Dan Sickles; but, confronted with the fact, he was steadfast in his
decision. It was, and was meant to be, a challenging gesture to his
fellow citizens: "In doing what I had to do I have broken the law.
Therefore I have placed myself behind bars. It is for you to set me
free!" And to deliver that challenge he was willing to face reek and
wretchedness, to say nothing of the severe disadvantage of present-
ing himself in court not a free man under bond but a jailbird between
guards.

Unable to change Dan's determination, Walker insisted that at least
he must be given a dean cell; and volunteered to see Warden King

Tragic Interlude 115

about the matter in the morning. Wooldridge, equally concerned,
crutched it over to his friend, the Reverend Haley a man full of good
will, and a constant visitor at the jail-and asked him to call at once
upon the prisoner, do what he could to comfort him, and use his in-
fluence to see that he had fresh blankets and, perhaps, a decent meal
sent in from one of the neighboring chop houses. Haley, eager to be
of service, promptly complied. Dan received him with appreciative
courtesy, but set aside all talk about his own needs. His only concern
was for Teresa. "I should be grateful if you would go to see her, and
tell me how she is."

And so it came about that the good minister, besieged by the
curious mob hanging about the jail and about Stockton Mansion,
plied back and forth between stricken husband, frantic wife.

In utter contrition, agonized atonement, Teresa had sealed her
mind, if not her heart, against sorrow for the dead; all her suffering
now was for the living for the irreparable disaster she had brought
upon husband and child. And Haley, alarmed at her frenzy of re-
morse, reported back to Dan that he feared for her reason, even her
life, unless she were given some help, some hope. He brought from her
a heartbroken note pleading for forgiveness, pleading especially for
the return of her ring. Dan was wrung but adamant. Having no
other paper, he wrote in pencil on the back of the note: "Do not
accuse yourself any more. It is useless. I have no reproach for you,
only pity; but I cannot return the ring." Sadly Haley left him. In
an hour he was back, deeply troubled. He brought news that Teresa,
discovering that he had come empty-handed, had collapsed in a
heart attack. The benevolent old face grew stern. a My friend, con-
sider what you do." Slowly Dan drew out the ring, placed it in
Haley's palm. "Tell her I send it for what comfort it may give her;
but die bond between us never can be restored." Day was already
breaking when Haley returned bearing a fervent scrawl of thanks
and blessing.

In the morning the warden, blandly surprised to learn that his
distinguished prisoner had suffered much from the bedbugs and
fetid air of the jail, promptly gave up his own room to him. To
Dan, sleepless through four days and nights of emotional storm,
the change of quarters came as a vivid relief. He now had a decent
room on the second floor, equipped with a clean bed, table, several
chairs, and lighted by a laige if well-barredwindow. Presently

n6 Dan Sickles

Octavia, acting for the still prostrate Teresa, sent him a trunk
packed with wearing apparel, cigars, books, and writing materials.
And when lavish boxes of flowers began to arrive, and Dandy that
most fanatical of his devotees leaped at him from Walker's arms,
suddenly the bare boards and whitewashed walls seemed to lose
some of their dreariness.

Tuesday afternoon, James T. Brady arrived from New York
to take charge of his friend's defense. He had not waited for the
wire that he knew would come, but had already packed his bags
before it was delivered. To him, as the ablest criminal lawyer of the
day, Dan gratefully assigned full charge of his case. Followed a long
and harrowing consultation. And at its close it was agreed between
them that Edwin McM. Stanton and John Graham, outstanding
members of the Washington bar, should be called in to assist.

That night George Garrett Sickles burst in upon his already ex-
hausted son. The stout old Knickerbocker was stormful: "You hot-
headed fool! That's no way to settle things! No woman's worth it!
No matter how you come out of this, you've killed your career-
White House and everything else." Dan's tone had the firmness of a
man surmounting his own weariness. "Don't you think I know
that? And if I had to, I would do it again!" Sickles Sr. gave up.
One sharp look at his son's fagged face and he mellowed down,
began to growl encouragement. Energetically, for a while, he dis-
cussed the organization for the defense, ended by drawing out his
checkbook.

The next night Mr. and Mrs. Bagioli appeared with Collector
Hart. They just had come from a hysterical scene with Teresa. The
Maestro seemed to have lost his voice. But Mrs. Bagioli burst im-
mediately into a torrent of lamentations, accusations, wild supplica-
tions for "ima. carissima bambiTia? imploring Dan not to cast her
off, to remember how he had played with her as a tiny baby. In
the midst of a sentence she collapsed in a faint. When she revived,
the Maestro led her weeping from the room. In momentary bitter-
ness Dan turned to Hart standing sympathetically silent. "I might
have been spared this, at least!" Then, with a swift glow of warmth,
'It's good to see you, Manny! God knows how I've wanted you."
Far into the night the two friends talked, fell amicably silent, talked
again.
In the course of a week, while Teresa ky in a state of dangerous

Tragic Interlude 117

collapse, Dan, regaining something of his old poise, set himself with
military self-discipline to cope with the crowding demands of his
situation. He rose early, took a sponge bath, made his toilet with
scrupulous exactness, then, after breakfast, sat down to read the
pile of letters received the previous night. One of the first of these
was a kindly note from the President- Practically all of them were
expressions of sympathy. To the many proffers of aid no few of
them, significantly, from bitter political enemies he had but one
answer, "I leave everything to my counsel and the law." As a man
of many friends, popular with the crowd, and, beyond that, a
national figure on trial for his life, his mail, naturally, was burden-
somely heavy; and scarcely did he have time to deal sketchily with
it before visitors began to arrive. Early in the afternoon came coun-
selBrady, Stanton, Graham, and soon with them four lesser assist-
ants, Alagruder, Chilton, Ratcliffe, and Phillips. There would be
hours of close conference. Then, toward dusk, came more friends
and sometimes they would bring small hampers of food and wine
and share the evening meal with him. Every evening the Reverend
Haley visited him. And one friend, usually Walker or Hart, always
stayed with him until he was ready for bed.

Meanwhile the body of Barton Key, followed by a few friends,
was borne to the Georgetown Cemetery scene of so many stolen
hours. Shortly thereafter his effects, even to his old horse pistols
and gay Montgomery Guard uniform, were sold off to a morbid,
bargain-hunting, souvenir-hounding crowd. The ladies, however,
were puzzled and disappointed by the plain, substantial character
of his furnishings.

Dan's first act in confinement had been to arrange that Teresa,
taking Laura with her, should go at once to New York and remain
there in the care of her parents. But it was March 10 before her
condition permitted travel. Before going she begged Dan for a part-
ing interview. The request, however, met with a gently worded re-
fusal: "A meeting at this time only could inflict torture on us both."
Nevertheless he asked to see Laura. The child had been told that
her father was in New York, and he did not like to think of her
bitter disappointment when she failed to find him there. There w r as
the risk, of course, that she would be shocked by his surroundings;
but even so he thought it better for her to be brought to him. When,
presently, she appeared with Mrs. Bagioli, she ran into his arms, all

ii8 Dan Sickles

joy, full of questions. But as she began to look about this strange
bare room, examine the cheap cot, the rack of old muskets on the
wall, and peer out of the barred window, her face puckered in be-
wilderment. One troubled question followed another. Dan's answers
were deft and quick. But she only shook her head. Suddenly she
began to cry bitterly. Nor could she be diverted or coaxed into
telling the reason for her tears. Dan could stand no more. Hastily
composing a little bouquet from the flowers on his table and putting
it in her hands, he motioned the signora to take her away.

The next morning Teresa, heavily veiled, half carried by her
father to the carriage, left Washington forever.

"The Washington Tragedy" as it quickly came to be known-
created an extraordinary reverberation throughout the country.
Even while crowds of the morbidly curious were clotting about the
jail, Stockton Mansion and No. 383, the newspapers, North and
South, East and West, wherever wires ran, were front-paging the
story under screaming headlines and, in the larger cities, rushing
out extras every hour or two, as fresh details came to hand. At the
same time a corps of correspondents and pencil-sketch artists arrived
in Washington to supply the popular demand for full-length, illus-
trated accounts of characters and scene. It was in New York, how-
ever, where for years Dan Sickles had been a prominent and popular
figure, that the excitement flared to its highest. There, for days and
all day long, the papers refurbished and blazoned the story from
every angle, while hordes of newsies ran through the streets howl-
ing, "Pi-per! All about the moi-i-i-der!" Everywhere, in the home
and on the street, in hotel lobbies, clubs and cafes, offices and
workshops, Dan Sickles was on every lip. And what was true in
New York was in lesser measure true of die country at large. Even
in the western wilds where the story only could be carried by dili-
gence, steamboat, pony express, it became as much the absorbing
topic in cabins and camps as on the streets of the cities. And, what
was more important, wherever it was discussed it aroused the most
energetic debate. For here was dramatic news that also was a chal-
lenge to the judgment of everyone who heard it. From Maine to
Alabama, from the eastern seaboard to the Golden Gate, folk
fought over the question: was Dan Sickles justified in skying the
man who had betrayed his confidence and seduced his wife? And
if down on the Tammany East Side the raucous caucus of saloon

Tragic Interlude 119

and sidewalk voted him right, and the metropolitan dailiesinclud-
ing even his enemies, the Herald and the Wood-ite News were
scarcely less emphatic in his favor, elsewhere a deeply troubled
public opinion stood divided. As a consequence the whole country
turned jury. And it was this that served to sustain a nationwide in-
terest in the case far more intense than its merely sensational features
warranted.

Of course the fact that the victim was United States attor-
ney, son of the revered Francis Scott Key; the aggressor a member
of the Foreign Affairs Committee, intimate friend of the President;
la -femme fatale a youthful, engagingly lovely Italian added rich
color to the picture. But what gave "The Washington Tragedy"
its unique importance was the fact that on the national stage had
been enacted a "morality play" of helpless passion, drifting treach-
ery, heartbroken vengeance, old as human history, universal as
human wrong, appealing and violent as any theme transmuted to
literature by an Aeschylus, a Shakespeare; and that it posed a ques-
tionone intensely critical at a rime when primitive America was
struggling toward civilized communion, when even congressmen
openly brandished their horse pistols in the House, and out West
every man toted judge, jury, and executioner on his hip. It was a
question that touched the very heart of contemporary life: apart
from self-protection under attack, do certain extreme provocations
justify the injured in dealing death upon his injurer? And it was the
wrestling with this problem of the "unwritten law" on the part of
millions of Americans that gave the subsequent trial its aura of in-
tense and nationwide excitement.

izo Dan Sickles

CHAPTER XVIII

"Gentlemen of the Jury *

IVJLoNDAY, APRIL 4, 185910 A.M. ... A vast mob of morbid
humanity blocks the street in front of Washington's drab, under-
sized Gty Hall. Within, the courtroom dingy, cramped, dimly
lighted, ill ventilated already is choked with talesmen, lawyers, wit-
nesses, reporters. Only fifty seats on bare benches remain for the
accommodation of the curious. The doors roll back. A powerful
body of police wrestles with the clamorous mob. Fifty panting,
disheveled representatives of the public squeeze through. The doors
are closed but not before a number of young fellows, nimbly us-
ing packed heads for steppingstones, have managed to crawl through
the windows. The disappointed crowd, men cursing, women tear-
fully gibbering, melts slowly away, with hoots and howls. The
policemen straighten their uniforms, joke over missing buttons.
The young men lounge, self-satisfied, on the window silk.

At 10:40 A.M. the prisoner enters. He is accompanied by the mar-
shal and several friends. Well groomed, impeccably attired black
frock coat, gray striped trousers, choker collar and broad, black
bow tie he bears himself with dignity and ease.

A few minutes later the bailiff raps for order. Spectators, talesmen,
lawyers, reporters scramble to their feet as a weazened little man,
with the face of a peevish bat, takes his seat on the bench. The trial
of the Hon. Daniel E, Sickles for the murder of Philip Barton Key
has begun.

On one side of the judge stand two tiers of raised benches for the
jury, and beside them the witness box. On the opposite side is the
prisoner's dock a low platform surrounded by rails and looking
much like a calf pen. On the same side sit counsel for defense.
Counsel for prosecution face the judge. Correspondents, growling

"Gentlemen of the Jury " 121

at the fact that they are given no table and must write and sketch
on their knees, scrunch on hard chairs about the clerk to the court.

The indictment is read. Formally questioned as to his plea, the
prisoner responds in a firm tone: <e Xot guilty."

The task of obtaining a jury begins. Three days pass in tedious
question and challenge. Two hundred talesmen are examined be-
fore twelve can be found who profess an open mind on the case at
issue. The great majority of those dismissed confess strong preju-
dice in favor of the prisoner. A few, however, are aggressively un-
favorable. One of these, passing out of the courtroom, is stopped
by a dark-eyed, bushy-haired member of the audience. "Just now
I heard you say something harsh of the prisoner, but let me ask you,
if you had lost your wife, or had your daughter sacrificed, would
you have been able to control your feelings and be governed by
reason?" The talesman looks startled. "I don't know but who is
asking me this question?" The reply grates on tears. "I am the father
of Airs. Sickles." Touched, the talesman apologizes, admits that
with the same provocation he, too, might have killed.

The fourth day. The battle begins. From the outset the contend-
ing forces appear bent upon a finish fight, but their strength is
oddly ill-matched. On the one side stands a dull bull of a man, at
one time a Baptist parson, recently assistant United States at-
torney, and just promoted by President Buchanan to the position
formerly occupied by Philip Barton Key. His is a curious predica-
ment. He is called to invoke justice upon the skyer of his former
friend and chief. And, the ethics of office apart, he is not disposed
to show mercy. At the same time he owes his appointment to the
distinguished position of United States attorney for the District of
Columbia to none other than the most intimate friend of the accused!
And if the fact should tend to soften his thunders, he must con-
front the equally cogent fact that, from obscurity, he has suddenly
been lifted to the status of a champion of the law in a case that has
become a national, even an international, cause celebre. Under the
circumstances, Robert Ould of the full, heavy face, thick shoulders,
decides to do what he always has done, rely on good, old-fashioned
Biblical honesty and go to his work with a sledge hammer. Inspect-
ing the defense, however, he, possibly, is consoled by the thought
that, do what he may to acquit himself to the world and in his own
eyes as a vigorous prosecutor, his most forthright efforts, most

122 Dan Sickles

crushing tirades, will fail to put the noose about the prisoner's neck.
He has reason for the thought. At his side his lone assistant sits
already unhappily aware of defeat the acid, unstable, if brilliant,
pleader, J. M. Carlisle, representing the deceased's relatives. But
across the way it is a different story. There sits the most powerful
battery of legal talent the old courtroom has yet witnessed: James
T. Brady, master strategist of the New York bar, intimidatingly
erudite on points of law, suave to the opposition, deferential to the
judge, overwhelming before the jury; Edwin McM. Stanton, leader
of the Maryland bar, with the massive head and flowing beard of
some patriarch of Israel, stentorian in eloquence always astutely
aiming at some weak hinge in his opponent's armor; John Graham,
Brady's only rival given to adorning his driving logic with dramatic
appeals, Latin quotations, recitations from Shakespeare worthy of
Booth; and, for the lesser work of cross-examination of talesman
and witness, the three prominent Washington lawyers, Ratcliffe,
Chilton, Magruder, and the foremost figure of the Alabama bar,
Congressman Phillips. And, looking them over, Prosecutor Ould
prepares for dramatic battle, honorable defeat. Amid the breathless
attention of judge, jurors, audience, he rises. Ponderously, power-
fully, in blackest terms, he draws a gruesome picture of the killing,
then presents the issue:

The prisoner at the bar came to the carnival of blood fully prepared.
He was a walking magazine. ... I say this not to influence your minds
against him, but as an illustration of the common law: that homicide
with a deadly weapon, perpetrated by a party who has all the advantage
on his side and with all the circumstances of deliberate cruelty and vin-
dictiveness, is murder, no matter 'what the antecedent provocation m the,
case.

Citing copiously from Wharton's CrvmnA Law he strives to make
twelve simple, rather vacant-minded men grocers, clerks, butchers,
mechanics realize the majestic tradition of the common kw in rela-
tion to murder:

Its maxims are based on common sense and common justice. . . . All
its features are essentially humane. . . . These principles owe their entire
strength, and their veracity, to their humanity not a maudlin, sickly,
sentimental humanity, but one that is God-fearing, and to men loving.
. . Society, gentlemen, has its cries, no less than the common pris-

"Gentlemen of the Jury " 123

oner. . . . The jury that sends its deliverance to the offender whose
stains are not washed off by the evidence in the trial, is itself morally
derelict to die high obligations which humanity alone imposes upon it.
. . . Innovation, even in its "wildest moment, has never yet suggested the
propriety of allowing revenge as either a justification or a palliation of
the crime of murder* . . . The common law has a most sacred regard
for human life, so sacred that even the rankest criminal he who has
assumed to himself the functions of judge, jury, and executioner is him-
self given by law the privilege of a fair and impartial triaL It gives to
Daniel E. Sickles, the prisoner at the bar, not only what he denied his
victim, namely, an impartial jury, an upright judge, but until he is proven
guilty, it clothes him in the spotless robes of innocence. ... I charge
you, gentlemen of the jury, by the duty that you owe to yourselves, to
your God and to your country, to smite the red hand of violence every-
where by your verdict.

Follows the examination of nine persons who, in more or less
fragmentary fashion, far or near, witnessed the kilting of Key. The
repetitious repicturing of the scene goes hard with the prisoner.
Frequently he leans his head on his hand, closes his eyes, wishes he
could close his ears.

Amid a decidedly unresponsive atmosphere, J. M. Carlisle, con-
ducting the examination, resumes his seat. The prosecution rests
its case.

It is now the turn of counsel for defense. They are smiling and
confident. The fact that two hundred dismissed talesmen under-
scoring the general attitude of the press just have exhibited marked
sympathy with the accused gives them good hope for victory. Also
the case presents a superb occasion for the grandiloquent exhibition-
ism so dear to their hearts and the heart of the Fifties! Neverthe-
less they have left nothing to chance. Their strategy has been
planned to a finish. Obviously they have but one plea: the fact
that the accused committed his crime under the excitement of ex-
treme provocation. And, to make the most of this, they have agreed
among themselves to: (i) turn the tables on the prosecution, place
the dead Key on trial, and twist the case into a stupendous arraign-
ment of adultery; (2) use this emotional appeal to fire the jury with
the indignant conviction that the accused was fully justified in his
action; (3) stress evidence to show that-justified or not the homi-
cide was committed under the impact of such grief and rage and

124 Dan Sickles

jealousy as rendered the accused temporarily insane, and to cite
precedent to show that such a state of mind has been accepted in
law as precluding moral responsibility. Viewing their strategy, they
feel that they have an unbreakable defense; but they also know that
juries have been known to spoil the best-laid plans. And so each in
turn, called to address the Court, gives of his utmost. And while
each one follows the formula of defense agreed upon, each one de-
votes himself to some special point of attack.

Saturday morning, April 9, John Graham opens for the defense.
After a few unctuous phrases expressing his friendship for the pris-
oner and a few scriptural and classic quotations thrown in for effect,
he suddenly bites into his subject and in a few sentences delivers
the whole theory of the defense:

A few weeks since the body of a human being was found in the
throes of death in one of the streets of your city. It proved to be the
body of a confirmed and habitual adulterer. . . . Had he observed the
solemn precept, ''Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy," he might,
at this day, have formed one of the living. But the injured father and
husband beholds him and rushes on him in the moment of his guilt, and
under the influence of a frenzy executes on hrm a judgment which was
as just as it was summary*

The issue which you are here to decide is whether this act renders its
author amenable to the laws of the land. In the decision of that issue,
gentlemen of the jury, you have a deep and solemn interest. You are here
to fix the price of the marriage bed . . . you are here to decide whether
the defender of the marriage bed is a murderer.

Reciting Othello's speech above the sleeping Desdemona, he inveighs
against the adulterer as the supreme criminal, piling up quotation upon
quotation from the Old Testament and the Roman kw to show that in
wiser days his punishment invariably was death and in Judea,
death by stoning, that the whole community might take part in
the execution. He points out that in these days it is far otherwise.
The law makes no provision for any such punishment of adultery.
The protection of the home is left to the vigilance and force of the
husband. Deceived and wronged, he has no recourse but his good
right arm or a paltry suit for damages! And here he pours biting
scorn on the idea that "the adulterer who stands ready to foot the
bill shall stand cleared of all human and divine accountability!"

Then in great detail he recounts the history of the relationship

"Gentlemen of the Jury " 125

between the deceased and the wife of the accused, minutely describ-
ing the events of the last three days leading to the tragedy. He
dwells upon the sincere and consistent friendship the prisoner had
shown toward the man who had violated his confidence.

We \vill show you that all the influence Mr. Sickles could wield to
secure his friend the elevated position of prosecutor at the bar of this
court was thrown into the scale. ... He sent him clients, even engaged
him as his own counsel.

Arraigning Key as one who had "sunk to the lowest depths of
baseness" in betraying such friendship, he points out:

Air. Sickles is a man in public life. He is compelled to trust the purity
of his wife; he is compelled often and for considerable periods to be away
from his family mansion, and to leave his wife to the guardianship of her
own chastity. Mr. Key visits the house in the guise of a friend and shows
her those attentions which gallantry is ordinarily supposed to prompt*
but which in his case were the foundation on which the adulterer sought
to rear his destructive power.

With Teresa he is gentle: ''She is youthful, susceptible to flattery,
too inexperienced to realize fully her responsibilities." Then, de-
nouncing Key's gestures of indignation over Beekman's insinuations,
he cries:

See the cunning of this man! When he is charged with treacherous
designs towards Mr. Sickles, he declares proudly, "It is the highest affront
which can be offered me, and whoever asserts it must meet me on the
field of honor, at the very point of the pistoL" Thus he cuts off with
threats those who might report his conduct to Mr. Sickles; and that is
why, for a period of nearly one year although no doubt he was in the
practice of almost daily treachery upon his friend Mr. Sickles never
harbored a thought of suspicion against him. . . .

Graphically he depicts the prisoner's suffering upon realization
of his wife's unfaithfulness, and finds in the very ferocity of his
attack upon Key convincing evidence that he committed it without
premeditation and in a state of frenzy beyond reason and responsi-
bility. Clinching the argument, he cites a number of precedents-
one of them created by Judge Crawford himself, in this court to
show that previous juries have not hesitated to vote for acquittal in
cases of homicide incited by obviously cruel provocation. In con-

126 Dan Sickles

elusion he once more excoriates the idea that mere payment of
damages can be regarded as appropriate punishment for the adulterer,
or any sum of money, however large, be compensation for a ruined
home. His voice rings out so that it is caught by the crowd in the
street: "In God's name repudiate that principle from your bosom!"
Exhausted, he sinks into his seat. He has talked for two days.

Monday, April 18. Judge Crawford renders a critically important
decision one which, so far as the common law of homicide is con-
cerned, establishes a precedent often invoked but never before dis-
tinctly defined. Under it, all testimony serving to show the existence
of "an adulterous relation between the deceased and the wife of
the accused," is declared admissible evidence. It is, of course, an
acknowledgment that the Court is prepared to take full cognizance
of that evidence in his final instructions to the jury.

The defense rejoices and calls for witnesses-and first for Samuel
F. Butterworth. Ould objects. As the foremost witness of the
homicide, Butterworth, of course, can be subpoenaed only by the
prosecution. But Ould refuses to summon him and also refuses ex-
planation of his action. "I do this for reasons which I shall keep
locked within my own breast, but which, I have no doubt, are
well known to counsel for defense." A mysterious remark! Butter-
worth long ago has fled where, no one knows leaving behind him
a cautiously worded statement of his position as the loyal friend
of the accused, counseling him against rash action, and as the sur-
prised and accidental spectator of the ensuing attack upon Key!
Why does Ould refuse to summon him? Is it because Butterworth's
attitude and actions make him virtually particeps crirmnis in the
case? But why make a mystery of a perfectly valid reason? Or
has Ould more knowledge of Butterworth's relation to the tragedy
from the first warning to the final shot than he cares to divulge?
Who can tell? History merely records that the principal witness to
the most sensational case of manslaughter in Washington annals
never was called to the stand.

And now to the exquisite torture of the prisoner there unfolds,
in piecemeal, the story of the tragic liaison as viewed through the
prurient eyes of Dark Town and belowstairs. The witnesses revel
in their momentary prominence, eagerly make the most of it. Mrs.
Nancy Brown arouses laughter by her frankness. Mrs. Seeley is
officiously detailed. Bridget Duffy is saucily alert, loquacious; coach-

"Gentlemen of the Jury " 127

man John Thompson is mordant; his successor, Cooney, talkative
and sly. Very different is the comprehensive, sympathetic testi-
mony of Wooldridge and Octavia Ridgeley picturing the incidents
immediately preceding the tragedy. Then Walker takes the stand,
giving a vivid account of the final scene at Stockton Mansion. Hith-
erto Dan has remained tense, frozen, staring straight before him.
But now, as his own agony is reviewed before him, his "more than
human grief," he breaks down, and, in a state of collapse, has to be
assisted from the courtroom by his father and Manny Hart.

Friday, April 22. Nineteenth day of the trial. After a week of
examination and cross-examination, counsel for defense exhaust
their witnesses, and court adjourns. Throughout the trial Hart has
hovered over Dan with unwearying solicitude; but now, forced to
return to New York, he must bid him good-by. It is a hard moment
for both. Dan has no great concern for the outcome of his trial.
He is assured of the rightness of his action, has confidence in his
counsel, and stands prepared to face what may come; but this last
week of crucifying testimony has worn his nerves very thin. He
wrings Hart's hand spasmodically and a moment kter sinks back
in his chair, fainting. And the jailer who has come to regard him as
a Scottish clansman might his chieftain must put an arm about him
and half carry him back to the room where flowers and Dandy, the
good Dr. Haley, and solicitous friends await him.

Saturday, April 23. Despite one of the most violent gales in Wash-
ington's history, the courtroom again is crowded and a wearied jury
listens with vast relief as the judge declares, "The testimony is closed
on both sides. 9 ' With unusual brevity prosecution give their opinions
on the law applicable to the case.

Then Edwin McM. Stanton, thickset, bushy-bearded, begoggled,
rises to reply for the defense. His manner, calm, precise, logical,
suggests, to those who know him, the storm to come:

The law exempts from punishment the man who kills another in self-
protection, or in defense of his household against thief and robber. But
the law also will excuse or justify the taking of life under other circum-
stances. The most important of this class of justifiable homicide is that
which is committed in defense of the family chastity, the sanctity of the
marriage bed, the matron's honor, the virgin's purity. For, gentlemen,
these are possessions held to be more valuable and estimable than the
property or life of any man.

128 Dan Sickles

After a scathing indictment of Key, he proceeds:

The evidence in the case shows both the nature and extent of the injury
inflicted upon the accused and the frenzy in which he executed judgment
upon the offender. In view of this evidence, it is the contention of the
defense that the prisoner stands exonerated of any crime. . . .

Reciting kw and precedent in support of his position, Stanton
then lets the bare bones of his argument stand and enters upon a
magniloquent indictment of adultery as the greatest of social crimes,
one that all ancient civilizations held punishable by death. Toward
the close his voice rises to a roar. He is a prophet of Israel, rebuking
wickedness in high places:

Lawless love is short-lived as it is criminal, and the neighbor's wife, so
hody pursued, is speedily supplanted by some fresh object of desire, and
then the wretched victim is sure to be cast off into common prostitution
and swept through a miserable life and a horrible death to the gates of
hell unless a husband's arms shall save her.

His voice turns stentorian, ragged with fierce emotion:

Who, seeing this thing, would not exclaim to the unhappy husband,
"Hasten, hasten, to save the mother of your child! Although she be lost
as wife, rescue her from the horrid adulterer! And may the Lord who
'watches over the home and -family guide the bullet and direct the stroke!"

At the last word, the overkeyed tension of the courtroom snaps.
The wild uproar defies retraint. Heavily Stanton resumes his seat and
for some minutes thereafter industriously mops glistening brow,
streaming eye.

April 23, the twentieth day of the trial. James T. Brady begins
his closing address. For a while he astutely argues points of law,
then proceeds to out-Stanton Stanton in an effort to stampede the
jury into quick and unanimous decision. Celebrated for his hypnotic
oratory, here he is at his most hypnotic:

The whole world, your honor, has its eye on this case; and I cannot
help saying that when all of us shall have passed away, and when each
shall have taken his chamber in the silent halls of death, the name of
everyone associated with this trial will endure so long as the earth shall
exist. . .

The whole world, I say, is watching the course of these proceedings
and the nature of the judgment; and I believe I know what kind of a

"Gentlemen of the Jury " 129

pulsation stirs the heart of the world I think I know, if the earth could
be resolved into an animate creature, could have a heart, a soul, and a
tongue, how it would rise up in the infinity of space and pronounce its
judgment on the features of this transaction. . . .

If Philip Barton Key's noble father, Francis Scott Key, inculcated in
lines imperishable the duty of the American people to protect their homes
against the invasion of a foe, how does it become less a solemn duty of
the American citizen to protect his home against the traitor who, stealing
into his embraces under the pretext of friendship, inflicts a deadly wound
on his happiness and aims also at his honor? . . .

When Daniel Sickles realized how he had been betrayed, all the emo-
tions of his nature changed into a single impulse; every throb of his heart
brought distinctly before him the sense of his great injuries; every drop
of his blood was burdened with a sense of his shame; he was crushed by
an inextinguishable agony in the loss of his wife, in the dishonor that had
come upon his child, in the knowledge that the future which had opened
to him so full of brilliancy had been enshrouded in eternal gloom by
one who, contrariwise, should have invoked from the eternal God his
greatest effulgence on the path of his friend. . . .

Then, with dramatic abandon, he points at the prisoner.

Look, your honor, at Daniel E. Sickles! Look at Teresa, that was his
wife. Look at the woman whom I knew in her girlhood, in her innocence,
and for whom I pray the merciful interposition of Heaven! Look at Dan
Sickles, and look at that poor girl- f or although the mother of a child, she
still is a girl and, as such, amenable to the influence of a master of seduc-
tion. And look at that young child, standing between its father and its
mother, equally influenced by the great laws of die Creator to go toward
either, and destined to leave one. . . . Look at that case and say whether
you may break into the sanctuary of a man's heart, rifle the treasures of
his home, betray his confidence, outrage his hospitality, bring shame upon
him, leave him almost hopeless a wanderer in the world. ... If , under
these circumstances, Dan Sickles had done less than became a man, then
despite our deep and abiding friendship in the past, I would have been
willing to see him die the most ignominious death before I would venture
a prayer in his behalf.

For three hours Brady's voice has filled the courtroom. On the
last words, shattered by his own emotions, he sinks into his chair
and for some time remains bowed, his face in his hands as if in prayer.

Ould, closing for the prosecution, begins by dryly remarking
that he completely agrees with the defense in their denunciation

130 Dan Sickles

of adultery, but he wishes to point out that the question before the
court is not one of adultery but of murder. Briefly he enunciates
the doctrine that a woman's chastity lies in her own keeping, con-
cluding pontifically:

The very moment you invoke the kw of force for the protection of
female honor, that moment you sacrifice female honor. If it must be
protected by the sword, the knife, and the pistol, it stands unworthy of
protection. Unless it be that God-ennobling nobility in and of itself, and
unless it exists of itself and for itself, it is unworthy to be cherished or
known.

So far as argument and oratory are concerned, the battle is over.
Amid a silence vibrant with expectancy, Judge Crawford delivers
his instructions with a dry, pedantic carefulness. At one-thirty the
jury retires. As the door closes upon it, the tension breaks. All
restraint is thrown off. Everyone leaps to his feet in an outburst of
excited talk. In vain Judge Crawford, half smiling, half frowning,
lifts a deprecating hand. In a body Dan's friends crowd about him
with cheering assurances: "The jury will be back in five minutes.
. . . There can be but one verdict. ... It is all over but the shout-
ing." Among them, beside the counsel for defense, there are the
local ministers, Dr. Haley, Dr. Sunderland, Reverend F. C Bran-
beny; a contingent of New York Democrats, including DeWitt
Graham, Captain Wiley, Nathaniel Lane, Thomas H. Brown, Henry
Acker, George W. Brega; and a half-score of Washingtonians, no-
tably Thomas H. McBkir, John Savage, John F, Coyle, William H^
Donohue, Mayor Berxitt, and Alderman Mohun. Dan responds like
a man drained of emotion, without concern for the outcome. For
him the ordeal is over.

But as the minutes pass and no jury appears, the atmosphere of
the courtroom grows taut with suspense. There are those that pre-
dict a hung jury if another half-hour goes by. As the hands of the
clock veer to two-thirty, comes a bedlam of speculation.

Meanwhile in the jury room a curious little drama is being played
out. There twelve perplexed men are wrestling with a decision that
after listening to the f eliminations of prosecution and defense-
looms before them searchingly as the decision between the punish-
ment, perhaps the life, of a man tortured to violence and the sanction
of murderous vengeance without the law. Seven at once are for ac-

"Gentlemen of the Jury " 131

quittal, three hesitate, two are completely opposed. Mr. Arnold, the
foreman, struggles against illness to bring about an unanimous
verdict. The first to give way is a young fellow named Knight.
He has solaced his fellow jurors' long exile with his performances
upon the violin and is looked upon as flighty and good-natured; but
as a "Know-Nothing" he hates Tammany, is very prejudiced against
the accused. Hopkins, the wag of the party, finally overwhelms
him. "If I'd been Sickles, I'd not only have used a pistol and a
Derringer on that fellow; I'd have turned a howitzer on him and
so would you!" The fiddler grins and gives up. Two more doubtful
ones, after much conscientious argument, follow suit. John McDer-
mott, a stubborn, righteous Presbyterian, is harder to convince.
But finally, under the urgings of Arnold and the ten for acquittal,
he, too, grudgingly surrenders. Eleven pairs of eyes are on the last
juror. James Weaver, a gentle-faced old man, has taken little part
in the discussion. Once he has left the table to kneel in a corner and
pray. Now he has no reply, hardly seems to listen to the torrent of
argument focused upon him. Presently he again leaves the group
and kneels down in a corner. A complete hush falls upon the room.
Minutes pass. Then the twelfth juror rises, comes back to the table.
His voice is peaceful and assured: "Mr. Arnold, I have my answer.
Let the prisoner go free."

As the jury files into court, on the stroke of three, riot breaks
loose. With cries of, "Here they come! Here they come!" many of
the audience are climbing up on the benches to catch a glimpse of
the jurors' faces. There are protesting shouts, 'TDown in front sit
down!" The clerk raps for order, howling, "Silence in the court!"
It is no use. Not Tintil Judge Crawford, trying to make himself
heard, orders the clerk to call the names of the jurors, is order
restored. One by one the names are called. The stillness is electric.
Then the jury stands up.

Clerk: "Daniel E. Sickles, stand up and look to the jury."

With a commanding fearlessness Dan rises, faces the men who
hold his fate in their hands.

Clerk: "How say you, gentlemen, have you agreed to your ver-
dict?"

Mr. Arnold: "We have."

Clerk: "How say you? Do you find the prisoner at the bar guilty
or not guilty?"

132 Dan Sickles

Air. Arnold: "Not guilty!"

The long-expected words explode a roaring, tumultuous "Hur-
rah! Hurrah! Hurrah!" Crashing through the open windows, the
cheer is taken up by the vast throng outside awaiting the verdict.
And while, in the street, men toss their hats in the air, women wildly
wave their handkerchiefs, within the court it is a scene of mad
jubilation. Some halloo, others weep, and a number leap into the
dock and hug the prisoner hysterically. Counsel for defense show
various reactions. Brady goes white, slumps in his chair, shaking
with nervous relief. Stanton heaves his great bulk into a jig. Phillips
covers his face with his hands and weeps like a child. The rollicking
Magruder storms around, slapping everyone on the back, shouting,
"Isn't it glorious, glorious?" Ould bows his head. "I thought it
would be so." The only unhappy person present is Jailer King. He
cannot bear to lose his favorite prisoner and is inconsolable.

Throughout the storm Stanton is trumpeting to the judge, "I
move that Mr. Sickles be discharged from custody. ... In the
name of Air. Sickles and his counsel, I desire to return thanks to
the jury." Judge Crawford, the only person who seems to retain
his wits, replies calmly, "Air. Stanton, the verdict is not yet re-
corded."

Rapping for order, the clerk addresses the jury: **Your record is,
gentlemen, that you find Daniel E. Sickles 'Not Guilty'?" The jury
nods affirmatively.

Air. Stanton: *1 now move that Air. Sickles be discharged as
prisoner."

Judge Crawford: "The Court so orders."

Again the frantic joy breaks loose. Captain Wiley, climbing over
the dock, seizes Dan in his arms and kisses him. Everyone is trying
to shake his hand or hug him. Dan's eyes are wet but show no ela-
tion; he seems to be looking beyond the moment to something
that yet must be done. He is free but what of Teresa?

"The Fearfnl Story of My Heart 13 13 3

CHAPTER XIX

"The Fearful Story of My Heart"

Bridle your virtue,

Tether the tongue;
Pity the fair vine

Blighted so young!
Why not the tomb?

Sad, shattered life;
Think of her doom

Widow, yet

Tears like sad rivers

Roll through all time;
He, his heart-torrent

Poured for its crime.
Billows of sod

Swell o*er his rest;
Pleading with God

There let him rest!

Still to another

Life is as death;
Ho?ne and its idol

Gone with a breath!
Blood on his hands,

Stain on his bed:
Pity them all

Living and dead!

134 Dm Sickles

Tbou whose life-current

Flovzs calm and quiet,
Whose love and ^hose passion

Never ran riot,
Judge not too harshly;

Fe^ fall by design;
Pray for the erring

Their fate may be thine!*

What of Teresa?

At first she returned, with Laura, as a paying guest to the home
of her parents close to New York's Central Park. Only two of her
letters-one written pending, the other during, the trial remain to
attest her wretched status, confusion of soul. And as in all our life
the trivial and the tragic never are far apart, so here in these letters
with their racing, graceful penmanship almost obliterated by tears
the mention of petty yet pressing matters of daily living as a
"fallen" daughter in a curmudgeon household is strewn between
with sentences struck from a girl's Gethsemane. In them she appears
the chastened child her tragic first taste of passion blasted reach-
ing back in terrified contrition to her "dear, dear Dan." She has no
reproach. She has laid her dead away in wordless atonement. But
to live at all she must have home and husband or the symbol of
them for Laura. Desperately she struggles to recover them. Exactly
one month from the tragedy she is writing:

Good morning, dear, dear Dan-Mr. Fields has just left. He brought me
a kind, good letter from you. Thank you many times for all your kind
expressions and God bless you for the mercy and prayers you offer up
for me. Do not ask if I never think over die events of the past month.
Yesterday, at each hour by die dock, I thought, "One month ago this
day, at this hoar, such and such things were going on in our once happy
home." That fearful Saturday night! No one has any idea what I suf-
fered. If I could have foreseen the scenes of the following day I would
have braved all dangers, all tilings, to have prevented them. Oh that
Manny Hart could have been with us! ...

I have been out of the house but three rimes since I came home; and
you know how much exercise I have been in the habit of fairing. . . .

*"Jndge Not," by C H. Webb, Harper's Weekly, March 12, 1859.

"The Fearful Story of My Heart" 135

Last night I walked with Manny Hart; but my body trembled, my legs
seemed to give way under me and my heart beat violently.

The verses you send me are very beautiful. I will keep them always,
and I thank you sincerely for them. . . . Perhaps I spoke hastily of
George Wooldridge. I promise you not to mention his name, Wiley's or
Butterworth's again in any of my letters unless necessary. One thing I
will assure you of, and that is that I did not tell Air. Butterworth to mind
his own business or something to that effect. . . . Mr. Butterworth, I
think, only needed encouragement from me to flirt. I may be mistaken,
but I doubt it. But let all suppositions be forgotten and unthought of
the reality is bad enough without suspecting or supposing things.* . . .

No, dear Dan, I cannot say you ever denied me what was necessary,
and you gave me many things I did not deserve everyone knows this.
... I shall commence a pair of slippers for you in a few days, my dear
Dan. I will not stop working on them until they are finished. Will you
wear them for me? Or would you dislike to wear again anything that I
have made? . . .

Can I say or do anything for you that you have not spoken of if so,
write me. Do not be angry at anything I have written you. I swear that
I have not written a -word to cause you pain. . . . Write when you can,
and think and feel as leniently as possible of me and my unhappy position.
God bless you for the two kisses you send me and with God's help and
my own determination to be good, true and faithful to you and myself
hereafter, those kisses gfoH never leave my lips while / am called wife and
you husband. I swear it by Laura. . . . God bless you, pray for me, and
believe in the sincerity and gratitude of

TERESA

f

A few days later, in the midst of the trial, she writes:

I cannot tell you, dear, dear Dan, how much pleasure your letter writ-
ten yesterday gave me. I am so glad the flowers were acceptable. You are
not wrong in supposing that I was pained at your silence, and equally
pained at receiving the letter you sent me. You know, Dan, I never affect
to love or dislike a person and I am, in a certain way, as frank as any
breathing creature. You say if I can hate those whom you love and who
love you then it is vain for you to appeal to me again on such a subject.
Dear Dan, it would be as impossible for me to love those who hate me
and have injured me, have called me every vile name, as I believe it would
be to have you love me again or ever wipe out the past. I enclose a letter
written last night. I send it to show you how I felt about all you said. It
teUs the fearful story of my heart. . . .

*Did Teresa suspect the identity behind the infrialy R. p. G.?

136 Dan Sickles

You sav that any object vou have loved remains dear to you. Do I
now stand upon a footing with the other women I know you have loved?
I have long felt like asking you what your love affairs have been love of
the heart, or love of their superior qualities such as you have often in-
formed me I did not possess, or attraction of face and form, or an infatua-
tion? If during the rst years we were married my good conduct did
not keep you true to me, can I suppose for a moment the last year has?
Ask your o^n hcsrt ^ho sinned first, and then tell me, if you will.

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 walk-
ing, cooped up with a loving but overemorional mother, a penurious,
egocentric father, Teresa, torn between grief for the dead, contri-
tion for the Uving, began to fail. . . . With a compassion newborn
out of his own suffering, Dan came to her rescue. He still loved
her quite poignantly; and he could bear neither her bitter humili-
ation nor the implacable attitude of all but a few toward her. In a
gesture as hopeless as it was chivalrous, he boldly restored her to
wifehood. Stockton Mansion stood shuttered. Never again could
Teresa return to Washington. But, with her parents for guardians,
he made her once more the mistress of Bloomingdale. . . .

It was an action utterly out of kilter with an age that neatly
divided women into "sainted mothers," "pure virgins," and "fallen
women." In Washington it created a state of scandalized shock.
Not a few of those who had condoned the killing of Key found
this fresh outrage more than they could stand. Gossip thrummed;
old acquaintances looked the other way. Commonly it was predicted
that Sickles had ruined himself socially, politically. In confusion, the
Globe mumbled that he must have "succumbed to the pressure of
most unwise counsels." As was his way in all things, Dan Sickles met
the situation head on. In an open letter to the press, vibrant with
deep anger, tinged with searching irony, yet noble in tone, tem-
perate in phrase, he crushed all cavilings:

My reconciliation with my wife was my own act, done without con-
sultation with any relative, connection, friend or advisor. Whatever blame,
if any, belongs to the step, should fall alone upon me. I am prepared to
defend izbat 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 mi not teware of any statute or code of morals

"The Fearful Story of My Heart" 137

which makes it infamous to forgive a woman; nor is it usual to make our
domestic life a subject of consultation v;ith friends, no matter how near
and dear to us. And I cannot allow even all the world combined to
dictate to me the repudiation of my vxfe, when I think it right to forgive
her and restore her to my confidence and protection* 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
followed to my threshold, the misery and peril from which I have rescued
the mother of my child. And although it is very sad for me to incur the
blame of friends and the reproaches of many wise and good people, I
shall strive to prove to all who may feel an interest in me, that, if I am
the first man who has ventured to say to the world an erring wife and
mother may be forgiven and redeemed, in spite of all the obstacles in
my path, the good results of this example shall entitle it to the imitation
of the generous and the commendation of the just. There are many who
think that an act of duty, proceeding solely from affections which can
only be comprehended in the heart of a husband and a father, is to be
fatal to my professional, political, and social standing. If this be so, then
so be it.

The restoration, of course, was only a gesture of protection a
warning to the world, "Tether the tongue!" It could be nothing
more. Never could the relationship itself be restored. Teresa was
still "widow yet wife." Dan's contacts with her necessarily remained
infrequent, painfuL Always between these two stood a ghosdy
figure. Despite every good intention, the gesture failed to accom-
plish its purpose. Teresa was unable to rally, no longer had any will
to live. Often her food lay untouched. Sleepless, she took refuge
in opiates. The habit grew. Torpor seemed preferable to the torment
of thought. She sank slowly from frailty to invalidism. Presently
tuberculosis set in. But her vital young body was loath to give up.
It was eight years before, "enclosed in a handsome rosewood casket,* *
it was borne by ten pallbearers, including four major generals of
the Union Army and James T. Brady, and placed on a catafalque
''surrounded by brilliant tapers" before the high altar of St. Joseph's
amid the solemnities of Requiem High Mass.

*The italics are my own. They need no apology. AUTHOR.

PART FOUR: "ARMS AND THE MAN'

CHAPTER XX

Chasm Agape

A HE DEATH OF THE tragic, cherry-coated huntsman of the Gwin
ball coincided curiously with the sudden decline of Washington's
hitherto gay social life. Six months later Congress reconvened amid
an atmosphere bleak with foreboding. From Maryland to New
Mexico the southern half of the continent was splitting away from
the northern half politically, spiritually, with the horrible, creep-
ing acceleration of a landslip. The chasm gaped across the capital,
cut jagged fissures between mansion and mansion, ripped neigh-
boring haunts and homes apart, clove the House with unbridgeable
yawn.

No longer were more than formal courtesies exchanged between
the opposing representatives of a riven people. Social life dwindled to
the forced gaieties of anxious, isolated groups as matron and deb-
utante, forsaking dinners, dances, at-homes, clustered daily in the
Senate gallery, to follow, parched with excitement, the furious de-
bates on the floor below.

John Brown, forsooth, with his fatuous foray, had keyed the
situation to a hair-trigger tension; and while the North took the
Bible-thumping old desperado to its bosom, fired silly salutes in his
honor, enthroned him its patron saint-at-arms, the South shivered
before the specter of an impending slave revolt urged on by aboli-
tionist fanatics dedicated to putting her like another Haiti to the
torch of some black Napoleon. Such was the tindery temper of the
time that while the slender, shambling Seward continued to rasp his

138

Chasm Agape 139

doctrine of "the irrepressible conflict, 9 * and the tempestuous Yancey
summoned the Alabama chivalry "to the trial by sword," many a
Kansas farmer drove to market with his muzzle-loader in the crotch
of his whip arm; and many a congressman and senator, both north-
ern and southern, took to buckling on his pistols beneath his frock
coat before leaving home for the Capitol

To one man, at least, this banishment of the old amenities before
the hot winds of hate came as a boon. Where social activities had
virtually ceased to exist, the fact that Stockton Mansion stood silent
passed almost unnoticed- And at a moment when a brawny, expand-
ing young commonwealth found itself threatened with havoc and
mutilation, few could sustain interest in last season's scandal. Eight
months is long in the public memory. Also a masterful magic lurks
in the sense of inner sanction. Never for one moment had Dan
Sickles doubted the authority of himself, either in his vengeance or
in his pathetic effort to resurrect a desokted marriage. And, from
the day of his release, he walked among men with the composure of
one who had cast up accounts with himself and reckoned the score,
undisturbed by any concern with public audit. The result was that
before the close of the session of '59 he could write to his friend,
William A. Seaver, managing editor of the New York Tribune,
"All the stuff you see printed to the effect that people here give me
the cold shoulder is bosh. On the contrary, ninety-nine out of a
hundred are more cordial than ever; and many take pains to be very
cordiaL" A defensive overstatement, possibly.

Nevertheless unobserved by those around him, for he kept a firm
front the blood on his hands, the wrench in his heart had wrought
a deep change in Dan Sickles. Two things had been taken from him;
his one ambition, his one love. Bent tenaciously toward the White
House, he had blasted its doors shut forever. Pursuing women as
so much game, he yet had so fastened the inmost fibers of himself
about one girlish figure that never again would he have the heart
to seek a mate, and except for one brief mockery of marriage, love-
less and luckless he would live out the remaining fifty years of his
life alone. And thus when, in November 1859, he stood up before
the House to review the national crisis, he was already in another
arc of himself. Henceforth, although nominally a northern Demo-
crat, he would ride alone, an independent rather than a party man;
one who now, for better or worse, had taken America to wife.

140 Dem Sickles

A significant prelude to his memorable speech, "On the State of
the Union," delivered fourteen months later on the eve of his en-
listment in the Union Army, this address of November 1859, "O n
the Relations between the North and the South," is both an authori-
tative refutation of a number of popular delusions on the subject and
a notable example of the vigor with which Dan Sickles strove against
northern ignorance in general, New England prejudice in particular,
for the preservation of the Compact between the States until the
South herself, in the bombardment of Fort Sumter, blasted that
Compact to powder.

Widely reported, and even more widely circulated in pamphlet
reprint, it was an utterance well calculated to exert a steadying in-
fluence on the mounting agitation; for here, if Sickles still speaks
as a Democrat, an advocate of states* rights, it is as an exponent of
historic fact and constitutional principles rather than as a partisan.
"Many of my fellow congressmen," he wrote Seaver, "thought my
speech overbold; but," he adds characteristically, "nothing so dis-
arms the crowd as a little pluck."

Opening on a plea for an informed attitude toward our own his-
tory and a respect for agreements entered into, he proceeds to take
sharp issue with a northern opponent. Methodically he takes up,
one by one, the "bold and grave charges of the gentleman from
Pennsylvania" to the effect that the South was the first to fracture
the Missouri Compromise and that it gained slave representation,
the Fugitive Slave Law, exemption from taxes upon export, and a
longer lease of life for the slave trade as a series of concessions ex-
torted from the Constitutional Assembly. In demolishing rebuttal
he points out that the North, in accepting California into the Union
without slavery, itself first had violated the Compromise; that "slave
representation" was a northern measure conceived to impose a due
proportion of taxation upon the South; that the Fugitive Slave Law
"had not one dissenting vote"; that the taxation of exports was pro-
hibited by the Constitution and never had found an advocate in
this country; that the "slave traffic then, if not since, as much a
branch of eastern, as of southern, trade was prolonged by the votes
of three northern states!"

Then, taking his stand upon the constitutional right of each state
to decide its own policy in regard to slavery, as expressed in the
Kansas-Nebraska Act, he urges Congress to endorse this principle

Chasm Agape 141

before it is too late, "for we are in the presence of the most serious
danger that ever has menaced the Confederacy." Earnestly he sum-
mons to view the close economic interdependence between the agri-
cultural South and the industrial North. Impressive in its restrained
eloquence is his conclusion forecasting the dark results of Disunion:

The blow would fall with crushing effect upon the masses upon those
whose welfare and happiness depend upon steady employment and good
wages. And, therefore, sir, it is to the poor that I look to maintain this
Union to those who have little else beside a home and a country. If civil
war comes, they will have to fight the battles. If trade and manufacture
are to be paralyzed, it is the laboring classes who will suffer the depriva-
tions, the anguish of want. Is it wise to overturn all the foundations of
our prosperity and bring unnumbered calamities upon the happy and
thriving communities of the North, for the purpose of gratifying preju-
dices against slavery and slaveholders? Is it worth while to carry northern
supremacy in the Union to that point which destroys the prize for which
the struggle is waged? Do you thereby attain the end the suppression of
slave labor which the philanthropist seeks? No, far from it! If we force
the slave states out of the Union, we, by that act, extend slavery from the
Rio Grande to the Pacific, and the Caribbean Sea, and to all the West
India Islands. Cuba soon would belong to the Southern Confederation.
England would cede to it Jamaica and its dependencies in return for the
stipulations of a liberal commercial treaty; and Mexico would be an easy
conquest. The result would be the extension of the institution of African
slavery over a larger territory than the world has yet seen, and the estab-
lishment of a republic whose command of the great staple products would
enable it to dictate its own terms to commercial and manufacturing na-
tions. The progress of the Northern Confederacy could only be in the
direction, of Canada. The West would not hesitate long in choosing be-
tween the Mississippi and the Erie Canal as its avenue to the Atlantic.
The North then becomes a nation of traders without customers a manu-
facturing population competing with the cheap labor of Europe, buying
its breadstuff's and provisions from the West and its cotton from the
South with no exports unless it could undersell British, French, and
German products. No longer would it be an integral and controlling
portion of one of the greatest powers on earth, but would yield up a
future of which the glory and grandeur could only be portrayed by one
who "first exhausted worlds and then imagined new." The North, the
practical, prosperous, happy North, would be doomed by the statesmen
who now rule its politics and its destiny to give up all it has achieved
and, in a separate confederation, accept the rank of an inferior power

142 Dan Sickles

the parallel of Holland; and to make all these unavailing sacrifices with-
out securing the least benefit to the Negro race for whom they are
hazarded.

It was Sickles's last effort to bridge the chasm soon to be choked
with the bodies of battling men.

CHAPTER XXI

"The Union Is Imperishable!'

The fateful sixties . . . decade of red death and bitter rebirth
dooming to the beat of distant drum. Slavocrat and Tree Softer gather
to their tents. . . .

The hitherto regnant South-mothering nine "Presidents, queening
it over Cabinet and Congress, dominating the Army, leading the
social cotillion suddenly loses her pride of place in the national
household. Her recent failure to keep Kansas a sleeve state, coupled
with the admission of Minnesota and Oregon as free states, has cost
her the balance of power. At the same time the onsweeping Republi-
can party, by its avowed determination to confine slavery within its
present borders, quenches forever her hope of regaining supremacy
by the capture of new states gestating in the womb of the West,

A virtually separate country, homogeneous in territory, culture,
economy, the South now sees herself not merely relegated to a
secondary, and rapidly diminishing, role within the Union, but de-
livered over to the control of a master more alien to her than France
or England: the truculent, prodigiously developing, industrial North.

So the issue stands m the eyes of the southern chieftains, grouped
around the cold, doctrinaire Davis, swashbuckling Yancey and Wig-
fall, valiant, invalid Clay, crafty Slidell. As 'were Washington, Jeffer-
son, Madison before them, these men are tenacious slavocrats meshed
in their patriarchal web of life 'with its ivoof of landed pride, feudal

"The Union Is Imperishable.*" 143

tradition; its warp of white floss, ebony muscle. Sorry solace to them
that this northern master proposes no interference with their regime
where it already exists. They know that the gesture is but delayed
sentence of death. If the admission of the new pee states to the Union
has sapped their political power, the excessive culture of tobacco
and cotton likewise has sapped vast areas of their soil. And, in their
present predicament, what they most urgently need is precisely what
they now are denied: new fertile territorities for a double crop, more
bales for the wharves, more representatives for the House. And,
beyond this immediate curtailment, never for a moment are they
allowed to forget the furor of abolitionist crusaders pledged to the
extinction of chattel slavery throughout the Union, and unthink-
able madness to these seigneurs/ the elevation of the black man to
the rights and dignities of American citizenship.

There remains, of course, a perfectly common-seme solution to
the southern impasse. And at least one southerner perceives it. Pains-
takingly, in his critique, The Impending Crisis, the North Carolin-
ian economist, Hinton Rowan Helper, marshals fact and figure to
prove to his fellow citizens that chattel slavery already has become
an unprofitable anachronism, doomed by its own inefficiency, its
proven mobility to pay dividends on an ever increasing capital in-
vestment; and that the plantation gentry, by freeing their slaves and
simply hiring them as day laborers at a bare subsistence wage, could
exact from them more diligent service, increase production, decrease
costs, shunt off a vast load of burdensome responsibility toward the
young, the aged, the infirmand thus bring themselves abreast of
the ?nodern, industrial age. But the southern response to such a
gospel is, quite naturally, an auto-da-fe for the book and a threat of
tar and feathers for the author. The paternalistic planter knows
'well the plight of New England's sweated mllhands, Boston's
moldering unemployed. And not while he has breath and powder
will he forsake all his traditions, set his "people" adrtft to be hired
and fired, and otherwise left to beg, sted, or rot while he himself
writes off a heavy flesh-and-blood investment, already mortgaged at
the bank! The mere suggestion smells of treachery, stirs him to red
rage.

The slave states, in truth, already have agreed among themselves
that their only recourse is withdrawal from the Union into a solid
Confederation of their own. In their view there is no alternative

144 m Sickles

zmless, perchance^ they may ra to power again in the coming elec-
tion. At the moment^ as a nutter of fact, a defeat of the Republicans
is by no weans an unwarrantable hope. The Democrats still hold
a majority in the House. United on a single platform, the party ele-
ments, Xoith and South, even now might enforce their will upon
the Union. They mightbut not for long! The causes of severance
lie too deep for that. As Lincoln clearly divines, the conflict over
slavery is but the surface indication that the Union cannot long en-
dure half archaic, half modern; half servile-agrarian, half industrial-
capitalist.

No political reprieve for the South, however, is forthcoming. In
the confusion and turmoil of the hour, the Democrats fall into
wangling factiojis* The extremists, in fact, determined now upon
bullets rather than ballots, and realizing that the election of a "Black
Republican" is all that is needed to rouse every cotton state behind
them, deliberately set out to split the party ranks. Refusing co-
operation with other elements, they bolt the Charleston convention
and nominate John C. Breckinridge on an uncompromising pro-
slavery platform. As & result the "popular sovereignty" men nomi-
nate Stephen A. Douglas, while a third aggregation, vaguely advo-
cating "obedience to the laws and adherence to the Constitution?
nominates John Bell, of Tennessee. And so by grace of a political
plot ironic, prophetic Abraham Lincoln, winning the Republican
nomination against SewarcFs bitter competition, comes to his tragic
triumph as President-elect with but forty per cent of the total vote!
In vain the Chicago platform pledges non-interference n^ith slav-
ery vcithin its present borders; in vain Lincoln avows himself con-
cerned only with "the preservation of the Union with slavery or
without" The little gang of secessionist conspirators banquet to-
gether in private glee. Under their tutelage the press 9 flaring scare
headlines, thunders doom. And a dismayed South sees only a "Black
Republican" in the White House; and behind him, towering spectral
in the northern sky, the giant fist of Abolition. In hot haste South
Carolina secedes and calls upon her sister states to fall in beside her.

Such was the national situation when, January 16, 1861, twenty-
seven days after the secession of North Carolina, Dan Sickles rose
to speak before an anxious House organized in Committee of the
Whole to consider the decidedly dubious "State of the Union.**

"The Union Is Imperishable.*" 145

In those twenty-seven days much had happened. Mississippi, Flor-
ida, Alabama, Georgia, and save for the final formalities Louisiana
and Texas also had seceded, and contrary to their vaunted right
and avowed intent by no means peacefully. In every one of these
states the authorities had laid violent hands on the federal arsenals,
forts, navy yards, customhouses within their borders; and Charleston
bravados, seizing the batteries of Fort Moultrie, had opened fire
upon the unarmed government transport, Star of the West, bearing
supplies to Fort Sumter. In swift consequence, something else had
happened an angry, powerfully decisive change in the hearts and
minds of millions of northern men hitherto confident of a peaceable
adjustment with the South.

To Dan Sickles the sudden belligerence of the seceding states came
as a profound shock. Peaceful secession he regarded as the lawful, if
lamentable, last recourse of sovereign states denied their due privilege
within the Federation. But this unprovoked, deliberate attack upon
forts and possessions flying the Stars and Stripes caused him to cry,
"Sir, that was an act of war naked, unmitigated war! Had such an
offense been perpetrated by any foreign power, it would have roused
every man in this nation." And if his speech in protest came as the
very voice of a dismayed and indignant North, it was yet more than
that a masterly orientation of the whole dispute, a searching indict-
ment of both the intransigent Republican and the violent Secessionist,
and the first proclamation of the dread decision soon to be thrust
upon the minds of northern men from Maine to California. Noblest
prose is the peroration proclaiming his own stand:

Whatever may be die issue of existing complications, the Republic of
the United States is imperishable. It will survive all the dangers which
now assail it. It will vindicate the faith in humanity upon which it re-
poses. It will fulfill its destiny in the development of an ameliorated sys-
tem of institutions and laws which recognize the equality of all the citi-
zens composing the Commonwealth.

It is my prayer that these disastrous events may go no further; that
the day-spring from on High may visit us and guide our feet into die
way of peace. But whatever may be the issue of events whedier happily,
by conciliation and justice to die South, we may find an honorable and
fraternal solution of our difficulties; or whether, unhappily, we blindly
drift into alienation, war, and irrevocable separation the great commer-
cial interests of this country require, the destiny of American civilization

146 Dan Sickles

demands, that the political and territorial control of this continent, from
the mouth of the Hudson to the mouth of the Mississippi, from the
Atlantic to the Pacific seas, shall remain where it now is in the hands of
the Government of the United States. In all the partisan issues between
the South and the Republican party, the people of the city of New York
are with the South; but when the South makes an untenable issue with
our country, when the flag of the Union is insulted, when the fortified
places provided for the common defense are assaulted and seized, when
the South abandons its northern friends for English and French alliances,
then tke loyal and patriotic population of that imperial city and I speak
as certainly for tkem as for myself stand UTianimous for the Umon.

CHAPTER XXII

Armies in Haste

AHE **LAME DUCK" SESSION of '6 1 limped along none ever more
limply! While Secession flamed, lighting the folds of a strange new
"Stars and Bars" in the southern sky, and planter-politicians, with
grandiloquent farewells, quit the Capitol to feed the flames, Congress
squatted, both lame and maimed, before the conflagration, making no
more than feeble garden-hose gestures toward it.

At the same time every department of the Administration floun-
dered in a mesh of proslavery treachery and sabotage. Secretary of
War Floyd, playing sedulous ape to his predecessor in office, Jeffer-
son Davis, had been busily transferring huge amounts of arms and
ammunition from northern arsenals to southern caches. The last
shipload at sea, he had looted the Treasury of $800,000 in bonds
and absconded to Virginia there to receive a wild welcome for his
"patriotic" services. By similar tactics the Navy also had been put
out of commission, its vessels dismantled or secreted in foreign ports.
Vice-President John G Breckinridge, Assistant Secretary of State
William H. Trescot, and former Secretary of Treasury Cobb already

Annies in Haste 147

had crossed the Potomac, followed by troops of army and navy
officers eager to apply West Point and Annapolis training to the
business of destroying the Union. And Secretary of the Interior
Jacob Thompson, in the act of signing his resignation, had turned
aside to scratch out a code telegram to the mayor of Charleston
apprising him that the Star of the Weft was about to be dispatched
to the relief of Fort Sumter!

And what was true of the higher officials was equally true of the
lower. Clerks, indebted for their jobs to southern patronage, con-
stituted themselves, with great gusto, an amateur secret service.
"Secesh" militia secretly drilled in government warehouses. And if,
for the most part, the great southern families already had departed,
the wives and daughters of those that remained, and enterprising
widows such as the notorious Airs. Greenhow, set themselves, with
wit, charm, and wine, to seduce officers, congressmen and ministers
still loyal to the Administration, or milk them of secret military in-
formation later to cost lakes of northern blood.

In the White House an "Old Public Functionary, 5 ' as Buchanan
liked to dub himself, already shrunk into the "lean and slippered
pantaloon" stage of performance, wrapped himself in a drab dressing
gown and, head askew, left eye aslew, prayed at his desk for the day
when the Railsplitter would release him from grievous responsibility
and the cares of an office "no longer fit for a gentleman." Bound by
ties of personal affection and political fraternity to the small group of
desperadoes who were now proposing to dispose of the Union, he
sought merely to placate them, avoid an open rupture and so end
his term of office on a note of inglorious peace. It was a policy, of
course, that bereft the nation of leadership in the supreme crisis of
its history. Incidentally, k beguiled the Chief Executive on more
than one occasion into dangerous compliance with southern demands.
From one of these blunders, the gravest, and from another, the
silliest, it happened that it was only Dan Sickles who somehow, and
at the last moment, managed to snatch him back in the one case by
a skylarking bit of strategy, in the other by an exhibition of plain
sword rattling. If both episodes smack of comic opera, they illustrate,
as perhaps could nothing else, the contrasting characters of the two
men, the touch-and-go temper of the time.

When Major Anderson, commanding the decrepit Fort Moultrie
on the shores of Charleston, moved his peacetime garrison of sixty

Dan Sickles

men to the nearby and more defensible Fort Sumter, the secessionists
became greatlv agitated. Promptly a South Carolina delegation, in-
cluding former Speaker of the House, Orr, and the former Assistant
Secretary of State, William H. Trescot, waited upon Buchanan and
demanded that the vigilant major be ordered to withdraw his gar-
rison to its former position! Timidly bent upon peace at any price,
Buchanan agreed. In vain, Edwin McM. Stanton, recently become
Attorney General, and John A. Dix, the new Secretary of the Treas-
ury, violently protested against his decision. Like most men of vacil-
lating minds,' Buchanan could be very stubbornin the wrong place.
And Dan Sickles knew it. When Stanton and Dix came to him,
begging him to try to dissuade the President from vacating Sumter,
he merely smiled. "It's no use, gentlemen. The more you pull at a
balky mule the balkier he gets. I know Buchanan. You have to light
a fire under his tail." After some thought, he added, "If you'll leave
it to me, I think I can start a little fire in the right spot." He would
say no more. And with that the two worried cabinet officers had to
remain content.

That night Sickles entrained for Philadelphia, first telegraphing
his friend, Daniel Dougherty, a leader of the Philadelphia bar and
an intimate of the President, to meet him on his arrival On the
station platform next morning he rapidly outlined the problem to
the astounded Dougherty and the solution. "You know Buchanan,
and that there is no way to reach him except through the force of
public opinion. I want you to send a strong current of opinion from
Philadelphia to the White House. First, have a national salute fired
tomorrow morning in honor of the President's heroic determination
to keep Major Anderson and his command at Fort Sumter. Then go
to all die newspapers and ask the editors to print editorials glorifying
the President for his patriotic resolution. Next interview the various
bank presidents and ask each of them to send telegrams to the Presi-
dent praising him to the skies for his manly decision to keep Major
Anderson at Fort Sumter. Give him a shower of telegrams no matter
how long!"*

With Irish alacrity, Dougherty promised to fulfill all instructions.

Again telegraphing ahead to friends to meet him on the platform,
Sickles proceeded by the next train to Trenton, New Jersey, and

His own words as reported in his speech to the Lincoln Fellowship, Febru-
ary 12, 1910.

Armies in Haste 149

promptly initiated a similar campaign. Then, again telegraphing
friends to meet him, he pushed on to New York. There, in his home
town, he lit a conflagration of editorials, started a pyrotechnic of
telegrams many of them from men powerful in Wall Street, and
wound up by securing a one-hundred-gun salute at the Battery in
honor of the President's "bold and decisive stand," as the Herald
phrased it. Within twenty-four hours the press throughout the coun-
try was headlining the story and echoing the eastern plaudits. For
the moment the colorless Buchanan emerged a national hero, his drab
dressing gown transformed to a star-spangled toga.

When, five days after his hasty departure, Sickles returned to
Washington, Stanton, meeting him, threw his arms about him in a
characteristic bear hug. "Glorious, my boy, glorious! We've won!
Anderson will stay! The Old Man is simply gloating over all those
editorials and telegrams, to say nothing of the salutes! The delegation
has been sent packing, and he's strutting around like a turkey cock!"*

Anticipating possible disorders at Lincoln's inauguration, General
Winfield Scott, commander in chief, had mobilized a considerable
force of regular troops in the capital; and, on the occasion of Wash-
ington's Birthday, Buchanan, without giving more than a routine
nod to the matter, had agreed that they should march in the cus-
tomary parade. But, catching wind of the arrangement, ex-President
Tyler, die proslavery president of the farcical Peace Commission
then in session, came hurrying to the White House to protest against
"an offensive display of military force such as would be sure to
wound the sensibilities of Maryland and Virginia." And Buchanan,
always aiming to please a rebel, promptly cut the troops from the
parade.

At the last moment, while fifty thousand Washingtonians and
nearby country folk waited to see their army pass in all the splendor
of plumed cavalry, thundering horse artillery, great snakes of march-
ing men, bayonets glistening in the sun, Sickles happened to get
word that the show was off, that the regulars had been ordered back
to the barracks. Hotfoot he werft in search of the President, finally
traced him to the War Department. But the Old Public Functionary
was closeted with Secretary of War Holt and had given orders that
he should not be disturbed. Denied admission to the presidential
presence, Sickles paced the anteroom and, in a voice calculated to

Ibid.

150 Dan Sickles

pierce the solidest walls, proceeded to roar his indignation. A minute
or nvo of this, and Buchanan timidly opened the door. Without
ceremony Sickles stormed in. Before the ensuing blast, Holt merely
bowed his head in his hands. He just had offered the President his
resignation rather than consent to cancel the parade. But Buchanan,
as usual, had been stubborn. Now, however, under the tornado of
Sickles's eloquence "the degradation of the national honor ... the
pusillanimous subjection of the executive power to a rebel
the outrageous insult to the memory of the man of Valley Forge
. . . "Buchanan quakingly discovered that he had thought it "a
matter of no importance" and that, of course, the parade could pro-
ceed. Holt, vastly relieved, took the orders in person.

Buchanan, now suddenly terrified at his own temerity, endeavored
to write a letter of apology to ex-President Tyler, explaining the
reasons for his reversed decision. But the words would not come.
Nervously he tore up sheet after sheet. Watching him sardonically,
Sickles finally suggested, "Don't you think it might be just as well]
Jim, for the President of the United States to postpone making an
apology for exercising the powers of his office until an explanation
is demanded?" Buchanan looked up at him in dazed approval He had
not thought of that!

The parade was late, but it went through to a hurricane of hurrahs
interpolated, here and there, however, with large layers of acid
silence. For all the recent exodus of planter-politicians and their
families, many southerners, many southern sympathizers, remained
in Washington. They did not cheer.

Lincoln, apprised of a thoroughly organized plot to assassinate him
as be passes through Baltimore, is compelled by his advisers to change
bis schedule and enter the capital by stealth and in disguise. Housed
at Willarfs Hotel, he endures days of crush and curiosity, but
charms even his enemies by his easy, simple manners, his unfailing
tact, amazing memory for persons, names. Presently, accompanied
by Seward, he pays an informal visit to the House to greet its mem-
bers, many of them already well known to him. Chivalrously he goes
first to the Democratic side of the great rotunda. No 7nm rises to
welcome him. Suddenly Sickles leaps from his seat and grabs the
arm of the young fellow member who sits beside him. "We're not
seniors; and ifs not our place to do it; but I carft stand this, Scott-

Armies in Haste 151

lefs go to meet himF Annd an electric hush the two come forward.
Seivjrd, who knows Sickles well admires him as a tough opponent,
a loyal friendintroduces him. Lincoln is wholly at ease. "Why, Air.
Sickles, from what I have heard of the doings at Tannnany Hall, 1
expected you to be a giant of a man, big and broad-shouldered, tall
as I am! But I would take you to be more a scholarly kind of fellow
than the sachem eh?" The chuckle is disarming. At once the two
are friends. Shamefacedly the Democratic leaderssuch as still bold
their seats come forward and are presented. Lincoln seems, as usual,
to know something essential about each one, has always the ready,
tactful t word; but his gaze, over their heads, now and again seeks "a
scholarly kind of fellow" returning to his seat. He is not the man to
forget.

March 4. From the portico of the Capitol, while Seward holds his
hat, and scar-faced Wigfall sneers in the background, Lincoln de-
livers his inaugural address. Here is no dalliance, no threat, but a
grave, tmblenching confrontment of fact. He will hold the forts and
property of the United States Government. He trill collect the duties
and imposts. But beyond what is necessary for this he will use no
force. "In your hands, my dissatisfied countrymen, and not in mine,
is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail
you. You cm have no conflict without yourselves being the ag-
gressor. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the govern-
ment, 'while I shall hwe the most solemn one to preserve, protect,
and defend it. . .

In vain!

April 16, '61. Charleston rebels, busy for weeks planting gun
emplacements at Forts Motdtrie, Pinckney, Johnson, and Cimmns
commanding Svmter on three sides suddenly call upon Major An^
derson to surrender. Met with a blunt refusal, they retort with a
concentrated cannonade. The supply ships belatedly dispatched to
relieve the starving garrison roll helplessly in heavy storm outside the
bar, unable to enter the harbor. And before the gale abates, Svmter
rationless, crumpled, in famessurrenders.

The War for the Disruption of the Union is on.

In the furor as blatantly planned by the conspirators reluctant
Virginia is stampeded into secession. North Carolina, Tennessee,
Alabama, Arkansas promptly follow.

Lincoln, man of peace, patiently endeavoring to avoid armed clash,

152 Dan Sickles

now realizes tfat the moment be long has foreseen, long dreaded, has
came. He does not hesitate. If the Union must be reborn in blood
then in blood be it! Before the smoke has cleared fro?n Sttmter, he
issues a call for seventy-five thousand volienteers. But not yet can he
bring himself to believe that he faces one of the epochal wars of
bumm history. He sets the term of service at ninety days! In Rich-
mond, the ne~>? seat of the Confederate Government^ the ne&s of his
action is received vitb a. blast of derisive laughter. Seventy-five
thousand raw northern militia to subdue the southern chivalry in
ninety days! The poor Yokel!

But the North, like Lincoln himself, hitherto patient, confused,
bent upon a peaceful issue, unwilling to strike the first blow, now
had received the needful slap in the face; and like Lincoln it promptly
stripped for the fight. On the instant in every city, town, hamlet,
men stormed the recruiting stations, demanding to be mustered in.
And among them Dan Sickles. On the day of the President's call to
arms he resigned his seat in Congress, took train to New York. There,
first, he went before the Common Council Tammanyites hitherto
proponents of states* rights and the southern view and in an im-
passioned speech swung them into passing a resolution, already pre-
pared by himself, pledging the city to the unstinted support of the
Union and the immediate appropriation of a million dollars for the
organization and equipment of volunteer regiments in its defense.
This done and Chairman Frank Boole dispatched on his way to
present the resolution in person to the President he promptly en-
listed as a private in Company B of the Seventy-first Battalion of the
National Guard, under his friend, Colonel Vosburgh.

The battalion was under orders to embark at once for the defense
of Washington. But Sickles was destined not to accompany it. The
next morning, as he was entering his carriage to drive to the wharf,
he was set upon by a group of his intimates, headed by Captain
Wiley, begging him not to be a f ooL Men were plentiful, organizing
brains scarce; his business was to raise regiments, not shoulder a
musket so went their argument. The wrangle was long, for at the
prospect of fight all the old Flemish baron blood in Sickles was
awake. He was eager for action, glad to get away from politics, law,
gossip, bitter memories. But finally his friends triumphed. And his
coachman drove to the wharf alone-there to present Colonel Vbs-

Armies in Haste 153

burgh a letter explaining that Private Sickles had been conscripted for
other military duties. The same day so fast were events moving-
Sickles received from Governor Morgan, of New York, a commis-
sion to raise eight companies of volunteers. Overnight he found
himself confronting the fantastic difficulties involved in recruiting
the defenders of a Union that, for the moment, had neither uniform
nor musket, ration nor roof to give them!

The South, secretly, long had been preparing for war. But the
North, caught off guard arsenals looted, navy dispersed, its officer
personnel streaming across the Potomac, its tiny professional army
of some sixteen thousand men scattered in frontier forts was not
merely unprepared, it was, in a military sense, simply destitute. But
the technical difficulties involved in feeding, equipping, housing,
training a sudden horde of men were, as Sickles soon discovered,
nothing to the jurisdictional difficulties involved in recruiting them!

Although the right of Congress, delegated to the President, to
raise troops in the national defense could not be questioned, the
governors of the northern and western states had instantly assumed
the right unto themselves. In their view the new army was not an
independent national organization, but merely an expansion of the
already existent state militia; and, from the first, they jealously fought
to seize, and hold, control over all bodies of recruits raised within
their borders. Their action, of course, was not prompted wholly by
states'-rights ideology or by local pride. There was good grafting to
be had in the distribution of supply contracts, valuable political
patronage to be dispensed in the appointment of henchmen no mat-
ter how grossly unqualified to the command of the new regiments
or to administrative posts created by the wartime emergency. And,
for the most part, the governors were far more concerned with such
matters than with putting a well-equipped and ably officered army in
the field. What this system ultimately cost the North, history recites.
And against it Sickles promptly rebelled and, with the tacit con-
nivance of Lincoln, proceeded to conduct a one-man war upon it.
From the first his innate military sense prompted him to demand a
national army, raised under centralized federal control, free from
local politics and peculations, and led by officers appointed and pro-
moted solely on the basis of merit. For the moment, however, he had
no recourse but to proceed to the organization of his eight companies
under state directive. This quickly accomplished, to his surprise he

154 fn Sickles

received an order to raise forty companies and organize them in a
brigade of five regiments. Such was his energy and popularity, and
the general eagerness to enlist that in less than three weeks he had his
brigade organized and mustered into the service of the state by
officers of the governors staff. At that moment, in reply to his re-
quest that the command of the new brigade be turned over to a
regular army officer, he received an order from Governor Morgan to
disband thirty-two of his companies for the reason that "the interior
counties might resent the raising of so large a force in New York
City alone"!

Dumfounded, outraged, Sickles realized, at once, that his accom-
plishment had aroused the jealousy of Morgan's less successful hench-
men. Nevertheless he summoned his men and, not without a sarcastic
comment or two, read them the order to disband.

But the "Excelsior Brigade" so named and officially registered by
Sickles after the New York State motto was not to be liquidated so
easily! In twenty-one days its commander had gathered around him
a body of picked men, hundreds of them known to him personally,
men keen for fight, clear as to cause, proud of their name. Their
loyalty was to him and the Union, not to any Albany politician!
They listened respectfully to the reading of the order; then, after a
moment of stupefied silence, they turned on him such a blast of
protest that for some moments he could not make himself heard.
That response was all that he needed. When, at last, some order was
restored, his voice rang out, crisp with decision: "All right, boys,
I see that we all feel the same way about this. Hold together for a
day or two. I'm going to see the President and ask him to muster us
in as United States Volunteers. If Albany doesn't want us, the Union
does!"

And aware that now the battle was on, that to disband his brigade
would be his first defeat, Sickles took train to Washington. Very
clearly now he saw that it had to be settled, once and for all, whether
the loyal states as a whole, or merely the separate states as parts, had
authority to raise the national forces of defense; whether the Presi-
dent was truly commander in chief and the army a national army, or
whether the organization of these men streaming from shop and mill
and farm to the colors was to be manipulated by petty state politi-
cians. A very pertinent question.
Lincoln received him with something more than his usual kindli-

Armies in Haste 155

ness of manner. He had not forgotten that episode in the Capitol.
Also he liked this handsome, stubborn-lipped, competent fellow,
admired his independence, divined in him great possibilities. Tact-
fully, he had spread on his desk the specially printed copy of the
New York Qty resolutions, for he knew very well who was respon-
sible for them. And before he would talk of anything else he had
to express his thanks: "Sickles, I have here on my table the resolu-
tions passed by your Common Council appropriating a million dollars
toward raising men for this war and promising to do all in the power
of your authorities to support the government. When these resolu-
tions were brought to me by Alderman Frank Boole and his associates
of the committee, I felt my burden lighter. I felt that when men
break party lines and take this patriotic stand for the government
and the Union, all must turn out well in the end. When yon see
them, tell them from me they made my heart glad and I can only
say God bless them!"*

Coming to the subject of his visit, Sickles was diplomatic. He was
far too realistic in his thinking to suppose that offhand he could
change the deeply entrenched state-militia system of recruiting the
national army. But he had thought out a very practical plan of sup-
plementing it and so, gradually, superseding it. His proposal was to
establish on Staten Island a large training camp as a reserve depot for
recruits for the whole army, volunteer and regular, where the men
could be thoroughly trained in the various branches of the service
and dispatched to the field as the need arose simply to maintain the
regiments at the front at .their full strength. He argued that the state-
militia system would have to be used for the initial enlistments; but
that one or several well-organized, properly equipped training camps,
competently officered under federal direction, could replenish these
regiments much more efficiently than could a score or more of scat-
tered state depots. This was the entering wedge of his argument.
And so far it seemed simplest common sense. But there was more to
come. His next suggestion was that out of the surplus of recruits
there should be organized regiments of "United States Volunteers"
enlisted for the duration under the exclusive direction and command
of the War Department. And in conclusion he urged that "die power
to raise armies granted to Congress by the Constitution conferred
upon the federal government ample discretion to choose whatever

*HIs own words as reported in his speech to the Lincoln Fellowship, Febru-
ary 12, 1910.

156 Dan Sickles

manner and form of organizing the land and naval forces might be
deemed most serviceable."*

Lincoln listened receptively to the crisp tones, rapid-fire reasoning,
everv now and again giving an approving nod, a thoughtful stare.
Then, broodingly, he got up and paced about the room. "Sickles, I
want your men, and I want you to command them; but we have no
arms or equipments, and but little money to buy them, if they could
be found. . . . How long can you keep your men together?"

The reply was prompt and assured: "I have my men quartered in
private homes in the city and suburbs; but if I am formally author-
ized by the government to organize my brigade as United States
Volunteers, I, personally, and from my own resources, will under-
take their subsistence and equipment and hold the force subject to
Your Rxcellency's orders."

Lincoln's face brightened, but he still seemed hesitant "I like the
idea of United States Volunteers, but do you see where it leads to?
What will the governors say if I raise regiments without their having
a hand in it? Let's hear what the Secretary of War has, to say about
it." And he reached for the page belL When Cameron, quickly ap-
pearing, heard the plan, he not only approved it but proceeded to
develop it, suggesting the establishment of a second reserve camp
at Hanisburg. Growing enthusiastic, he went over to a large map on
the wall and began pointing out other suitable locations. "We shall
need all the men we can get, and now is the time to enlist them. By
all means let us have three or four of these camps for our own re-
cruits. From Staten Island, to begin with, they can be sent anywhere
by sea, or from Harrisburg by rail, and there are several other points
equally advantageous."

Lincoln now was thoroughly intrigued. "The subject of the vari-
ous camps we will consider at a cabinet meeting. But meanwhile,
Cameron, I'm going to ask you to give Sickles authority to raise five
regiments as United States Volunteers, and we will see how this
beginning ends."f

In high fettle Sickles returned to his men with the good news.
Somewhat naively he imagined that the President's order would be
executed by the simple procedure of mustering out his command
from the service of the state of New York and mustering it into

*His own words as reported in his speech to die Lincoln Fellowship, Febru-
ary 12, 1910.
tlbid.

Armies in Haste 157

the service of the United States. But he had not reckoned on the
power of the political blockade! As soon as it was known that
the President had decided to raise volunteers direcdy in the serv-
ice of the United States, without the intervention of the gov-
ernors and their coveted graft, there came such a blast from Albany,
followed by such a howling storm of protest from the gubernatorial
sanctums, North and West, that it shook the White House. For days
Lincoln's desk was cluttered with abusive letters, indignant telegrams.
Not a few governors came to Washington to protest in person. Lin-
coln, as usual, reasoned and told stories and waited to see whether
this tempest would blow itself out. Finally, taking things a step at a
time, he directed that, for the present, Sickles should be commis-
sioned colonel of United States Volunteers and that his command
should be mustered into the federal service, "leaving for further
consideration the question of raising more troops in the same man-

ner."

Sickles had established a bridgehead in his war for a national re-
cruiting system. But he could not enlarge it. Promptly all the gov-
ernors of the loyal states issued orders prohibiting any individual
from attempting to raise volunteers except under state authorization.
For two years they had their way. Subsequent to Gettysburg, how-
ever, their inability to furnish the necessary replenishments for
Grant's campaigns compelled the War Department to adopt Sickles's
plan. From that time all enlistment, volunteer or conscript, was
conducted by provost marshals in charge of extensive interstate
military districts and acting exclusively under the federal authority.
Nevertheless, throughout the succeeding four years of war, Sickles's
Excelsior Brigade remained with the exception of a few colored
regiments toward the close the only volunteer force mustered as an
original unit directly into the service of the United States.

But if the privilege of innovation had its charms, it also had its
trials. Relying on Lincoln's word, Sickles removed his men to Staten
Island and put them under canvas in a model camp. To do this he had
to purchase out of his own funds, and wherever he could, tents,
stores, equipment, uniforms, blankets, cots, arms, ammunition all
the paraphernalia required by a raw force of a thousand men; or-
ganize the supply, commissary, .sanitation; and, with the aid of a few
old drill sergeants, veterans of the Mexican War, such officer person-
nel as he could find, and three hundred antiquated muskets used in

158 Dan Sickles

relays, train his men in the manual of arms and field evolutions. And
all this against an opposition so solid that when, for example, on one
occasion, he quartered some of his recruits just arrived from upstate
in the New York armory for an hour's rest and the good hot break-
fast he had arranged to be sent in to them from nearby restaurants,
Governor Morgan ordered them turned out and would not let the
tired, hungry feDows even touch their food!

Nevertheless, with his organizing ability and instinct for soldiering,
Sickles soon was able to present his force in an exhibition of drill and
field maneuver to admiring crowds at regular Sunday reviews.

But week after week went by at a cost of several thousand dollars
a day. Sickles's pocket soon sagged, but Sickles Sr., solidly approv-
ing, footed the bill. And still the Excelsior Brigade had no official
existence. No longer state militia and not yet officially mustered in
as United States Volunteers, it hung between heaven and earth, the
private luxury and road to bankruptcy of one man with a vision.
Meanwhile, as the opposition against it grew and the press daily
predicted that Lincoln never would recognize it, the brigade itself
was undergoing a change in personnel that made it as unique in com-
position as it already was in constitution a change, incidentally, that
actually saved its existence as a military unit.

In those feverish first weeks of recruiting when it was generally
believed that the South would be "whipped in ninety days," and
thousands of lusty young fellows chafed to get to the front before
the fighting was over, and political favorites, blossoming out in
brigadier uniforms, were hectically endeavoring to bring their com-
mands up to the required strength desertions from one force to
another, voluntary or bribed, were very common. And soon there
developed that indigenous product, **the racket" engaged in buying
and selling volunteers as so much merchandise on the market. In
consequence of its uncertain status, the growing doubt that it ever
would be mustered into service, the Excelsior Brigade had suffered
particularly heavy losses to other contingents about to go into action.
To offset this depletion, Sickles had organized recruiting in neigh-
boring states; and such was the popularity of the "United States
Volunteers" idea that his ranks were always wefl replenished. But
the fact that this amateur and innovator now was recruiting his
brigade from all states brought a fresh outburst of wrath from the
governors. The press took up the cry. A new campaign of detraction

Arnnes m Haste 159

began; and soon the rumors were rife that Sickles had lost nearly all
of his men and that Lincoln, at last, had definitely abandoned the
whole enterprise.

The news brought Sickles hotfoot once more to Washington.
Lincoln met him rather wistfully. "I hear that your brigade has gone
all to pieces." Sickles smiled, "Not yet, Your Excellency! " Consulting
some papers on his desk, Lincoln looked up, surprised. "But they tell
me that you have lost most of your men. I hope this is not true. But
I am still puzzled to see what I am to do with our United States
Volunteers."

Sickles was ready with his answer. "It is true that I have lost a
number of my men by desertion; but I have been able to replace them
with recruits from a dozen other states. My numbers stand intact; and
no man can say that I have been trespassing on the preserves of
Governor Morgan."

A quick look of understanding came into Lincoln's eyes. For a
moment or two he brooded over the matter, then rose decisively
and came forward with outstretched hand. "Sickles, you're all right
now. That last expedient of yours recruiting from other states has
relieved me from embarrassment. Your organization is no longer
local. Whatever may be said of the authority of the President to
raise volunteers, you have put yourself outside the jurisdiction of any
governor. You are raising United States troops from all parts of the
Union. Hold your men together three days longer, and the mustering
officer will come and take you all in out of the cold."*

At last triumphant, Sickles returned to his encampment, only to
find that a whole company of his men just had deserted and were on
their way to the ferry. With an armed troop he promptly pursued
them and brought them back, putting the officers under arrest When
the racketeers a fake "colonel" and two "lieutenants" who had sold
the company to a political brigadier arrived later to find out what
had become of their merchandise, Sickles arrested them also. That
same evening he haled the officers-sellers and sold before a drum-
head court-martial and had the six of them condemned to be shot at
midnight.

On the stroke of twelve the prisoners were led out, lined up
against a wall, blindfolded, and given fifteen minutes to prepare for
death. Their wild pleas for mercy, their promises to expose, if par-

*His own words as reported in his speech to die Lincoln Fellowship, Febru-
ary 12, 1910.

160 Dan Sickles

doned, several other schemes afoot to entice awav the Excelsior
recruits, went unheeded. Colonel Sickles, smoking a cigar over the
last New York Sun editorial describing the wreckage of his brigade,
was not interested. The execution squad lined up. At the word of
command, six rods rammed home a charge. '"Ready!" and six
muskets leaped to aim. The pleas of the condemned died in a quaver-
ing. At that point the officer in charge stopped nonchalantly to open
a letter Sickles had given him with orders to read it before he de-
livered the command to fire. The letter proved to be a reprieve
"until the sentence be approved by the President." Six shaken men
staggered away from the wall, scarcely able to believe themselves
still alive. It was the last attempt at raiding Sickles's command!

Three days later the Staten Island recruits were mustered directly
into the federal service, regiment by regiment, as "United States
Volunteers, The Excelsior Brigade, Colonel Daniel E. Sickles com-
manding." At once they were ordered by General Winfield Scott to
proceed to the Shenandoah Valley. And the soldierly, smartly uni-
formed ex-congressman who rode at their head, as with bands blaring,
flags flying, they marched in perfect parade form from the Battery
landing up Fifth Avenue to Central Park their overnight camping
ground-was, undoubtedly, the most jubilant officer in the Union
Army that day.

But "this upstart who would deprive the states of their right to
raise volunteers" was not to be let off with a technical victory. The
discomfited governors, particularly Morgan and his Albany hench-
men, still pursued him and were to pursue him for many a day to
come. The hounding took various forms: a demand that he pay
$2,500 for the rent of the three hundred old muskets he had been
compelled to draw from the state armory for the use of his men; a
bitter struggle to thwart the commissioning of his officers; attempts,
voucher by voucher, to block the War Department from reimburs-
ing him for his tremendous outlay of some four hundred thousand
dollars in organizing, equipping, and maintaining his brigade; and,
finally, a determined campaign to deprive him of his command.

The matter of the vouchers turned up some illuminating sidelights
on the exigencies attending the hasty manufacture of an army
witft empty treasury, bare magazines, looted arsenals. For instance,
among the accounts Sickles presented to Quartermaster General
Meigs was a small bill on an official form reading: "For one tent,

Armies in Haste 161

$500." In their efforts to discredit him his enemies already had
spread wild tales of his extravagance in housing, equipping, accouter-
ing his men. Here was proof of it! And, not surprisingly, the entire
department blew up. "Five hundred dollars for a tent! An imperial
marquee, if you pleasefor this rajah brigadier!" An explanation was
demanded. Sickles calmly replied that, unable to draw sufficient tents
from the army depot or obtain delivery on those he had ordered,
he had been compelled to buy a disused circus tent from Barnum to
shelter several hundred men already sickened by nights of sleeping
in the open under heavy rain. With shrugs and raised eyebrows,
the explanation was accepted. But soon there appeared another
voucher even more alarming: "For baths and barbering 1,478 re-
cruits . . . $147.80." This was too much. "So this pet, pampered
brigade of Sickles luxuriates in baths and the attentions of the hair-
dresserat the government's expense! A corps d'elite, indeed!" Again
an explanation was demanded. The reply revealed something of the
wretchedness that enlisted men had to endure while waiting for
housing, clothing, equipment. For lack of better quarters, so it
transpired, these recruits had been housed for weeks in the bare halls
of the Assembly Rooms, 444 Broadway without benefit of beds,
blankets, even washtubs. And since few of them possessed a change
of clothing or so much as a cake of soap, a razor, or a comb, their
condition, at last, had become such as to arouse the wrath of the
Board of Health. In the emergency, Sickles had engaged a cheap
bathing house to shower and shave the poor devils at ten cents apiece.
The voucher was accepted and quickly filed away! The disbursing
officers had hardly calmed down, however, when another outrageous
litde bill turned up: "To building one refrigerator at Camp Scott,
$316. Ice for same, $211." Somehow news of this item reached the
Albany Gazette and excited a fervent editorial, "Behold this amateur
brigadier proceeding on campaign with champagne and boned
turkey on ice, and an eighteen horse track to haul his monster on
the march!" Once more the department queried Sickles, and once
more his reply only served to show his practical good sense. He could
draw fresh beef from the commissary depot in New York only twice
a week so ran his report. Consequently, in June, thousands of pounds
of the unref rigerated supply had been found unfit for use. As a simple
measure of economy he had built a refrigerator capable of holding
three or four days' supply and kept it well filled with ice; and in so

1 62 Dan Sickles

doing, he had already saved its cost many times over. By that time
the Quartermaster General's Department had come to view this
"amateur brigadier' 5 with a certain respect; and, in the upshot, all his
vouchers were honored except one quite considerable docket of
them lost when two of his aides were drowned at the beginning of
the Peninsular campaign.

If Sickles's success in establishing the principle of United States
Volunteers proved circumscribed at die moment, it none the less
foreshadowed what is now the accepted procedure in times of war
emergency. Incidentally his brigade proved to be more characteris-
tically "American" which is to say, polyglot and interracial than
ever answered roll call; for it included in its ranks the sons of nearly
everv loyal state in the Union and specimens of nearly every nation
on earth including a doughty Chinaman killed at Gettysburg. But
if it spoke a dozen tongues it marched and fought like one man.
The very fact that it represented a cross section of a cosmopolite
people gave it a special character and strength. And Sickles's bold,
magnetic personality, his almost fanatical belief in this creation of
his, the assiduous care he showed for its welfare in quarters, its
efficiency in the field, endowed it with much of his own fighting
verve. At Williamsburg, baptized in the blood of seven hundred men,
it immediately established its reputation; at Fair Oaks, before Fred-
ericksburg, in the fierce counterattack and rear-guard action at
Chancellorsville, on the crucial "second day" at Gettysburg, it proved
its surpassing spirit in attack, tenacity in defense, as a component of
the famous Third Corps Sickles's final command. Time and again
it was selected to stopgap desperate predicaments. The figures tell
the tale. From Bull Run to Appomattox, its total muster roll was
6^.22 enlisted men its total casualties, 3,028.

No less unique was the brigade's commander. An ardent friend of
the South, he had joined the North in defense of the Union; a stout
proponent of states' rights, he had defied the whole state-militia
system in creating his United States Volunteers; steadfastly opposed
to the appointment of any but regular army officers to positions of
military responsibility, he soon found himself a major general the
only one destitute of previozis professional troimng; and, finally,
maintaining that amateurs and politicians were the curse of the Army,
he completely disproved his own thesis by becoming according to

Annies in Haste 163

that scientific and highly professional man of war, General Warren
"one of the four great corps commanders" of the Union forces.

But for all his initial success, Sickles's efforts to persuade Lincoln
to establish federal recruiting as a government policy came too late.
Once surrendered to the state political machines, the power of the
Executive to raise troops was lost. And it was only by constant and
vigilant struggle that Sickles was able to preserve even his own small
organization intact, as a symbol of the principle he had sought to
maintain. But even as a symbol, the existence of a force of United
States Volunteers remained a menace to state patronage. And if it
could not be disbanded, then its name must be erased so thought
Albany. In December 1861 Governor Morgan was able to bring
enough pressure to bear on the War Department to compel the in-
corporation of the Excelsior Brigade in the body of the New York
State troops. True, the brigade kept its unique composition, its
privilege of nationwide recruiting; but no longer were its regiments
known as the First, Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth United States Vol-
unteers, but simply as the 70th, yist, yznd, 73rd, 74th New York
State troops. The hated name had been obliterated! That done, it fol-
lowed naturally enough that Sickles would not be left long in enjoy-
ment of his command.

Meanwhile the same political pettifogging had prevented the Ex-
celsiors from participating in die festive advance, hysterical rout at
Bull Run. And, despite some picket and reconnaissance duty on the
Shenandoah and Lower Potomac, it had to wait some months for its
first brush with the enemy. Years afterward, in an address before the
Society of the Army of the Potomac, Sickles recalled that first
experience of his under fire:

It was early in 1862, before the Peninsular campaign began. General
McQellan was in Washington, and somehow he lost track of a portion
of die Confederate army. General Hooker, my commander, chose me to
make a reconnaissance in force and try to uncover the position of General
Longstreet. I took a thousand men of my brigade, and I picked them
myself, taking die huskiest and most reliable I could find.

We crossed the river from Maryland and made a march of some
twenty miles in die direction of Fredericksburg. At a place called Stafford
Court House we met die outpost of Longstreet's army two regiments in
alL They outnumbered us two to one, and it was a hot fight. This was
die first time that I or any of my men had been under fire. I was sur-

164 Dan Sickles

prised when it was over and the Confederates had retired evidently
thinking we were the advance guard of a whole army. I was surprised that
I had taken it so coolly. Mind you, I do not say this boastingly, but simply
as a man reviewing his sensations under certain conditions.

But while Sickles had his face to the enemy, the politicians had
been busy behind his back. Under Albany pressure the Senate Mili-
tary Affairs Committee refused to confirm his commission as colonel,
although for some months he had been performing all the functions
of a brigadier general. And he was ousted from bis command. In
vain he volunteered to serve with his men in a subordinate capacity.
Albany would have none of him. But not so Lincoln, Stanton, Mc-
Clellan, Hooker! By their intervention, after three months of gnaw-
ing inaction, he was restored to his command and now with his full
rank of brigadier general. The ink still wet on his commission, he
embarked for the James River, arriving just in time to lead his Ex-
celsiors against Longstreet in the fiercely contested victory at Fair
Oaks.

Throughout the following campaign that saw Mcdellan thrust
cumbrously up the Peninsula from Fort Monroe, only to miscue each
opportunity of crushing an enemy half his strength, and, finally,
Richmond within his grasp, beat an absurd retreat, the Excelsior
Brigade fought intrepidly, bled copiously. Over a thousand of the
men who inarched with Sickles did not come back, although he him-
self, always to the front in moments of crisis, came through un-
scratched. It was a grueling initiation. The Army of the Potomac
not only had to face an alert enemy, brilliantly commanded and
close to his own base, and endure the pusillanimities of a parade-
ground general, but between mud and muddle its supply service fre-
quently broke down and, for weeks at a time, officers and men fought
on famished bellies. One good story of those lean days Sickles told

in after years at of all places! a banquet:*

\

In the thick of the Peninsular campaignr-at Malvern Hill, to be exact
I had occasion to employ a section of artillery, and hunting up my divi-
sion commander, General Joe Hooker, I asked him if he could detach a
couple of guns for use in my brigade.

*Tighting Joe," however, seemed to have his mind on something else.
"Guns? Gunsr " he snorted. **Oh, yes, you can have guns or anything else
you want if youll only give me something to eat. I'm starving!"

*A speech before the Society of the Army of the Potomac, 1912.

Armies in Haste 165

I dug in my pockets and pulled out a chunk of hardtack and a small
bag of brown sugar. Hooker stared at me in amazement. 4k lf you'll tell me
where you find sugar and hardtack, you can have four guns! a whole
damned battery!"

I said, "General, if you will send an orderly a few miles back along
die road I just hare come, he will find a broken-down wagon of die
commissary train loaded with sugar and army biscuit. That's where I got
this." Hooker bawled for his orderly and I rode off with my guns!

The next morning the army had reached Harrison's T*nding T It was
July and terribly hot. But I was in high spirits and for a very good rea-
son! I hurried over to the Headquarters tent and found General Heintzel-
man, my corps commander, Generals Kearny, Hooker, and Warren and
also my two very good friends, the French military attaches, the Comte
de Paris and his brother, the Due de Chartres, busy over maps and re-
ports. "Gentlemen," I said, "would you do me the honor to lunch with
me at my camp?"

Heintzelman squinted up from a chart he was studying. "None of yonr
jokes, Sickles! You know you have nothing but sugar and biscuit."

Blandly I countered, "Come and see!" There were about twenty staff
officers present, and raising my voice a little, I cried, "Gentlemen, lunch
is laid and waiting won't you do me the honor?"

Twenty pairs of incredulous eyes were staring at me. There was a
general murmuring suggestive of what would be done to me if I were
merely fooling with empty bellies. But, at last, hesitantly, the whole
group followed me.

My camp happened to be pitched in a charming spota small grove by
the riverbank, with a fine natural lawn. When my guests arrived they
saw, to their wild surprise, a huge white doth spread oat on the turf,
punctiliously set with white porcelain plates and dishes, napkins, polished
knives and forks, wineglasses, and all the appointments of a luxurious
dinner table.

"The rascal has robbed a hotel! 9 ' cried Hooker. Kearny was skeptical
"There are no hotels around here, General that's plantation loot!"

At that moment, as I had given directions, my orderlies appeared bear-
ing two large pails, one of purple, the other of amber, liquid both
garnished with lumps of ice, fresh strawberries, sliced oranges, pineapples,
lemons a most potent punch. Kearny seized one pail, Hooker the other,
both dropping on their knees as if in adoration. And while the one
grasped a chunk of ice and kissed it ceremoniously, die other squatted
before his pail and drank from the brim like an Arab in the desert. Mean-
while my orderlies reappeared with great platters of roast turkey and

1 66 Dm Sickles

chicken, steaming hams, rounds of beef, fresh vegetables and fruits, and
even cranberry sauce!

Never was a man so bedeviled with questions as I was. But I remained
mysterious. When Hooker cried, "But this is all a dream, Sickles," I re-
plied, "It is, General and I advise you to finish that turkey before you
wake up!" T But as first hunger was appeased and the good punch warmed
us all, I confessed. "The truth is, gentlemen, that early this morning a
steamboat arrived at the landing laden with every luxury from the north-
ern markets for the sick and wounded of the army a gift from that good
angel of mercy, the Sanitary Commission. The agent in charge applied
to me for wagons and men to transport the supplies to our hospital camps.
And I promptly complied requesting, however, that one wagonload be
assigned to our famishing Headquarters Staff. My request was granted
with a smile. And that wagonload was a royal one, you will grant! My
orderlies did the rest. So, gentlemen, a toast: 'The Sanitary Commis-
sion!"

CHAPTER XXIII

Muddle and Massacre

Over the White Home hangs a huge sign: "Wanted a. General!"
Lincoln has tried the conscientious but mediocre Irvin McDowell
only to be banded the disastrous rout at 'Bull Run. He has tried Me-
Clellan, "the hero of West Virginiaonly to be handed a hand-
somely organized army, a bloody and fruitless Peninsular campaign,
and a masterly retreat before far inferior forces. And while, m the
South, Farragut, the classic type of bold, ingenious navd commander,
bos captured New Orleans and opened the lower reaches of the
Mississippi; and General Pope and Commodore Foote, in a parallel
campaign, have opened its upper reaches; and Ulysses S. Grant a
dwarfish, tough, bellicose fellow recently returned to the Army from
the paternal tanning yards has seized Forts Henry and Donelson,
md, by his all-but-lost victory at Shilob, cleared western Tennessee

Muddle and Massacre 167

of Confederate troops, the main attack on the forces of Lee and
Longstreet, based on Eichmond, has not advanced a foot.

Meanwhile the peevish acade?mcian, General H. W. Halleck, sits
in Winfield Scotfs chair as commander in chief and fights a desk
tsar less with the enemy than izitb his &vm generals. In desperation
Lincoln, finding no better mm to hand, appoints Pope in McClell&rfs
place and advises him to make a direct advance upon Richmond from
Alexandria by the Manassas valley route, Em if Pope is a good corps
commander, he, too, is no general. Lee and Longstreet, Johnston,
Stonewall Jackson and Jeb Stuart play hob vzith him; and bis crushing
defeat at Second Bull Run leaves the Army of the fotomac still on
the Potomac, iziih still nothing to show for eighteen months of
bloody struggle but a discouraging mmtber of graves. Once more
Lincoln turns back to McCleUan and, in a letter of sober rebuke, sad
counsel, reappoints him to his old commmd^just in time to counter
Lee's bold march into Maryland. In the terrific struggle at Antietam,
McClellan manages to check the enemy, but isitb his usual dila-
toriness fails to forme and rout him. Lee recrosses the Potomac in
sight of Washington! Once more Lincoln changes generals. This time
he turns to Bumside, a humble-minded man who pleads his unfitness
for such a responsibility and soon proves it!

Throughout the disastrous Manassas campaign under Pope, Sickles's
Excelsiors had been continuously in action. At Bristoe, Groveton,
Second Bull Run, Chantilly, they had fought stubbornly, suffered
brutally. And the close of the campaign found them so shattered,
depleted, exhausted, that when the army under the reappointed
McClellan marched to meet Lee at Antietam, they were put on gar-
rison duty at Alexandria to rest and recruit, and so for the first time
since they took the field missed an important engagement. But two
months later they rejoined the Third Corps in time to take part in
the action before Fredericksburg.

On a score of bitterly fought fields Sickles had won the idolatry
of his men. And his fellow commanders, such as Heintzelman,
Hooker, Reynolds, Hancock, Kearny, Warren, Couch West Point-
ers naturally inclined to be highly critical of a brigadier without a
shred of military training quickly had come to accept him as one
of themselves. From the first, Lincoln, Stanton, McClellan had de-
tected his fighting qualities. And when Burnside, before Fredericks-

1 68 Dm Sickles

burg, reorganized the Army of the Potomac, no one was surprised
if certain Albany politicians were chagrined to see Sickles promoted
to the command of the Second Division, Third Corps, in charge of
three brigades and a battery of artillery.

No new and untried division commander could have taken the
field under less auspicious circumstances than did Sickles at Fred-
ericksburg. Lee at the moment kcked two of his most powerful
divisions-those of Johnston and Longstreet; and Burnside, with his
overwhelming temporary superiority in numbers, could have stormed
him out of his position in twenty-four hours. But the precious dap
passed while Burnside dallied, fussing over a faddish and quite un-
necessary reorganization of his army. When, at last, all was readied
for the advance, the pontoons required for the crossing of the
Rappahannock failed to arrive. Meanwhile Longstreet and Johnston,
with their heavily gunned divisions, had come up to reinforce the
Confederates. And on Marye's Heights a ridge commanding the
whole field of operations Lee was able to mass artillery wheel to
wheel. His effective strength, fire power, and dominating position
were such that any force attacking him across the river faced cer-
tain slaughter. Nonetheless, as soon as the pontoons arrived, Burnside
ordered the attack. Vainly his senior corps commanSers, Stoneman,
Reynolds, Couch, Butterfield, Hooker, Wilcox, pleaded with him
not to hurl the army at the Heights but to make a rapid march west
and cross the river at its upper reaches. Hooker skirted close to
mutiny in the violence of his opposition. But Burnside, aware that
he already was under severe criticism for his delay, and realizing that
Lincoln had appointed him in the hope of obtaining prompt action,
refused to change his orders for an immediate assault. For the Army
of the Potomac it was once more a case of

Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die . . .

But each corps commander knew what was coming. And it came
massacre! The Union forces, storming Marye's Heights with mad
valor, were blasted at every lunge by Lee's massed artillery, en-
trenched infantry and, finally, driven back across the river. Sickles's
division, held in reserve until the last hours, came off with slight
casualties. Not so the assault troops. Before the action ended, more
than twelve thousand of them had been slaughtered or maimed to

Muddle and Massacre 169

no purpose by a general whose sole claim to fame lay in the cut of
his whiskers!

In utter distress Lincoln came down to the Army Headquarters
at Falmouth to obseye the situation for himself. Before leaving he
spent one entire day with Sickles to somewhat distracting results.

Reviewing the Second Division assembled to do him honor, and
returning the salutes of the men with an air of infinite sadness, Lin-
coln suddenly cried out, "Sickles, can you see an end to this dreadful
business? It breaks my heart to think how many of these brave
fellows here and across the river will perish before peace can be
restored!" Sickles was as sick at heart over the recent massacre as
Lincoln, but as a fighting man, a subordinate commander at that,
he could not express his real thought. Instead, albeit a bit soberly, he
countered with Macaulay's famous lines:

And how can man die better

Than facing -fearful odds
For the ashes of his fathers

And the temples of his gods?

Meanwhile, at Headquarters, a group of officers one, here and there,
accompanied by his wife had assembled in the hope of being pre-
sented to the President. And Lincoln, returning from the inspection,
bravely endeavored to rouse himself to greet each one of them with
some word of praise or remembrance. For once, however, his usual
genial tact failed hin^ Suddenly Sickles, realizing that something
must be done to break through the President's tragic mood, be-
thoqght himself of the ladies! Mischievously he went among them
suggesting that they storm the Lincolnian heights, and each one
convey her admiration in a kiss!

But those were not the days of promiscuous kissing. The ladies
were bashful, argumentative: "It is not for us to begin that sort of
thing. . . . How can five-foot-two kiss six-feet-four? . . fc . Besides,
Mrs. Lincoln might seriously object . . ." Among them, however,
was one adventuress, the Princess Salm-Salm, youthful and attractive
wife of an Austrian nobleman commanding a Union regiment. She
had known gay days in Vienna, had been recently at the court of
Maximilian and Carlotta in Mexico, and was not disposed to regard
a kiss too solemnly. Seeing that no one else seemed inclined to make
a move, she volunteered to lead the charge; and by way of encourag-

170 Dan Sickles

ing her followers, gave the President, not one, but several highly
artistic kisses. On the instant cloud-capped Lincolnian heights caught
the sun. Enviously the others sought to outdo the Princess. When it
was all over, Lincoln was laughing and blithe as a boy . . . But, alas!
Tad, his spoiled and adored brat, was watching. And when, next day,
Alary Lincoln arrived, he eagerly recounted to her the kissing epi-
sode. Once more gloom descended. In Lincoln's tent a high-pitched
voice was heard far into the night pouring psychopathic anathemas
upon the faithlessness of men.

The next morning, while the whole staff over coffee covertly dis-
cussed the fact that Uncle Abe was "in hot water again," Sickles to
his dismay found himself of all men ordered to escort the President
back to Washington. He knew very well by now that Alary Todd
would have preferred the devil for escort! But orders were orders.
Dutifully he joined the President and his family at Aquia Creek and
embarked with them for Washington. And with what was something
more than tact, he managed to keep out of the way until suppertime.
Then, compelled to sit in a tiny cabin vis-i-vis with the outraged
Airs. Lincoln, he found himself subjected to a process of complete
refrigeration. The First Lady would neither speak to him nor even
look at hun. Desperately Lincoln, exerting all his whimsy and quaint
humor, told one good story after another. He might as well have
been trying to amuse a tombstone. Suddenly, as though he had just
remembered something, he turned to his unhappy military escort.
**SickIes, until I came down this week to see the army, I never knew
that you were such a pious man!"

Sickles looked puzzled. "Fm sure I don't merit the reputation,
Air. President if Fve gained it." Lincoln's gray eyes twinkled. "Oh,
yes-they tell me you are the greatest psalmist in the army. In fact
they say that you are more than a psalmist they say you are a salm-
salmist!"

Alary Todd tried to choke back her laughter. But it was no use.
Lincoln had won.

Defeat Grotesque 171

CHAPTER XXIV

Defeat Grotesque

JViADE TRAGICALLY AWARE that Buniside was not the man to oc
entrusted with the Army of the Potomac, Lincoln looked about him
long and thoughtfully. What he wanted was a man who would
neither make masterly retreats nor let himself be completely out-
maneuvered nor throw his men upon foredoomed massacre, but a
man who would cany the fight to the enemy with some respect for
common sense and the rules of warfare. And in an unlucky moment
his glance fell upon 'Tighting Joe."

That General Joseph Hooker came by his sobriquet honesdy
enough cannot be questioned. Graduated from West Point in 1837,
in the same class with Jubal A. Early, Confederate division com-
mander; Chilton, Lee's chief of staff; and Sedgwick, commander of
the Sixth Corps, Army of the Potomac, he had won three brevets for
gallantry, as artillery and staff officer, in the Mexican War; and in
the Peninsular campaign, his fighting qualities had brought him rapid
promotion to the rank of major general Unfortunately he was
cursed with a very unstable temperament one that today, probably,
would be classified as ''manic depressive." Oscillating as this type
tends to do between pompous self-confidence and morbid gloom, he
also exhibited in marked degree the customary associate symptoms^
of egotism, criticism of others, vanity, self-petting, irritability. Hith-
erto it does not appear that this psychological imbalance had proven
an obstacle to Hooker's military efficiency. Within the limited scope
of brigade, then division, then corps commander, he had shown him-
self keen and capable, if temperamental It was only when given
supreme command on a critical field that, suddenly, all checks and
guides removed, his every defect loomed up with a tragic magnifica-
tion, foreboding disaster. How Lincoln and Halleck came to choose

172 Dan Sickles

such a man over commanders of such character and distinction as
Reynolds, Couch, Hancock, Meade is hard to understand.

At first, however, the choice seemed not only wise but even
brilliant.

With great energy Hooker, thrusting aside Burnside's cumbersome
scheme of reorganization, proceeded to put the army in first-class
fighting shape. At the same rime, working in utmost secrecy with
a few of his military confidants, he evolved a thoroughly scientific
plan of campaign against Lee. It called for a frontal demonstration
by three corps against Fredericksburg to cover, and coincide with, a
sweeping flank movement of the remaining four corps across the
upper reaches of the Rappahannock and Rapidan rivers thus taking
the enemy in reverse, crushing him between the jaws of a powerful
pincer movement, while at the same time a heavy force of cavalry,
sweeping far to the south, cut him off from his supply base at Rich-
mond. To Hooker's corps commanders the plan came as an electrify-
ing surprise. Hitherto they had not overestimated his abilities. But
his strategy if he could carry it through seemed, at last, to have
the true Napoleonic touch; and they set to their task of moving their
masses of dogged veterans and huge wagon trains with the sense
that, for once, a decisive victory lay within their grasp.

In the reorganization of his army, one of Hooker's first moves was
to recommend Sickles for promotion to the command of the Third
Corps with, the rank of major general. The request was promptly
complied with, and Sickles entered at once upon his new responsi-
bilitiesalthough political pettifogging once more held up the actual
issue of his commission for several months. And so Private Sickles,
without benefit of West Point, compelled to learn the business of
handling fighting men as he went along, in two years had become
Major General Sickles, one of the gallant little group of corps com-
manders who, first and last, remained the brain and backbone of the
Army of the Potomac.

Incidentally, as so often happens with men torn by warfare from
their civilian life, that year and a half of tough campaigning had
wrought Congressman Sickles out of all likeness to his former self
a fact that Brady's camera portrait of him, taken before Fred-
ericksburg, reveals with startling abruptness. Here is no longer the
chin-tufted, dandified diplomat, the Washington fashionable, poli-
tician d'elite, epicurean master of Stockton Mansion; but a ragged-

Defeat Grotesque 173

mustached fellow, rugged, sad, worn looking rough, valiant, and
dependable as an Irish wolfhound. So far, in truth except in what
might be called the "lucky victory" at Fair Oaks Sickles had known
little of glory, much of muck and blood and death, stubborn de-
fense, bitter defeat, crass command. And just as he had received his
initiation as brigadier general under the coxcomb AlcClellan, the
puttering Pope, and his baptism as division commander under the
dull, disastrous Burnside, so now he was to make his first essay as
corps commander, savagely endeavoring to salvage an army deliv-
ered to rout, under the catastrophic Hooker!

With some excusable lapses in timing and co-ordination, Hooker
executed his basic maneuver in forthright fashion. Leaving three
corps including Sickles's Third to make a covering demonstration
against Fredericksburg, he swept the main bulk of his army in a
rapid march westward along the northern banks of the Rappahan-
nock and its tributary Rapidan, and splitting them into a four-
pronged fork, forded them at convenient shallows some miles apart,
and, reuniting them, curled them around Lee's far-flung, thinly held
defense lines on the southern banks. The concentration point was
a lonely, massive old country house, known as Chancellorsville,
standing in a broad clearing in "the Wilderness" a heavily treed
district bordering open country to the south and adjacent to three
roads paralleling the course of the Rappahannock. Having effected
his concentration in good order, Hooker, deploying a defensive line
along his southern front, the Plank Road to guard his base and
communications dispatched powerful columns eastward, along the
three main trails through the forest, in an assault upon Lee's army
based upon Fredericksburg. His idea was to seize a ridge running
at right angles to the Rappahannock on the eastern edge of the
Wilderness that commanded Lee's position in the open country
beyond, and, massing this with artillery, make it the base line of
his attack. At the same time he had dispatched twelve thousand
cavalry under Stoneman in a sweeping southeastern curve to raid
Lee's communications with Richmond. And confident now that he
' had the enemy trapped and that Sedgwick, in command of the forces
before Fredericksburg, needed no more than two corps for the pro-
jected covering demonstration, he ordered Sickles to bring his
troops to Chancellorsville following the nearest route already well
trampled by the main flanking column.

174 Dan Sickles

Xo army that lived to convert imminent annihilation into brilliant
victory was ever in a more desperate predicament than was the
Confederate force before Fredericksburg at that moment. And no
armv, in military history, was ever more dependent on pure genius
of generalship. Lee had little more than forty-five thousand effec-
tives; for he had sent Longstreet with his division a third of the
Army to guard the Peninsular seaboard. He had been caught off
guard, brilliantly outmaneuvered and encircled; and he now faced
a massive, heavily gunned offensive of 125,000 men advancing upon
him simultaneously on both flanks, while, at the same time, his scouts
apprised him that Union cavalry detachments were freely raiding
his rear!

It was, in truth, the most critical moment of the entire Civil War.
And had Hooker carried through as he had begun, there is no doubt
that Appomattox would have been predated two years and vast,
useless bloodshed saved. But conception is one thing performance
quite another!

That Hooker did not fail to appreciate his own achievement-in-
the-making is shown by his grandiloquent announcement to the
army upon taking up his headquarters at Chancellorsville: "The
Twelfth, Second, and Fifth Corps have accomplished their task
magnificently ... the enemy now must ingloriously flee or come
out from behind his defenses and give us battle on our own ground
where certain destruction awaits him . . . the Rebel forces now are
the legitimate property of the Army of the Potomac!" This before
a shot had been fired! And Lincoln, head .bowed upon his desk,
waited for news. . . .

Hooker, of course, was positive that Lee, finding himself trapped,
would retreat. But Lee did nothing of the kind. Instead he attacked.
Thus when the Union columns had seized the ridge commanding
the Confederate position from the west, they found themselves
facing no retreat but a fierce onslaught. And at that moment Hooker
suddenly, like an overinflated balloon, collapsed

Much has been written to explain that collapse: Hooker was
drunk; Hooker, aware of his tremendous responsibilities, denied
himself his stout daily rations of Kentucky, and had caved in; and
so forth all of it beside the mark. The fact is that Hooker had great
ability but small capacity, and, faced with crisis, this discrepancy
between his ability to conceive and his capacity to perform un-

De-feat Grotesque 175

nerved him. As he afterward confessed, he 'lost faith in Hooker'
a typical manic-depressive reaction. And thus, tragically, at the very
moment when he had full command of the field, he crumpled and
against the well-nigh mutinous protests of his advancing corps com-
manders, Couch, Hancock, Aleade, and his staff artillery officer,
the brilliant and indefatigable Warren ordered a retreat! From
the very strategic ridge he had planned as a base of assault, he cuddled
his army back into a purely defensive position helplessly entangled
in the Wilderness thickets there to await whatever it might be
that Lee should choose to do to him! And Lee was not long in
choosing. He had the prime qualifications of a great, in contradis-
tinction to a merely good, general he knew just when to completely
disregard all the accepted rules of warfare. And he also had the sec-
ond qualification he knew men. And it was these two qualifications
used in brilliant conjunction that had given him against heavy
odds in numbers and materiel the whip hand in the first two years of
the war. In each campaign and often with daring disregard for
academic military science he conformed his strategy to the psy-
chology of the opposing Union general: by bravura tactics backed
by dangerously small forces frustrating the chickenhearted McCIel-
lan on the Peninsula; with dangerously divided forces outmaneu-
vering and carving up the slow-witted Pope in the Manassas Valley;
with dangerously inadequate equipment, crossing the Potomac, in
the hope of raising all Maryland behind him, and attacking the re-
appointed McCIellan on his home ground confident that, if foiled,
he would be permitted to withdraw at leisure; dangerously drawing
in his flanks at Fredericksburg, waiting for the dull Burnside to
bring his army to massacre in a frontal assault. He knew these men
and what could be expected of them and what he dared risk with
them. Also he knew Hooker, the braggart and poseur, man of large
mouth, small fist, big beginnings, whitiing endings.

But for the moment when he first realized that Hooker had
taken him in reverse and had powerful forces poised on his western
flank he thought that, for once, he had mistaken his man. Was
Blowhard then a general, after all? His strategy so far was brilliant,
but would he carry through? If, for an uneasy quarter of an hour,
Lee lost some faith in himself as psychologist, he suffered no loss of
faith in himself as commander. Making forehanded preparations for
a last-minute withdrawal upon Richmond, he promptly split his

176 Dan Sickles

pitiful force of less than forty-five thousand men in two and, leav-
ing a fraction to hold off Sedgwick's menaced attack upon his right
flank at Fredericksburg, threw his main force forward in an en-
veloping movement against Hooker's advance from the west. It was
the instinctive response of first-class generalship to desperate pre-
dicamentthis bold attack in full force, with preparations for orderly
retreat.

But Lee had not misjudged his man. While his forward divisions
under Anderson and McLaws were skirmishing smartly with the
Union lines, his scouts came galloping in with the incredible report
that, for no discernible reason, the enemy advance had suddenly
changed into a hasty withdrawal. Instantly then Lee realized that
Blowhard had blown himself out, that, expecting to meet an enemy
flanked and in retreat, and meeting instead energetic attack, he had
lost his nerve and now was committing himself to a defensive in the
Wilderness thickets. There, Lee knew from the nature of the
ground with its tangle of scrub, few clearings, many swamps and
ravines Hooker's whole army would be helplessly entangled, the
artillery without position, the cavalry almost useless, the infantry
unable to maneuver except along a few narrow roads. And for him
the problem at once became: how with forty-five thousand men-
free to maneuver in the open behind a screen of woods to carve up
a headless, blindfold mass of seventy-five thousand men muffled in
those same woods, while holding off another force of fifty thousand
men to the east. He knew that Hooker had deployed a strong de-
fensive line on his eastern front and that he would establish the re-
mainder of his forces behind the long line of entrenchments facing
south. This would be routine tactics. But what about the far flank
of the Union line on the west? Would Hooker, facing advance
from the east, also think to "refuse" his right flank and guard him-
self from the west? Probably not! In any case, with Sedgwick
menacing his base and rear at Fredericksburg, there was no time for
Lee to find out. Whatever action he took must be instant, backed
by all the element of surprise.

That night Lee and Jackson held high council alone, over a tiny
campfire near the Wilderness edge. And between them they evolved
one of the most fantastically daring maneuvers in military history.
With five thousand men left at Fredericksburg to hold off Sedg-
wick's menaced attack in the rear, Lee had but a scant forty thou-

Defeat Grotesque 177

sand men wherewith to meet the entrenched seventy-five thousand
men confronting him. Taking the line of uttermost risk, he once
more split his force and, retaining only some twenty thousand troops
to keep up a David-to-Goliath demonstration against the Union
left and center, he dispatched Jackson with the remainder of his
mobile force amounting now actually to a little more than twenty-
two thousand men on a march clear across the whole Union front
with a view to making an attack in force where Hooker would
least expect it: on his western, and probably weakly defended, right
flank. What made the maneuver so fantastic was not merely that
Lee, by cutting his army into three parts widely separated by for-
est country, kid himself open to a double counterthrust through
the gaps between his forces an offensive that could have rolled
him up on all sides in complete debacle but that Jackson's flanking
march must be made along a road that for half its length was parallel
to the Union lines and separated from them fay little more than a
mile width of screening scrub land. The fact is that Lee and Jack-
son simply were betting on Hooker! Having seen him make a
brilliant offensive gesture, then huddle back and cover up, they ex-
pected nothing more than a nervous defensive. And luck was with
them. Of course, columns of troops, encumbered with artillery, bag-
gage trains, ambulances, could not crawl all day along an enemy
front within gunshot without presently being discovered. But at
that moment when, half their march completed, they were at last
discovered, it happened that the road they followed curved sharply
southwest, clear away from the Union lines, thus giving them the
appearance of being in full retreat.

Sickles, in command of the Third Corps on the Union center,
apprised by scouts of an enemy movement across his front, im-
mediately sent word to Hooker and rode forward in person to
reconnoiter. Plainly the sight of the massive column marching south-
west, back turned to the Union front, indicated the retreat of Lee's
whole army. Excitedly he sent back a galloper with a report of the
good news and asking leave to attack. Hooker, who had based all
his strategy on the surmise that Lee, finding himself three-quarters
surrounded, would quit the field, had a moment of renewed exalta-
tion. He had been right after all! The Confederate demonstration
on his left had been nothing more than a feint to cover the retreat
of the whole army! Excitedly he gave Sickles orders to attack at

i-8 DIM Sickles

once \\ ith F.VJJ divisions of his corps these of Birney and Whipple;
and by vray of supporting columns, sent him also Williams's divi-
sion of the Second Corps and Bigelow's Brigade of the Twelfth
Corps. At the same time he dispatched General Pleasonton, ''the
little cavalry commander,'' to place his four hundred horse and
five batteries of field artillery at Sickles's command and go forward
himself to assist in the necessary disposition of troops. This done,
in a final burst of bombast he telegraphed Sedgwick "to cross the
river and capture Fredericksburg and even-thing in it and vigor-
ously pursue the enemy," adding, with magnificent idiocy, "We
know that the enemy is fleeing, trying to save his trains. . . .
Sickles' divisions are among them." This before Sickles had marched
a yard. Then, as though the world once more were his, he was
sending circular instructions to all his corps commanders to replen-
ish their supplies of "forage, provisions, and ammunitions" and be
prepared for a rapid pursuit march at dawn. So much for Hooker
while Jackson, circling back on a bold arc, was stealthily prepar-
ing to crash through the forest screen in a smashing surprise attack
on the Union armies 7 heedless and unprepared western flank!

Before Sickles could throw his men into action, the main body
of Jackson's column already had passed and was far to the south
on its apparent path of retreat. Nothing but cavalry could reach it
now. And had Stoneman's twelve thousand horse been present, in-
stead of conducting an absurd nuisance raid far to the south, they, of
themselves, could have cut it into helpless fragments, and brought the
Lee-Jackson wild maneuver to its just military conclusion. As it was,
all Sickles could do was to throw his infantry upon Jackson's rear
guard. In a hot fight he routed them, took five hundred prisoners.
But by that time the enemy column had completely disappeared

Then it was that Sickles, hounding after the remnant of Jackson's
troops on his right, became aware of Confederate forces still massed
in position on his left and suddenly realized that what he had been
attacking was no army in retreat but the rear of a powerful flank-
ing column bent on mischief to the west. Instantly he dispatched an
aide to Hooker with the information and, requesting reinforcements,
begged permission to change front and throw his force against the
newly discovered enemy contingents. An hour earlier such a dis-
ruption of the Confederate maneuver well might have decided the
day* Executed with Sickles's customary energy and co-ordinated

Defeat Grotesque 179

with a simultaneous advance of the Union center i such as any com-
manding general worth his salt would have Lunched), it would
have rolled up Lee's small "demonstration" force, leaving Jackson
in mid-air, unsupported, to meet envelopment, massacre, or flight
in face of an enemy four times his strength. But the suggestion came
too late! Hooker had foreseen nothing, planned nothing; had left
even-thing to luck and Lee. And before Sickles's aide could return
with the impatiently awaited orders, suddenly, out c: the already
fading west, belched red uproar. Jackson, having completed his
desperate sickle-shaped march, was bursting through thickets that
tattered and stripped his men down upon the Union right flank.
There the Eleventh Corps, largely German in composition, con-
vinced that the Confederates were in retreat, had stacked their guns
and were peacefully engaged in cooking and eating the evening
meal. Howard, their commander, afterward claimed that he had re^
ceived no specific orders from Hooker to be on the alert against a
flank attack. Be that as it may, it seems incredible that a commander
of his experience should have failed to earn' out the routine pro-
cedure of protecting his flank with a substantial force facing west,
or, in dense country, have failed to throw out an adequate picket
line against possible surprise from a screened enemy. But he appears
to have taken neither of these precautions at least in any sufficient
measure.

Approaching in three lines through a shroud of woods, at first
stealthily as panthers, directed only by orders whispered from mouth
to mouth, Jackson's men would have crept right in on the Union
flank without need to fire a shot had it not been for the startled
deer and quail and hare that fled before them apprising the feasting
Germans that "something was coming"! Then along a mile front
burst the rebel yell. The rest was pandemonium, rout, massacre.

The power of a surprise flank offensive, of course, lies in the
simple fact that masses of men formed to face an attack from one
direction are helpless until re-formed to resist an attack 1 from any
other direction. And to re-form troops at dusk, in the midst of a
forest, in face of a yelling, shooting onslaught and soon a maddened
mass of fugitives was a virtual impossibility. The Eleventh Corps,
hurled back upon the Twelfth Corps, threw it also into confusion
and panic. And soon the whole Turnpike, running from Dowdafl's
Tavern on the west wing to Chancellorsville, the army center and

i8o Dan Sickles

headquarters, was choked with crazed men, thundering wagons,
careening caissons, bellowing cattle, in mad stampede.

Instantly Sickles realized that the force he had been pursuing to
the south already had swung about and was attacking from the
west-before he could cut it off from its base by his countennove
against Lee. Ordering his divisions under Birney and Whipple to
reverse front, form column of line, and follow him, he galloped
back with Pleasonton toward Chancellorsville. Coming up from the
shallow valley where he had been engaged, he could see nothing of
what was going on, but topping a low bare mound known as Hazel
Grovea mile or so southwest of Chancellorsville House and com-
manding a large clearing he suddenly came upon a chaos of panic.
Before him the whole terrain was a churning mass of animals and men
in frenzied flight. Already the foul swamp on his right was bedded
with floundering wagons, stalled artillery, choking fugitives, mak-
ing a bloody bridge for the rout that poured over them.

Fortunately, it was right here that Pleasonton had parked his five
batteries and, in a little well-screened hollow near by, posted his
four hundred horse before cantering forward with a small escort
to help Sickles organize his attack. But at that very moment the
whole position was being overrun and rendered useless by the flee-
ing horde. At the same time down the Turnpike, a little to the
right, and through the woods directly in front, scarcely two hun-
dred yards away, the Rebels already were emerging, shooting, yell-
ing in demoniac pursuit. Nothing but artillery could stop that ad-
vance. But before the guns, parked facing south, could be wheeled
into position facing west, the field of fire must be cleared. And
Sickles, with bitter decision, ordered Pleasonton's cavalry escort
to charge the panic-stricken mob and drive them off to the right.
But to. wheel and realign twenty guns on rough terrain takes min-
utesand minutes were few. It was plain that unless something
could be done to check the oncoming Confederates, the guns would
be taken before they could be served. And Sickles knew that his
position, once captured, would enable the enemy to command the
whole field of action and turn a routed wing into a routed army.
The only help at hand was Pleasonton's cavalry in the little hollow
behind him. And even while the escort was clearing the ground
ahead and with slash of whips and shouts of men the guns were
swinging into position, he ordered the troop into action. At the

Defeat Grotesque 181

trumpet call u To horse!" four hundred lounging men were leap-
ing to their saddles and, in three squadrons in column of four,
were topping the mound at a canter. Hidden in their hollow,
oblivious of what was taking place, believing the firing and up-
roar to come from the recent attack on the retreating Rebels, not
even the officers, for a moment, realized what it was that was ex-
pected of them. But one glance at the havoc-strewn field before
them, the dim forest spurting flame, and they knew. Pleasonton
rode to meet Major Huey, in command. "We are flanked! The
enemy is advancing in force down the Turnpike. You will charge
them, cut your way through, then wheel right and tiy to reach our
lines again if you can." At the same time Sickles was exchanging a
rapid word with young Major Keenan, in charge of the first squad-
rona man he much prized. "I am sorry to do this, Keenan, but it's
our only chance." With a quick smile Keenan saluted. "I will do
it!" Major Huey shrilled the order to advance. In perfect cavalry
fashion, walking quietly a hundred paces, then trotting, then canter-
ing, then bursting into a mad gallop, four hundred men charged an
oncoming host of twenty-two thousand! At the point where the
Turnpike, now crammed rank upon rank with Confederates, de-
bouches into the open terrain before Chancellorsville, they crashed
with slashing sabers into the head of the column. Falling like leaves,
horse and man, before a blast of bullets, the first squadron yet man-
aged to throw the enemy into an instant of confusion. The second
and third squadrons, immediately behind, met momentarily empty
guns and rode a thinning charge over ground cluttered with floun-
dering horses, shattered men. Saved in part by dusk, audacity, sur-
prise, the survivors then swerved off into the forest toward their
own lines. For a moment the Rebels, scattering right and left, had
thought that the whole Union cavalry was coming down on them.
And, before they had recovered from their panic, Pleasonton had
his guns in position and was raking their front with shrapnel aimed
to ricochet into their ranks at a three-foot level. Nothing could
stand against that murderous, searching fire. And the Rebels, halted
in their berserk pursuit, wilted back into the shelter of the forest.
The attack had been stalled. But at cost! In that Balaclava charge
121 men, including thirty officers, had ridden into the "jaws of
hell," never to come back among them the brave Keenan, found
dead at dawn with thirteen bullets in his body.

1 82 Dm Sickles

Sickles's and Pleasonton's bloody check, backed by nightfall,
brought a temporary lull to Jackson's onslaught, and thus gave
Howard and Slocum an opportunity to re-form their shattered
lines before Chancellorsville.

Meanwhile, under a full moon, the infantry divisions of Birney,
Whipple, and Bigelow, wearied by their belated, if successful, attack
on Jackson's rear guard, had followed their commander back to
Hazel Grove still the key point of the entire action. And now, for
the third time that day, Sickles requested permission to attack. And,
for the third time, Hooker, now completely dazed, acquiesced.

Twice on his own account Sickles had seized the initiative
soundly and well and had been cheated only because he did not have
the facts of the situation before him and had been compelled to im-
provise his own strategy on the spot without more than the passive
consent of a collapsed commander. And now that, at last, he had
the facts before him a routed right wing, a powerful, triumphant
enemy ambushed in thick woods waiting only for dawn to com-
plete the disruption of the whole Union army he was determined
to take the initiative once more, and this time to good purpose, play
back surprise, and, at the point of the bayonet, impale the Rebels
where they lurked trusting to forest darkness. His men were weary,
but also they were raw with disappointment and the sense of gross
mishandling from Headquarters. In the way that troops will on the
field of action, they already knew how Sickles had stopped the
Rebel advance, had heard of Keenan's gallant charge, Pleasonton's
murderous barrage. All right! Here was a fighter and a fight! If,
with nothing but cold steel, they had to rout out an enemy for-
tressed in bkck forest, they would go. The Rebs be damned! They
had been told that Pleasonton's artillery would play over them and
that Berry, of Slocum's corps, would support them on the right.
And in they went.

General Williams, sitting in his saddle at the head of his reserve
division of infantry and artillery at Hazel Grove, was in a position
to observe the whole action; and in a letter to a friend a few days
later gave unforgettable account of it:

A tremendous roll of infantry fire, mingled with yellings and shoutings
almost diabolical and infernal, opened the conflict as Sickles' divisions
went into die attack. For some time my infantry and artillery kept silent,
and in the intervals of the musketry, I could distinctly hear the oaths of

Defeat Grotesque 183

the rebel officers, evidently having hard work to keep their men from
stampeding. In the meantime Sickles' artillery opened, firing over the
heads of the charging infantry, and the din of arms and inhuman yellings
and cursings redoubled. All at once, Berry's division, across the road on
our right, opened in heavy volleys, and Knipe (commanding my right
brigade) followed suit. Best (chief of artillery of the Twelfth Corps)
began to thunder with his thirty-odd pieces. In front, and on the flanks,
shell and shot were poured into these woo'ds which were evidently
crowded with rebel masses preparing for a morning attack. Along our
front, and Sickles' flank, probably fifteen thousand or more musketry
were belching an almost incessant stream of flame, while, from the eleva-
tion just in the rear of each line, from forty to fifty pieces of artillery
kept up an uninterrupted roar, re-echoed from the woods with a re-
doubled uproar from the bursting shells which seemed to fill every part
of them with fire and fury. Human language can give no idea of such a
scene such an infernal and yet sublime contemplation of sound and flame
and smoke, and dreadful yells of rage, of pain, of triumph or of defiance.
Suddenly, almost on the instant, the tumult is hushed, hardly a voice can
be heard. One would almost suppose that the combatants were holding
breath to listen for one another's movements. But die contest was not
renewed.*

Commenting on these twelve hours of desperate struggle, Stine,
in his History of the Army of the Potomac (pp. 353, 390), con-
cludes, "If Sickles had not brought up his command in time to
strike Jackson's right and rear, there is no telling where disaster to _
Hooker's army might have ended. . . . His subsequent night attack
against Jackson was one of the most brilliant actions in military
history." He might have added that from forenoon to midnight of
that day Sickles had fought three different types of major engage-
menta pursuit, a check, a counterattack on two fronts, each one
improvised, each one .successful, and two of them executed amid
conditions of pandemonium.

Ironically, it was not in the fury of that night of flame and
skughter, but in the lull of exhaustion and confusion succeeding it,
that the Confederates suffered their severest loss. Jackson had ridden
forward with his staff down the Plank Road to reconnoiter. With
his usual daring he had crept almost to the Union lines. Suddenly
came a burst of fire. He wheeled and galloped back with his escort.

*Quoted from History of the Army of the Potomac (pp. 355-56), by J. H.
Stine.

184 Dan Sickles

But, as he neared the Confederate line, came another burst of fire.
His own men, keyed to hysteria, had mistaken his troop for Union
cavalry. Under that volley, twice repeated, but two or three of the
escort came through unscathed. Jackson was mortally wounded
. . . Lingering, the pious, fanatical genius of the Rebel army passed
the command of his division to its beau sabrewr, the youthful,
dandified, incomparable cavalry leader, "Jeb" Stuart. A few days
kter, clutching Lee's noble last-minute message, "I wish it had been
myself rather than you," he raised himself, shouting orders in
momentary delirium, then relaxed with a quiet smile and the loveli-
est Fenvoi given human lip: "Let us pass over the river and rest
under the shade of the trees."

Hooker already had lost his overwhelming advantage of surprise,
even any semblance of a sound def ensive-and more than ten thou-
sand men. But Lee had lost much more. He had lost '^Stonewall,"
the right arm of his power.

The next morning Sickles still held on to Hazel Grove. But Stuart,
realizing that it was the key to the whole position, pressed him with
desperate flan. Charge after charge was wiped out in bloody re-
pulse; but still the Grays re-formed and came on. An eyewitness of
the action (Camp-fire and 'Battlefield, p. 246) gives an amusing
thumbnail sketch of Sickles at the moment, cool, sardonic, electric.

The corps colors were already advancing. General Sickles, smoking a
cigar, was standing a few feet from the regiment about to attack, when
a dismounted orderly hobbled up to him in a great state of excitement;
"General, my horse has been killed." Came the calm reply, "Captain, the
government will furnish you with another.'* Just at that moment a cap-
tured Rebel officer of high rank, passing on his way to the rear, recog-
nized the general and, stepping aside, tried to open up a conversation with
him*

"General, how do you do? I had the pleasure of meeting you in New
York."

"Move that battery forward!"

"But General, I am quite sure that you "

"The Brigade will advance!"

"General, don't you remember ?"

"Go to the rear, sir! I am about to attack!"

Sickles's ammunition was running dangerously low. Again and
again he sent his aide, Major Tremaine, to Chancellorsville to beg

Defeat Grotesque 185

for one train of the many trains of shot and shell he knew ky idle
to the rear. But although the enemy was stalled, exhausted, and
Slocum, Humphreys, Hancock, and Couch by their own efforts
had improvised a contracted but still powerful front, Hooker already
had decided to abandon the field. And Sickles, facing a new on-
slaught with empty guns, received instead of the idle ammunition
that would have saved the day orders to retreat. . . .

Thus to surrender, without reason or necessity, a position that,
once in Stuart's hands, would enable him to join forces with Lee on
his right, rake the retreating Union army with his own massed
artillery, and in combined attack complete the rout already begun,
seemed to Sickles criminal madness. Turning the command over to
Pleasonton, he galloped off to Headquarters. As he drew rein at the
Chancellorsville mansion, he noticed that Hooker was on the balcony
above him, leaning broodily against one of its wooden pillars. With-
out waiting to dismount, and standing in his stirrups, Sickles had
just begun to shout his protest when, as ironic luck would have it,
a shell struck the pillar Hooker was using for spine and knocked
him unconscious. At once the rumor spread that he had been killed.
But he quickly recovered and a few minutes later mounted his horse
and rode among the troops to show that "Fighting Joe" was still in
action. It was his last gesture. Quickly he retired to a tent far to
the rear and took to bed. He was not really hurt a bit bruised and
shaken, that was all. But the shock had completed his collapse. And
just as he had left the field at Antietam because of a slight foot
wound that interfered no whit with his riding, so now he quit
Chancelloisville with nothing more than a bad bump! To Sickles he
peevishly reiterated his original order. He would send him no more
ammunition "since it only would fall into enemy hands 9 '!

Hazel Grove, the strategic key to the whole field of battle, held
at terrible blood cost, still could have been used to mount a counter-
attack in overwhelming force for Anderson's corps of forty thou-
sand men had not yet fired a shot. And to hand it over to the enemy
as a gift was, for Sickles, the bitterest experience of his military career.
From that moment he inew that, for all his efforts, for all the
valiant struggle of Slocum, Couch, Meade, Hancock to retrieve the
field, the Union army faced once more at the hands of hapless
command shameful, inexcusable defeat. Hoarsely he ordered his
guns drawn off, his men to form column of march. And Stuart,

iS6 Dan Sickles

watching through field glasses scarcely a mile away, could not be-
lieve his eyes. "By the Eternal! they're packing up and going home!**
Within the hour, massing his own artillery where Sickles had planted
his, he was blasting Chancellorsville to kindling, punishing the
huddled, retreating Union center, and hilariously joining hands with
Lee. In a solid arc now both forces prepared to drive the Yankees
into the river in a final rout. But at that moment came word that
Sedgwick had crossed the Rappahannock, taken Fredericksburg, and
was coming down on the Confederate flank. Hooker with seventy-
five thousand men in line of battle had called upon Sedgwick with
twenty-five thousand men to come and save him! Under the cir-
cumstances Lee decided that before he could finish Hooker he had
better brush Sedgwick out of the way. Deliberately he denuded
his front of all but a skirmishing line and threw himself on this new
danger. Sedgwick, expecting to meet Union troops, met instead a
yelling line of Rebs in front, in flank, and soon in rear. With a
perilously thin line Lee had surrounded him. Receiving no support,
and guessing that Hooker must have met disaster, Sedgwick skill-
fully maneuvered his forsaken divisions northward to the river and,
fighting a desperate rear-guard action, successfully forded them.
Lee then turned back to dispose of the main Union force.

But Hooker, leaving Sedgwick to his fate, was not even waiting
to be disposed of! Hastily he had called his corps commanders to-
gether to decide, of all things, whether to attack or retreat! In his
simpleton's heart he believed that, in their present discouraged
state, they would vote for retreatand thus enable him to shift the
onus of the final decision to their shoulders. There is little doubt
that, even at that late hour, any one of them, given full command
and the use of the entire force including Anderson's forty thousand
idle, chafing men could have turned and thrashed Lee's exhausted
little army. And they knew it. But Hooker, lounging on his cot,
nursing his bruises, showed no sign of relinquishing command.
Nevertheless Meade and Howard voted for attack. Reynolds, not
yet having been engaged, felt that he could not vote either way.
Slocum's attitude was foreknown; he had proven himself able to
hold Jackson's right wing amid all the frenzy of rout but he was on
active service with his line and could not be present. Couch, the
senior corps commander, reserved his decision. "Before I give my
voice, I first wish to know what the plan of operations will be and

Improvisation at Gettysburg 187

who will command." Hooker promptly sat up. "I shall decide the
plan of operationsand I shall command them." Couch was coldly
decisive. "In that case, General, I vote for immediate retreat across
the river." Pretending not to notice the biting tone, content that
he had the senior commander for buffer, Hooker turned on Sickles.
"And you?" Sick at heart, loathing the idea of retreat, but realizing
that so long as the Army of the Potomac remained south of the
Rappahannock under Hooker's command it simply would be served
up for slaughter at Lee's hands, Sickles voted with Couch. Where-
upon Hooker for two days now wishing himself safely across the
river pretended to make the final decision himself and, turning to
Couch, indicating the rear-guard positions he wished him to occupy,
ordered an immediate retreat.

Thanks to the utter exhaustion of Lee's small force and the tire-
less, efficient Couch twice wounded, his horse shot under him, but
still carrying on the Army of the Potomac, despite floodwaters,
withdrew in good order and without undue loss. And with it re-
crossed forty thousand cursing reserves who had never been per-
mitted to sight a Rebel, and miles of ammunition trains never un-
loaded; while from Marye's Heights to Dowdall's Tavern seventeen
thousand men had been buried or cremated alive in the flaming
woods, crippled or captured in crudest waste. Chancellorsville,
opening in brilliant surprise, had ended in defeat grotesque.

CHAPTER XXV

Improvisation at Gettysburg

UNE 1863. Two years of rigorous campaigning and increasing
responsibility had hammered Sickles into a seasoned commander.
Under four disastrous generals he had been compelled to realize
that the Army of the Potomac had been, still was, and probably

1 88 Dan Sickles

always would be a "headless army"; and that, hitherto, it had been
saved from annihilation only by the stubborn quality of its rank
and file, the desperate efforts of its officer personnel. All of this,
naturally, ordered his military thinking, caused him to conclude that
in future actions he would have to do what he just had been forced to
do make the most of whatever opportunities appeared on his own
front and trust that, once engaged, Headquarters would back him
up. And it was in this state of mind that he crawled with the army
still under Hooker back to Falmouth.

Lee, meanwhile, reinforced by Longstreet, already was creeping
craftily westward and northward up die Shenandoah Valley. With
only half the force now at his command, he had administered the
Union army its severest defeat in a long history of defeat. Now he
rode right into the heart of the enemy country, circling for the
kill! On the face of it that march of his, like his flanking foray at
Chancellorsville, seemed a perilous gamble. While he had held, re-
pulsed, or whipped the Army of the Potomac wherever the two had
met in anything like full force, he never had been able to destroy
it, cripple it, nor, more than momentarily, reduce its soon recruited
fighting strength. And what he had been unable to accomplish on
his own ground, close to his own base, with a whole population for
spies, he now proposed to do on enemy ground, far from his own
base, subject to imminent attack, flank and rear, amid a bitterly
hostile people keen to play eyes and ears for his opponent.

But the adventure was not as mad as it looked. Never was a gen-
eral so befriended by sheer terrain. On his rapid, hidden thrust across
northern Virginia from Fredericksburg to Williamsport where he
forded the upper reaches of the Potomac and thence north to
Chambersburg, his temporary headquarters, he was shielded on his
right flank successively by the Rappahannock and Shenandoah
rivers, the Blue Ridge and the South mountains. And he was well
into Pennsylvania before Hooker, squatting at Falmouth, became
cognizant that the enemy he believed to be facing him across the river
was already far behind his back! And just as Lee was shielded by
terrain and knew how to make the most of it, so he was shielded
by Lincoln's concern, Halleck's morbid anxiety, for the safety of
Washington; and he knew how to make the most of that also. Well
aware that die Army of the Potomac had no freedom to "seek out
and destroy the enemy wherever he may be," but that it must always

Improvisation at Gettysburg 189

work on a leash tied to the White House, he took the bold chance
that, in face of his invasion, it would be permitted neither to inarch
on his unprotected base at Richmond, nor cut his communications
at his Williamsport fording, nor make a flank attack upon him
through the South Mountain passes his three supreme hazards
but that Halleck would keep it hugged to an inner circle guarding
the capital. Which is exactly what happened! Hooker begged to be
allowed to march on Richmond. He was refused. Then, shifting
his forces northward to Edwards Ferry, and crossing the Potomac,
he begged to use the idle garrison of over ten thousand men at Har-
pers Ferry and, reinforcing them with two divisions, cut Lee's line
of communications to the rear. Again he was refused. And at that
he resigned. And George Gordon Meade, a well-balanced, if by no
means brilliant, commander, suddenly found himself, at Lincoln's
behest, charged with the responsibility of meeting the supreme crisis
of the war under precisely the same restrictions.

Thus, shielded by terrain and the Administration psychology,
Lee was enabled to proceed almost at leisure up the Shenandoah and
Cumberland valleys, debouch through Chester Gap, and spread his
forces in a broad arc dear across Pennsylvania as far as Harrisburg
an arc that parachute-wise had road-strings concentrating at
Gettysburg, within but three days' march due south to Washington!

In all of this it may be noted parenthetically Lee made but one
mistake. Curiously, as did Hooker at ChanceUorsville, he denuded
himself of his cavalry permitting "Jeb" Stuart to take his whole
body of horse off on a raid behind the enemy's rear, thus depriving
himself of the means of ascertaining with any certainty Meade's in-
tentions. Thus, in the upshot, he virtually blundered upon the ad-
vance left wing of the Union army and had no recourse but to give
battle on unfavorable ground not of his own choosing.

But carefully as Lee had calculated the protective factors in his
favor, and dangerously self-confident as he had become, it may be
doubted if he would have undertaken his invasion had it not been
for a series of bitter compulsions. He needed shoes for his barefoot
army; and these could be had only in the North. Also he needed
food, fodder, horses long stripped from war-trampled Virginia but
abounding in the rich farmlands of Pennsylvania. But more than
that, the South was running out of everything except courage. Its
ports blockaded, the whole Mississippi save only beleaguered Vicks-

190 Dan Sickles

burg in the hands of the enemy, it faced economic collapse unless
a quick decision could be reached. Moreover, one more victory
and this time on northern soil menacing the capital could be counted
upon to produce two feverishly desired results: it would encourage
the already strong northern peace party to demand a cessation of.
hostilities and an agreement with the South; and supreme con-
sideration! it might well precipitate the long-pending recognition
of the Confederacy by England and France, thus paving the way
for British aid, at least, in breaking the Union blockade. Added to
this there was the possibility that the campaign, whether successful
or not, might drive Halleck to withdraw a stout portion of Grant's
troops from before doomed Vicksburg in order to safeguard Wash-
ington.

Such, in brief, was the intricate mesh of reasons, from footgear
to power politic^ which launched Lee on the most unorthodox mili-
tary adventure of his career. He did not know that in the ranks of
the Union army lurked a corps commander as much given to the
bold and unorthodox as himself! He did not reckon that Sickles,
who had balked his grand coup at Chancellorsville with a swiftly
improvised change of front, would balk him again in much the same
manner at Gettysburg!

No more than Lee did Meade deliberately choose Gettysburg as
a field of battle. The one already had decided to make his stand at
Cashtown, some twenty miles to the west of it. There, backed by
the South Mountain, with Chester Gap a p$rf ecdy protected path
of supply and retreat immediately in his rear, he felt he would
have a practically impregnable position. The other had selected the
south bank of Pipe Creek, a sound defensive line covering Balti-
more and Washington, about thirty miles to the south. But the gods
decreed that a strong detachment of Confederates foraging for shoes
at Gettysburg should come into collision there with a Union cavalry
reconnaissance in force, under Buford. The engagement, once be-
gun, rapidly sucked increasing support from both sides; and, before
the day was over, the two armies of some eighty-five thousand Blues
and seventy-five thousand Grays were converging in full force upon
what had been, but a few hours before, a sleepy, obscure little village.

Gettysburg, with its ten intersecting cross-country roads, was an
admirable concentration point for either army; and to prevent the
enemy from using it for this purpose, Meade already had ordered

Improvisation at Gettysburg 191

Reynolds, commanding the Union left wing, to push forward and
occupy it with his own First Corps and place the other two corps
under his command Howard's Eleventh and Sickles's Third at
nearby points to protect his flank and rear. Thus Buford, aware
of Reynolds' rapid approach, fought fiercely to hold the town
against his arrival. Meanwhile, however, the far-flung Confederate
forces, alarmed by the news of the growing battle, were also pour-
ing toward Gettysburg from York in the east, Harrisburg and
Carlisle in the north, Cashtown on the west. Reynolds, arriving on
the field, found Buford making a last stand; and, quickly realizing
that his own troops were greatly outnumbered, and in immediate
danger of being flanked, sent a call for help to Sickles, his nearest
subordinate commander.

Sickles, with his Third Corps, had been posted at Emmitsburg,
some ten miles to the southwest, with special orders from Meade to
examine its suitability for a battleground and to hold it against a
possible flank movement of the enemy. But an emergency summons
from a ranking officer such as Reynolds could not be ignored. There
was no time to consult Meade many miles to the rear. Leaving two
brigades to hold Emmitsburg, Sickles immediately putting his men
. on the march, dispatched a galloper to Meade reporting his action
and requesting that definite orders of approval or recall be sent
to him en route. Meade, realizing now that the battle was joined,
instantly approved Siddes's action, sent the remaining two brigades
forward, and commanding Howard, with his Eleventh Corps, and
Hancock, with the Fifth, to follow in support, issued general orders
for the whole army to advance and concentrate at Gettysburg* At
the same time, and with a like rapidity, Lee, cheated of his chosen
position at Cashtown, was marshaling all his forces to the same field
bent upon decisive batde.

During those last hours of July i f 1863, in one of the bloodiest
and bitterest engagements of the war, Buf ord's three thousand horse,
supported by the First and Eleventh corps, outnumbered and over-
powered, were driven back to Cemetery Ridge, a fairly steep hog-
back running some five miles south from the edge of Gettysburg.
The batde had opened inauspiciously for the North. But only
technically could the tenacious, if broken, resistance of Buford,
Reynolds, Howard, and their men be regarded as a. defeat. Actually

192 ' Dan Sickles

it was a valuable, although costly, holding action giving time for
the main body of the Union army to arrive on the field.

Already it was dusk. The exhausted Confederates, fearing the
presence of powerful Union reinforcements on their front, desisted
from further attack. Reynolds had been killed early in the action.
And Hancock, now in command, instantly appreciating the stra-
tegic advantages of Cemetery Ridge, proceeded to reorganize the
shattered troops and set them to throwing up earthworks along its
rocky five-mile length; while every hour throughout the night, up
the Emmitsburg Road, the Taneytown Road, and Baltimore Pike
came the dust-muffled tramp of heavy columns, the growl of artil-
lery caissons, ammunition trains, supply wagons, as the Army of the
Potomac wheeled into position. At midnight Meade arrived and
under the pale glare of a full moon hastily examined the ground and
the disposition of the troops. Across the narrow valley to the west,
on wooded Seminary Ridge the twin of Cemetery the Confeder-
ates also were massing, felling trees, erecting abatis. And Lee, with
Longstreet at his side, was riding from point to point, giving last
orders. Tomorrow the grapple!

Dawn of the fateful Second Day at Gettysburg revealed the fact
that the position hurriedly occupied by the Union army during the
night, was for all its eleventh-hour adoption one remarkably well
adapted to the defensive battle Meade proposed. Protected on its
southern extremity by two rugged, boulder-strewn mounds the
one, Big Round Top, some three hundred feet high, too precipitous
for any military purpose, yet still an obstacle to the enemy; the
other, Little Round Top, just north of the first and a hundred feet
lower, a key position for infantry and light artillery it ran thence
three miles northward along the gradually rising crest of Cemetery
Ridge, and finally curled back upon itself on the steep, half -moon*
wooded height known as Gulp's BB1L Thus, following the natural
contours of the country, it presented a striking resemblance to a fish-
hook. And while this comparison from a bird's-eye view has be-
come customary, it seems to have escaped notice hitherto that the
Union horizon line viewed from the Confederate side presented
precisely the same appearance. Lay a fishhook flat, and you have
the one; stand it on its side, only butt and barb touching the table,
and you have the other. The high curve of the barb would be

'Improvisation at Gettysburg 193

Gulp's Hill; the shank, the down-sloping crest of Cemetery Ridge;
the butt supposing it to be a rather pronounced knob would be
Little Round Top. But while this position, with its well-buttressed
flanks and short interior line, was decidedly strong, it had one
very weak spot: the lowest section of the "shank" just before it
joined the "butt." Here the ground was not only low but swampy,
thicketed, ill defined, lacking in artillery positions, and cut up by
small ravines obstructive to troop movements. Moreover, it was
commanded a mile to the west by high ground where a stone-
walled enclosure (the Peach Orchard) offered the enemy excellent
emplacement for his own batteries. For while Lee's line deployed
along Seminary Ridge parallel to Cemetery Ridge, thence down
through Gettysburg and around the base of Gulp's Hill closely
conformed to Meade's "fishhook" line of defense, the terrain it
occupied exhibited a quite contrary order of elevation. And thus
while its lowest point, the Village, confronted the peak of the
Union position (Gulp's Hfll), its highest point the southern region
of Seminary Ridge marked by the Peach Orchard dominated the
lowest point on the Union front. And, as luck would have it, this
depressed sector was the one given Sickles to hold.

It happened that Geary had occupied this same sector for a few
hours the previous night with his Second Division of Slocum's
Twelfth Corps. Meade's instructions to Sickles, therefore, were to
establish his troops along the vacated line. But Geary had left no
line, had been given no time before he was ordered to the right-
to do more than bivouac "in position," and had withdrawn long be-
fore the Third Corps began to arrive on the ground. Sickles thus
was left in considerable doubt as to the exact location and extent of
his sector, and had to appeal to Meade for more specific directions.
But, apart from a glimpse by moonlight,. Meade had found no
opportunity to inspect his left. Consequently his instructions were
explicit enough as to "line of front" but delivered without any actual
cognizance of the ground to be occupied. Indicating the Round Tops
as marking the terminus of the Union left, he ordered Sickles to
cover them and extend his troops due north until he contacted Han-
cock's Second Corps on Cemetery Ridge in other words to protect
the "butt" and lower part of the "shank" in the already well-de-
fined "fishhook" line.

But, examining the position allotted him, Sickles quickly became

1 94 0^ Sickles

aware not only that, for the most part, it ran through a broken,
tangled swale but that he had by no means enough troops to cover
it; that if he connected with Hancock on his right, he could not
man the vitally important crest of Little Round Top on his left.
He thus faced the disturbing fact that, until Sykes with the Fifth
Corps assigned to his support could reinforce him, he would have
to leave one flank or the other unprotected, "in air." And he drew
small comfort from the knowledge that Sykes, at the moment, was
thirty miles away! And scarcely had he dispatched a report of his
situation to Meade when he was shocked to discover that, by some
blunder at Headquarters, Buford's cavalry, stationed hitherto just
behind Little Round Top to guard his sector and thus the whole
Union left against an encircling movement from the south, had been
withdrawn, sent back to base at Westminster far to the rear, tmd
had not been replaced!

Sickles was now thoroughly concerned. He had been long enough
at war to know that down in a hole, commanded from the front,
unprotected on his left, unsupported to his rear, and without troops
enough to fill out his line he stood at the mercy of the enemy. But
what troubled him most was the realization that, should the Con-
federatesrepeating Jackson's trick at Chancellorsville crash in on
his left flank, he would find himself, like Howard, helplessly aligned
the wrong way; and that once his depleted Third Corps was en-
veloped, crushed, the whole Union line, taken in reverse, would
go with it. Was it then to be Chancellorsville again? . . . Deter-
mined to put his predicament before Meade in person, he galloped
off to Headquarters.

But he might have saved himself the trouble. Meade, completely
convinced that the major attack would be launched against Gulp's
Hill, was too intensely preoccupied with strengthening his right to
spare much thought for his left. . . . Cavalry protection? Yes it
had been ordered; but the squadrons * assigned were some hours'
march away. As to reinforcements Sykes, with his Fifth Corps,
was coming up, and, in due time, would provide them. For the pres-
ent no others were available. And when Sickles, arguing in terms of
tactics, requested permission to advance his troops from their present
low, jumbled position to more defensible ground on his front and
left, he was met with refusal based upon the hoary maxim of strat-
egy which decrees that, in adopting a battle line, a commander

Improvisation at Gettysburg 195

must consider the whole as paramount to the parts, in other words
"take the fat with the lean." It was the old clash between the well-
tested general rule and the new particular case. Both men were right,
the one tactically and realistically, the other strategically and theo-
retically. But it would have required a dispassionate executive in-
telligencesuch as Meade did not possess to combine both views
to definite advantage.

Once more Sickles found himself, in face of the enemy, thrust
upon his own devices. Believing Meade to the contrary that the
onslaught would come on the left, and lacking cavalry for recon-
naissance, he instructed General Birney, commanding his First Divi-
sion, to advance a line of pickets along the Emmitsburg Road
paralleling his front a mile to the west and throw out a skirmish
line three hundred yards beyond. This "feeler" of his soon elicited
a brisk fire from the woods on the southwest; and, strongly sus-
pecting now that a considerable force wasr creeping around his
flank, he dispatched General Berdan with a hundred United States
Sharpshooters supported by the Third Main Infantry, to smoke it
out.

Penetrating the forest screen, Berdan soon contacted enemy
pickets and, in a sharp action, drove them in, to discover, as Sickles
had surmised he would, a heavy enemy column stealthily circling
toward the Union left. Dispatching an aide with the news, he gave
orders to his men to fan out in line of fire. Instantly he had realized
that the column must be delayed; and he knew that the only way to
deky it was to engage it, throw it into confusion, make it believe
itself beset by a powerful force.

It was a few score against thousands. But the Sharpshooters were
virtuosi. Carefully selected, specially trained, many of them ex-
perienced Indian fighters, they were the keenest scouts, deadliest
shots, cagiest crew at an ambush, in the Union army. Berdan knew
he could trust them, the Third: Main, too self-reliant fellows, reared
to hunting and a hardy life. And, in an action of pure, derotedi
bravado, he attacked. The sudden rapidly repeated blast of die
Sharpshooters' new breechloaders threw the whole column into
panic. Amid a haphazard crash of return fire, blurt of bugles, bawl-
ings of officers, the- Confederates, convinced that they were being
flanked in force, first wavered, then rallied, and finally re-forming
their line, advanced to the charge. Crushed back almost to the

196 Dan Sickles

Emmitsburg Road, Berdan, to the last stretch of daring, held them
in play. Then, before they could discover their mistake, he skill-
fully withdrew. He had lost sixty of his men, but he had sprung
the enemy's surprise, thrown a dangerous flanking maneuver off
balance, given his commander time to prepare against it.

Sickles, meanwhile, had been carefully examining the rising ground
on his left. Not yet had he received Berdan's report, but he scarcely
needed it. A flanking assault from that direction was something that
he now fully anticipated, and he already was preparing to counter
it by a quick change of front. He knew that Meade notwithstand-
inghe had no alternative if he would meet it from commanding
ground and -face to face, instead of doim in a hole aligned the ivrong
'way. What he sought, therefore, was a higher line of defense hinged
on his present position and at right angles to it, so that, in a crisis,
he could swing out his low westward-facing line as one would
swing open a gate to a high southward-facing line, and thus meet
the attack from uphill and head on. And it was not long before he had
found what he sought or, at least, a reasonable resemblance to it.

A few hundred yards away on his immediate left, and divided
from Big Round Top by a swampy ravine (Plum Run), stood a
grotesque, hundred-foot-high pile of boulders (Devil's Den) good
cover for an enemy attack but, by the same token, a good hinge for
a defensive line. Thence northwesterly ran a low ridge, bare at first,
but soon wooded where it bordered a broad, upsloping clearing
(the Wheat Field) as far as the elevated ground on his front. Here
the Emmitsburg Road connecting the northern end of the Union
position on Cemetery Ridge with the southern end of the Confed-
erate parallel position on Seminary Ridge in a long, shallow diagonal
passed out of sight into enemy territory* And at this point stood
the stone-walled Peach Orchard, the very spot from which he
momentarily expected to be shelled a vantage ground for the guns
of either side.

Here, he decided, was his true fighting position* And if, for the
present, he must remain where he had been put facing west he was
determined that, at the first hint of assault from the south, he would
swing out his whole line on the hinge of Devil's Den, deploying it
along the partially wooded ridge as far as the Peach Orchard, and
there "refuse" (bend back) the scanty remnant of his corps along

Improvisation at Gettysburg 197

the Emmitsburg Road His proposed new emergency front, there-
fore, presented a broad spearhead -with a long flange and a short
flange: the Jong flange aligned against the expected major attack
from the south; the short flange a temporary protection against en-
circlement from the west Truly, by thus turning a sump into a
salient, he would lose contact with Hancock on his right and Little
Round Top on his left, and so leave both flanks dangerously "in
air." But in his present position one flank would have to be left to
luck anyhow; and here, aligned the wrong way, he could do little
but await massacre. In his proposed position he at least could con-
front the onset, surprise, baffle, and with luck hold it until rein-
forcements fcould be massed to his support. Once more, therefore,
he rode^off to the little farmhouse on the Taneytown Road. There
energetically he outlined his whole predicament, ia view of a pos-
sible, and highly probable, enemy assault on his flank; and indicating
the change of front required to meet it, he requested Meade to view
the ground for himself and judge which of the two lines, the pres-
ent or the proposed, offered the better chance of defense.

But Meade, still anticipating imminent attack on his right, skepti-
cal of Sickles's fears for the left, and reluctant to make any alter-
ations in what he deemed sound military dispositions, expressed
himself as unable to leave Headquarters and his telegraph at such
a critical moment. Sickles then begged that General Warren, that
topographical chief and general good genius of the Headquarters
staff, be allowed to examine his position and give his opinion. This,
too, was refused. Finally, yielding to Sickles's insistence that he
must have some advice, Meade delegated General Hunt, artillery
chief of staff, to make the desired inspection.

Hunt, however, proved cautious and noncommittal. Agreeing
that, especially in a lack of artillery positions, Sickles's sector was
unsatisfactory, he contented himself with pointing out that the
suggested new front, while offering definite advantages, was too long
for the Third Corps to cover if Lkde Round Top was to be
properly protected. And, unwilling to assume responsibility for
authorizing any change in the established line, he rode off.

Sickles sat brooding in his saddle. His uncanny prescience was
gnawing on him. Deep in himself he knew that Lee was outsmart-
ing Meade, that the major attack would come not against the almost

198 Dan Sickles

impregnable Union right but against his own decrepit left, that
the new high line he had chosen was the only possible line of de-
fense, and that if he did not occupy it now, the enemy soon 'would!

Berdan, seeking to penetrate the enemy's movements, had been out
of communication for some time. Now suddenly his aide, astride
a mare soapy with sweat and froth, came in with the scribbled re-
port: "A powerful enemy column moving around your flank. . . .
I am attacking." Sickles slid the note into his pouch and without a
moment's hesitation ordered his corps to form line of march. Down
the line the bugles were sounding, "Fall in!" And within a matter
of minutes while Hancock's men on Cemetery Ridge, sensing the
situation, cheered uproariously the Third Corps, in perfect divi-
sion formation, colors flying, bayonets glinting in the brazen glare,
the blue flag of the Excelsior Brigade leading the parade, marched
up out of their sump hole and proceeded to deploy, in echelon,
along their new upland position from Devil's Den to the Peach Or-
chard, and thence northward a space along the Emmitsburg Road.
And on the instant, depressed, grouching men were larking, jubilant.
Here they saw that, at least, they had elbow room, vista, shade,
breeze, a chance to breathe and to face fighting whatever the enemy
had to offer.

Made, as they were, at driving speed, the dispositions yet took
time; and it was already three o'dock before the last man and gun
were in place. To Humphreys, a division commander with an ex-
uberant delight in battle, Sickles assigned the protection of his right
flank, with Carr's brigade aligned along the Emmitsburg Road sup-
ported by Brewster's Excelsiors. Graham's brigade, backed by thirty
pieces of field artillery, he stationed at the peak of the salientthe
Peach Orchard. Thence the ridge he had chosen for his main line of
defense bent obtusely back toward Devil's Den. This mile-long sector
he assigned to his senior commander, Birney, with his brigades of De
Trobriand and Ward the one occupying die wooded portion of the
ridge, the other the bare portion. In support of this line he deployed
Burling's brigade across the Wheat Field to the rear, at the same time
planting twenty-six guns behind De Trobriand, two atop the Den,
and four commanding Plum Run.

The movement had been made not a moment too soon. Scarcely
had it been completed than an outburst of skirmish fire along the

Improvisation at Gettysburg 199

southwestern arc announced that the long-expected flanking on-
slaught was about to break.

What had happened in the interval makes a curious piece of
military history. Lee, at first, had concluded, rightly enough, that
the Union left was anchored on the Round Tops. But mistaking
Sickles's pickets at the Peach Orchard for an occupation in force,
he sharply revised his judgment. Knowing Meade to be a strict
academician, he could not conceive of him thrusting out an im-
pudent and perilous salient on his flank; and, without a flicker of
doubt, he assumed that the whole Union line had been advanced
from Cemetery Ridge to the vicinity of the Emmitsburg Road and
now terminated at the Peach Orchard. His flanking maneuver,
therefore, was projected to envelope that point. And, consequently,
his orders to Longstreet commanding the movement were to "at-
tack by echelon up the Emmitsburg Road." Had his assumption
been correct, this plan of attack would have paralleled, and might
well have repeated, Jackson's coup at Chancellorsville. A broad line
of troops marching north on both sides of the Emmitsburg Road
would have curled around the Union position supposed to be aligned
along it. And a simultaneous assault, front and rear, by successively
advancing echelons would have proceeded to roll up the whole line
from south to north. And, as a matter of fact, so convinced was
Lee seven miles away! that this was the actual enemy position
that not the most urgent, if belated, reports to die contrary from
the scene of action first from Longstreet, then from Ewefl, lead-
ing the Confederate right wing could induce him to change his
original orders. Thus, in the supreme struggle of the Civil War,
both generals completely misapprehended the situation confronting
them; and, in the upshot, both had to be saved from the full toll
of their errors by the last-minute directives and technical dis-
obedienceof their subordinate commanders. No more than Sickles
could persuade Meade to see that an attack was impending on the
left, not on the right, could Longstreet make Lee credit his too
late discovery that the Union flarik rested not on the Peach Or-
chard but on Litde Round Top and Devil's Den a mile to the east!

By three o'clock a crescendo of skirmish fire to the southwest
gave warning that Longstreet's massive corps was advancing on a

200 Dan Sickles

wide front on either side of the Emmitsburg Road toward the
Peach Orchard. Sickles, tense, galvanic, riding his lines, had every
man nerved for the onset. But it was precisely at this moment that
Meade, still blindly preoccupied with his right, chose to summon a
conference of corps commanders at his headquarters. Sickles, plead-
ing that he was in face of the enemy, requested to be excused, but
was peremptorily refused. And, turning over his command to
Birney, he galloped off. As he whirled up to the porch of the little
farmhouse where Meade was conferring with Warren, Hunt, and
Doubleday, chief of staff, the thunder of cannonading burst out
behind him. Surprised, Meade sprang to his feet. "What is that, sir?"
Sickles, without dismounting, saluted .grimly. "I am under attack,
General." It was a bad moment for Meade. The amateur had out-
guessed him. His own elaborate preparations on the right had gone
for naught. And warned and warned again, he had given but one
moonlit glance to his left. But he wasted' no words. "You are ex-
cused from dismounting. Return to your command, sir. I will fol-
low you."

Coming up on the "spearhead" at a gallop, Warren at his side^
Meade appeared amazed at Sickles's dispositions and this despite
the fact that they had been under discussion all morning and had
been made nearly two hours before! Stung by the belated criticism,
Sickles countered coldly, "I will withdraw to my original position,
if that is what you prefer, General." A burst of shrapnel overhead
pointed the answer. "It is too late, sir those people won't let you!"
In consternation Meade saw that, with the enemy coming down
in full force, Sickles's salient stood wholly "in air," that its long
flange facing the immediate assault failed to cover Little Round Top
on the left, and that its short flange along the Emmitsburg Road
failed, by half a mile, to connect with Hancock on Cemetery Ridge.
Sickles knew it as well as Meade. And he also knew that if a tithe of
th,e attention given to the right had been given to the left, those*
gaps would not be there. But there was no time as yet for recrim-
inations. And if Meade had shown himself mistaken in his judg-
ment, he now showed himself competent and decisive in emergency.
Ordering Warren to seize upon any reserves he could find and in-
stantly man Little Round Top, he proceeded to strip his whole line
even dangerously denuding his right in vigorous effort to sup-
port Sickles's spearhead. But these measures, hastily improvised and

Improvisation at Gettysburg 201

uncoordinated as they were, failed tragically of the efficacy they
would have had, taken an hour earlier.

At the same time Longstreet, equally suffering from misappre-
hension at Headquarters, and balked by Sickles's massing of troops
across his supposedly open path between the Peach Orchard and
Devil's Den, found himself compelled to extend his line eastward
and concentrate his assault on Little Round Top the true Union
left. As important to Federal as to Confederate, and seized by the
one only a minute before the other, this insignificant hump of rock
turned on the instant to a human abattoir. Clotted with frenzied
men grappling over boulders slimed with blood, it flew the Stars
and Stripes, at last, only after Blue and Gray lay thick upon it
as its own stones, and three Union leaders of the fight Vincent,
Weed, and the gallant young O'Rourke had fallen on its crest.

Failing to capture Little Round Top, Longstreet fiercely pressed
his attack along the line from Devil's Den to the Peach Orchard;
and soon, also, along the Emmitsburg Road. By six o'clock the sun
dipping, a smoke-hazed ball in the west the spearhead had been
clutched and driven in from both sides.

Many efforts have been made to describe that delirious death
straggle; but none has ever pretended to succeed. Suffice it to say
that Sickles's reinforced salient, unbroken for the past three vital,
valiant hours, finally collapsed in a coiling chaos of fight-maddened
men and, foot by foot, was slowly crushed in leaving six thousand
wounded and dead upon the field

But that most frightful affray of the Civil War was also its de-
ciding crisis. When the salient had been flattened back into its
original position now massively reinforced Lee already was de-
feated. The Confederate army had spent its strength and gained
nothing. The Union line simply had been hammered into impreg-
nable solidity; and no soldier in gray except as a prisoner had set
foot within it. The grand coup on the left had failed; and a minor
attack on the right, momentarily successful, failed a few hours later.
Gettysburg had one more day and Pickett's sacrificial, foredoomed
charge on the center. And not for two years would come Appo-
mattox. But those five fierce hours of battering against Sickles's
spearhead had broken the peak of the Rebel power, forecast its
final destruction.

Throughout the action Sickles, riding back and forth along his

202 Dan Sickles

front in a cold flame of excitement, had come through unscathed
But returning for a moment to his headquarters, the Throstle farm-
house in mid-field, he was struck by shrapnel his right leg splin-
tered from thigh to ankle. Fearing the effect the news might have
upon his men, his orderlies rushed him to the rear. There, stoically
smoking a cigar while he waited for the surgeon, he demanded to be
kept informed of every development on the battle front. Within the
hour his leg was amputated; and two days later he was dispatched
to the base hospital in Washington. As his stretcher was borne from
the train to the waiting ambulance, the curious crowd noted the im-
perturbable calm of this man who had made Lafayette Square echo
to his cries of grief and rage. But the same Sickles who had slain
Key and defied public opinion; and now putting his own instincts
ahead of orders had thrown out his protective salient and compelled
the whole Army of the Potomac to support him, still knew he was
right! En route he had received news that the Union line held. Lee
was in retreat! And his sense of inner sanction could not have been
more complete had he foreknown that in later years three authori-
tative voices would sound his vindication: that the brilliant British
military critic, Captain Cecil Battine, would write, ". . . the new
position acted like a breakwater upon which the fury of the attack
spent itself, and by the delay enabled all the Federal troops to come
into line";* that Jesse Bowman Young, an eyewitness, and, thereafter,
a lifetime student of the batde, would sum up his exhaustive investiga-
tion on this point with the declaration, "Longstreet's blow, falling
upon the Third Army Corps, in its original position . . . could not
have been warded off or withstood; it would have made a hole clean
through the line to the Taneytown Road";f and, finally, that his
defeated opponent, the chivalrous Longstreet, would write to him,
"I believe that it is now conceded that the advanced position at the
Peach Orchard, taken by your corps afid under your orders, saved
that battlefield to the Union cause. It was the sorest and saddest re-
flection of my life for many years; but today I can say with sincerest
emotion that it was and is the best that could have come to us all,
North and South. . * . As a Northern veteran once remarked to me,
'General Sickles can well afford to leave a leg on that field!* ":

*The Crisis of the Confederacy, p. 216.

^Tbe Battle of Gettysburg p. 226.

^Published in Lee and Longstreet at High Tide, by Helen D. Longstreet.

PART FIVE: HIGH TRUST AND INTRIGUE

CHAPTER XXVI

General on Crutches

J.T WAS THE SUNDAY after Gettysburg. In his Washington quarters-r
the first floor of a private residence on F Street Sickles lay on a
stretcher. The orderlies who just had carried him in had departed.
His colored valet had bathed and shaved him. And now, clad in white
drill, save for the bandaged stump, his head supported by several
pillows, he was smoking a cigar now and again biting hard on it
against some unusua"

with two of his staff officers, Captain Fry and Lieutenant Colonel
James F. Rusling, his chief quartermaster. "He was in much pain
and distress at times," reported RusEng, "and weak from loss of
blood, but ralm and collected and with die same iron will and dear-
ness of intellect that always characterized him."*

Suddenly the clatter of cavalry without. The orderly at the door
announced, "His Excellency, the President." The prankish face of
young Tad appeared, and behind him an ungainly apparition Lin-
coln, a rail-thin six-foot-four clad in ill-fitting bkck broadcloth
topped by a silk stovepipe hat, his trousers thrust into high riding
boots complete with heavy spurs. He had just heard of Sickles's
arrival and had immediately come to visit him cantering in with his
escort from the presidential summer residence, the Soldiers* Home.

Lincoln and Sickles, by James Fowler Rusling, a pamphlet published by the
Third Army Corps Reunion, 1910, and based upon the author's letter to his
wife written immediately after the ensuing episode.

203

204

According to Rusling, "the meeting between the two men was cordia
and pathetic. It was easy to see that they held each other in higt
esteem." Solicitously Lincoln inquired about Sickles's wound, how i
happened, when, where, concluding, "And what do the doctors saj
about you now, General?" Sickles's tone was quiet, controlled. "They
tell me that my condition is serious, and that I had better put my
affairs in order at once." But Lincoln, raising a great hand as if to stop
the words in mid-air, would have none of it. "General, listen I am in
a prophetic mood today; and I prophesy that you will soon be up and
about, and that you'll live to do many an important service for your
country yet."* The cheery, deeply assured tone, the shrewd challenge
to the onward view, instantly relaxed Sickles. The grim tension faded
from his face. Nor did it return. From that moment he seems never
to have doubted either his firm recovery or his future career. Six
months later, as able on one leg as he ever had been on two, he was
to prove Lincoln a true prophet and a sound psychologist.

Lincoln, who had been standing in sympathetic concern, now sat
down, and, crossing his prodigious arms and legs, began to question
the general as to all phases of the encounter at Gettysburg. Dis-
tressed by the appalling Union casualties, he inquired anxiously what
measures were being taken to care for the wounded of both sides.
And finally, stressing the magnitude of the victory, he voiced the
fervent hope that Meade would follow it up, strike Lee swiftly, and
bring the war to an end. On this point Sickles, careful to avoid
criticism of a superior, was diplomatically evasive. But for the rest,
prone on his stretcher, puffing leisurely at his cigar, he answered
Lincoln freely and in great detail. Wrote Rusling, "He discussed
the battle and its probable consequences with a lucidity and ability
remarkable for one in his condition. . . . Occasionally he would
wince with pain, and call sharply to his valet to wet his fevered
wound. But he never dropped his cigar, nor lost the thread of the
discussion."

Then, from the questioned, Sickles presently turned questioner.
"I suppose, Mr. President, Washington was pretty close to panic
while we were battling up there? You had reason enough God
knows. It certainly was nip and tuck with us."

Lincoln nodded gravely. "Yes, I suppose we were a little rattled

*Here and throughout this episode the conversation is quoted from Rusling's
report.

General on Crutches 205

now and then. There was talk of the city being captured. The Cab-
inet ordered a gunboat, and went so far as to send away some of the
archives. They even wanted me to go along. But I said, *No, gentle-
men, I'm not going aboard any gunboat. We're going to win at
Gettysburg.' . . . No, General, I had no fears about Gettysburg."

In his astonishment Sickles half sat up. "But how was that, Mr.
President?"

Lincoln looked at him very steadily. "I will try to tell you, but I
don't want you to speak of it. People might laugh, you know. But
the fact of the matter is, in the pinch of the battle up there, when we
had sent General Meade all the soldiers we could rake and scrape,
and yet everything seemed going wrong, I went into my room one
morning and locked the door, and got down on my knees, and
prayed God Almighty for victory at Gettysburg. I told Him this
was His country, and our war His war, and that we could not stand
another Fredericksburg or Chancellorsville. And then and there I
made a solemn vow that if He would stand by you boys at Gettys-
burg, I would stand by Him. I prayed, *Oh God, have mercy upon
me and my afflicted people! Our burdens and sorrows are greater
than we can bear! Come now and help us, or we must all perish!
And Thou canst not afford to have us perish! We are Thy chosen
people, the last best hope of the human race!' ... I don't know
how it was and I can't explain it I'm not a 'meeting man,* you know
but somehow or other a sweet comfort crept into my soul that
God Almighty had taken the whole business up there into His own
hands, and that things would come out all right at Gettysburg. And
He did stand by you boys there, and now I will stand by Him. No,
General, I had no fears for Gettysburg, and that is why."

For a moment or two the room was quite stilL Then Sickles
spoke. "Mr. President, what do you think about Vicksburg? How
are things going there?"

Lincoln appeared soberly cheerful. "I don't quite know. Grant is
still pegging away. And I rather thiak, as we used to say out in
Illinois, he *will make a spoon or spoil a horn' before he gets through.
Some of our senators and congressmen thinlr him slow, want me to
remove him. But I like Grant. He doesn't bother me for reinforce-
ments all the time like some of our other generals. He takes what
soldiers we can give him, and does the best he can with what he has.
Yes, I confess, I like General Grant. There is a great deal to him,

206 Dan Sickles

first and last. And Heaven helping me, unless something happens
more than I know now, I mean to stand by Grant a good while yet.
He fights, he fights!"

"So then you have no fears today about Vicksburg either, Mr.
President?"

"Well, no, I can't say I have." Lincoln spoke slowly. "The fact
is I have been praying over Vicksburg also. I have told Almighty God
how much we need the Mississippi, and how it ought to 'flow unvexed
to the sea,' and how its great valley ought to be free forever. I have
done the very best I could to help Grant and all the rest of our
generals though some of them don't think so. And now it is kind
of borne in on me that somehow or other we are going to win at
Vicksburg, too. I cannot tell how soon. But I believe we will"

Unknown to the President, his, of course, was a prophecy already
fulfilled. Vicksburg had fallen July 4; and at that moment a Union
gunboat was churning up the Mississippi to Cairo with the news.
Curious coincidence that, on the birthday of Independence, Lee
should retreat and Vicksburg fall!

Taking summer quarters at Lake George, Sickles made rapid re-
covery. Five months later he was again in Washington seeking active
service. The ingenious, knee-action artificial leg constructed to his
order by New York experts failed to satisfy him, and, except on
special occasions, he preferred to use crutches. But there was little
of the cripple in his stance and demeanor. He stood as straight on one
leg as formerly on two and manipulated his crutches with unobtrusive
dexterity. Nor had he long to wait for a call upon his services.

The previous year Lincoln had issued his Proclamation of Emanci-
pationwell calculated to weaken the South economically, strengthen
the North morally. Now in December 1863 ^ e essayed a stroke of
pure psychological warfare, and in his third message to Congress
delivered his famous Amnesty Proclamation offering pardon and
restitution of citizenship to all Rebels other than the higher officers
of the Confederate forces who should swear allegiance to the Union
and the Constitution; and the restoration of statehood to any member
of the Confederacy able to certify that ten per cent of its voting
population had registered the required oath. For some ten weeks he
awaited southern reaction to his gesture of reconciliation. None
came. And, dubious now as to the effectiveness of his two great

General on Crutches 207

experiments in non-military warfare, he commissioned Sickles to
make a confidential tour of all southern ports in northern hands and
investigate the results of both.

It was a day or two before his departure for the South that Sickles
first met Grant. The occasion was a levee at the White House. Re-
cently placed in supreme command of Union military operations,
Grant had been summoned to Washington to receive his commission
as lieutenant general It was his first visit to the capital, his first ap-
pearance at a high social function; and blushing as furiously as a
bashful boy he stood beside Lincoln and Stanton at the south end of
the great East Room, jerkily shaking the cordial hands extended to
him as the. long reception line filed past him. As Sickles came up and
was introduced by his old friend Stanton now Secretary of War he
quipped genially, '^Besieged by friends, even you must surrender,
General!" Quipped Grant smardy, "You're right, sir Tve no arms
left!'* The next day the two met again casually at Wfllard's, drifted
off to Grant's suite for a chat. Their mutual admiration, of Lincoln
was an immediate bond, but simply as men diverse as they were in
everything but fighting spirit they liked each other. And by the
time they had refought Vicksburg and Gettysburg over a bottle of
Kentucky's best, they had established a comradeship destined to link
diem in official life for many years to come. Incidentally, circum-
stances soon put that comradeship to a tough test. Prior to Grant's
arrival in Washington, it happened that Stanton, Halleck, and Meade
had drawn up plans for the complete reorganization of the Army of
the Potomac. Among the many changes decided upon was the con-
solidation of the twice-decimated Third Corps with the Second. It
was an unnecessary and cruelly tactless act; for the Third had a
brilliant record, an unsurpassed esprit de corps, and to obliterate its
identity was to strike at the soldierly pride of thousands of veteran
campaigners. The moment Sickles caught wind of the matter, he
sought out Grant, begged him to protest against the absorption of
his old command. Grant, however, felt compelled to refuse. Regret-
fully he explained that, in accordance with his general practice of
committing as much executive power as possible to his subordinates,
he had entrusted all matters of administration to Meade, and that it
would be likely to cause ill-feeling if he meddled with the reorganiza-
tion of die army and, especially at a moment when he himself had
but just assumed his new functions as lieutenant general. Noticing

208 Dan Sickles

that inadvertently his request was proving embarrassing to Grant,
Sickles gracefully withdrew it. And the two parted cordially the one
to accompany the Army of the Potomac, the other to proceed upon
his confidential mission.

That Lincoln expected no very encouraging report from Sickles's
tour of investigation seems certain. But that he needed the informa-
tion, felt that Sickles was the right man to obtain it, and welcomed
the opportunity to launch him on his new career with one of those
**important services" he had prophesied for him, also seems certain.
Curiously, his letter of instructions to Sickles remains the only docu-
mentary record of the assignment:

EXECUTIVE MANSION

Washington, Feb. 15, 1864.
MAJOR-GENERAL SICKLES:

I wish you to make a tour for me (particularly for observation) by
way of Cairo and New Orleans, and returning by the Gulf and Ocean.
All Military and Naval officers are to facilitate you with suitable trans-
portation, and by conferring with you, and imparting, so far as they can,
the information herein indicated, but you are not to command any of
them. You will call at Memphis, Helena, Vicksburg, New Orleans, Pensa-
cola, Key West, Charleston Harbor, and such intermediate points as you
may think important. Please ascertain at each place what is being done, if
anything, for reconstructions-how the Amnesty Proclamation works, if at
aft- what practical hitches, if any, there are about it whether deserters
come in from the enemy, what number has come in at each point since
the Amnestywhat deserters report generally, and particularly whether
and to what extent the Amnesty is known within the Rebel lines. Also
learn what you can as to the colored people how they get along as
soldiers, as laborers, or in service, on leased plantations, and as hired
laborers with their old master if there be such cases. Also learn what
you can about the colored people within the Hebel lines. Also get any
other information you may consider interesting, and, from time to time,
send me what you may deem important to be known here at once. And
be ready to make a general report on your return.

Yours truly,
A. LINCOLN.

Save for one routine dispatch, dated May 3, 1864, from U.S. gun-
boat Fairy, at Memphis, there appears to be no record of Sickles's
reports to the President. Probably their not too enthusiastic tenor
made publication politically inexpedient Possibly they were buried

Mysterious Mission 209

in Lincoln's private files. But that Sickles had conducted his survey
in a highly competent fashion is indicated by the fact that a year later
Lincoln assigned him a far more complex confidential mission to
revolution-torn Colombia.

His investigations completed and reported, Sickles, chafing against
his long absence from the field, now formally applied to the War
Department for active service. His physical disability, of course, was
against him. And he was by no means persona grata with either
Halleck or Meade. But both Stanton and Grant felt that his military
experience could be used to good purpose; and, as a result, in May
'64 he was assigned to duty as inspector general with Sherman's
army. Present on the firing line at Resaca, Kennesaw Mountain, and
the battle of Atlanta, for six months he endured the heat, malaria,
hardship of that blistering campaign. Then, in November, his health
not yet sufficiently established for such an ordeal suddenly broke;
and with the rollicking strains of "Marching Through Georgia"
ringing in his ears, he took indefinite leave of absence and returned
to Washington.

CHAPTER XXVII

Mysterious Mission

.LIATE m JANUARY '65 Sickles, now fully recovered, was on board
a steamer bound for Panama. Again he had been entrusted with a
confidential mission and one, this time, apparently so fraught with
the possibility of international repercussions that its precise nature
has remained a State Department secret to the present day. That
Sickles acted both as the special envoy of Lincoln himself and as the
secret agent for Secretary of State Seward, is evident. But what his
instructions were, what objectives they concerned, with what success
or lack of success they were pursued, can only be surmised And
while the history of the period, and an examination of the routine

2io Dan Sickles

State Department records relative to United States relations with
Colombia at the time, suggest a fair field of speculation on these
points, the fact remains that only a fraction of the documentary-
record concerning them has been made available to the public. From
the veiy first the State Department, doubtless for reasons of public
policy, clamped the padlock on the Seward-Sickles correspondence.
And the Lincoln-Sickles correspondence was padlocked by Robert
Lincoln, even against the State Department itself, when, exercising
his legal privilege immediately after his father's death, he sealed the
presidential files for fifty years and, at the expiration of that period,
reseated them for a like term! Under these circumstances it would
appear that the full story of the Colombia mission cannot be revealed
officially before 1965 and possibly not even then.

However, using what dues are at hand, it is not impossible to
detect the outlines, at least, of some of the plans and purposes that
may well have been involved in this mysterious diplomatic adventure.
Ostensibly Sickles was sent to Panama to obtain permission for the
transit of United States troops across the Isthmus a favor that had
been denied the French. So far as this matter is concerned, the out-
lines are fairly clear* Panama, at that time, was simply a constituent
state of the Republic of Colombia. The governor, theref ore, rightly
enough, professed himself without authority to grant the required
permission and referred Sickles to the President. It was a twelve-day
journey by steamboat, canoe, and horseback to the Colombian cap-
ital of Santa F6 de Bogota, crannied high in the Andean Alps. And
Sickles's letter to Seward describing this picturesque bit of travel is
on file, together with one or two other letters recounting his incon-
clusive conferences with the President, and the official and popular
acclaim he himself received, as American envoy, when the news of
Appomattox arrived. But all that appears here is that while President
Murillo and his Cabinet desired cordial relations with the United
States, they considered that, in view of the insurgent activities then
menacing Panama, die presence of foreign troops on the Isthmus
might result in regrettable complications. And there the record fails;
and there the matter seems to have rested.

But that this phase of Siddes's mission was put forward both as a

sop to public curiosity and as a testing ground for negotiations far

too important and delicate for publication at the time, seems certain.

In tie first case Seward, an exponent of the newborn industrial

Mysterious Mission 211

imperialism, had become intensely preoccupied with the possibility of
an American-built, American-owned Panama Canal. And although it
would be fifteen years before Ferdinand de Lesseps would land his
men and machines on the Isthmus and essay the digging of the Great
Ditch on behalf of France, it was known in Washington that his
engineers already had made tentative secret surveys of the project
and that Louis Napoleon, not satisfied with the military occupation
of Mexico, had proceeded to bring pressure to bear on Colombia to
permit his troops to "cross" the Isthmus. Under the circumstances
Seward naturally felt that decisive countermeasures were in order.
And it is rather more than likely that in the chaotic condition of
Colombian politics he discerned an opportunity to induce Panama
always simmering with insurrection and secessionist talk to declare
itself an independent republic; and by the promise of American
recognition, American gold, secure its pledge at birth to the cession
of the whole Isthmus zone to the United States Government. But
Seward was ahead of his time. It would be thirty-eight years before
Theodore Roosevelt, under curiously similar circumstances, and by
quaintly similar means, was to land Isthmus and Canal in the Amer-
ican lap!

Seward's expansionist dreams, however, were by no means limited
to the Panama Canal. For some years he had been cogitating a gigantic
project nothing less than the extension of the Monroe Doctrine to
the economic sphere. The establishment of American monopoly
control over all the more valuable raw resources of the southern
continent, to the virtual exclusion of European competition, was his
aim. And as a first step toward this he had conceived the idea that it
would be sound business for the United States Treasury to assume
the foreign indebtedness of such Latin-American republics as had
fallen into bad standing with their European creditors. His first
attempt to put this policy in practice had crashed in failure. In the
fall of '6 1, Juarez facing destruction of Mexico's newly established
constitutional regime at the hands of a fake debt-collecting invasion
by the joint forces of England, France and Spain had appealed to
the United States Government to assume for five years the delin-
quent interest owed to .these Powers. And with Lincoln's consent,
Seward, seizing his chance, had taken charge of negotiations. But his
proposal in reply had revealed all too crudely his real intent. In it he
had declared that the United States would assume the payment of

212 Dan Sickles

the interest on Mexico's three per cent consolidated debt a matter
of some sixty-two million pesos for a term of five years "on the con-
dition that the Mexican Government undertakes to pay to the United
States for the reimbursement of the money loaned an interest of six
per cent, warranting such payment with specific retention upon all
public lands and upon the mines m the different Mexican states of
Lower California, Chihuahua, Sonora, and Smaloa, these mortgaged
properties to fall wider the absolute domain of the United States
at the end of die term of six years counted since the signing of this
treaty, if the said reimbursement has not taken place during that
term." And Juarez, rather than put all Mexico's most valuable assets
in Seward's "carpetbag," had chosen to face invasion as by far the
lesser of die two evils.

On that occasion Seward had overreached himself. But the field of
future experiment was still wide. Stubborn and shrewd as he was, it
may be doubted if he relinquished his dear design or failed to learn
from his first rebuff. And it is not unlikely that Sickles bore in his
portfolio a similar, if more dulcet, proposition to debt-entangled
Colombia as an opening wedge in the financial invasion of her sister
republics.

At the same time Lincoln, dubious as to the future of the emanci-
pated Negroes in the South, had been brooding the idea of establish-
ing them in a home of their own, a new Liberia but one dose at
hand. And after much probing about, he had become convinced that
the fertile, virgin valleys of New Granada on the western slopes of
the Colombian Andes would prove a location highly suitable for the
purpose. The project was as subtle in concept as it was beneficent
in motive. For while Lincoln contemplated no such absurdity as a
mass transplanting of the freedmen, he knew that the mere existence
of such a homeland would inspire them with a new sense of dignity
and security, and, by the same token, gendy force the southern
planter to accord them such fair wages and considerate treatment as
would entice them to stay on their jobs! Obviously it was an under-
taking that the least premature exposure could have aborted. The
South, of course, would be bitterly opposed to it and must be kept
in the dark for the present. And an unpredictable and probably
divided Colombian opinion must be sounded in secret before any
further steps were taken. The instability of a "republic" that had
never been more than the arena of successive insurrections and mili-

Mysterious Mission 213

tary dictatorships demanded that unless the Negro colonists were
to be sold into a new and worse bondage the proposed Liberia
must be established as a leased concession under the protection and
control of the United States Government. And while the Colombian
business element might be disposed to accept this arrangement for
the sake of its impetus to the state's agricultural development, the
politico*, shorn of their chance to exploit it, would be likely enough
to raise the cry of "Texas!" and damn it as an attempt to create
"incidents" leading to American military occupation and annexation.
And if Lincoln's "promised land* 9 were ever to become more tftgn a
promise, the negotiations on this touchy point would have to be
conducted not only behind the scenes but with extraordinary finesse.

The principal danger to these large dreams, needless to say, lay
in the tempestuous flux and flow of Colombian politics. To obtain,
therefore, a keen, close, impartial view of the politico-military scene
was a prime necessity to the planners in Washington. And there can
be little doubt that such a survey formed an integral part of the
mission entrusted to Sickles one that as a soldier of prestige dealing
with a caste self-consciously military, as an astute politician dealing
with politicians, and as a diplomat able to speak fluent Spanish to
gentlemen devoid of English, he was well equipped to conduct.

That some very illuminating papers concerning Seward's ambi-
tious schemes, Lincoln's benevolent project, might have been found
in Sickles's dispatch bag is a warrantable surmise.

But Washington society, lacking any real data in the matter, had
its own surmise; and it was the current gossip of the more malicious
that Lincoln, in his quietly devious way, had deliberately assigned
Sickles a mythical mission for personal reasons not unrelated to the
White House boudoir. It had happened, early in '61, that a certain
Henry Wikoff, a fascinating but shady international adventurer,
Washington correspondent and secret agent for James Gordon
Bennett's New York Herald, and known to be assiduous in his atten-
tions to Mary Todd, had telegraphed his paper a substantial portion
of Lincoln's first Inaugural Address prior to its delivery* Outraged,
the House Judiciary Committee had started an investigation into t&e
origin of the leak. Summoned for questioning, Wikoff had refused to
divulge the source of his information and had been jailed for con-
tempt. Public suspicion had pointed to Mary Todd as his accomplice.
And Sickles, to save Lincoln further embarrassment, had energeti-

214

cally intervened and had forced John Watt, the White House head
gardener a thievish, disreputable fellow, but much in Mary Todd's
favor to declare that he bad seen the text of the speech by accident
on the President's library table and had retailed it to Wikoff from
memory! That little drama starring Mary Todd as a First Lady
given to strange infatuations and the amorous General Dan Sickles
as her confidant and champion had not been forgotten. And now
when, newly arrayed in battle glory, the general had returned to
Washington and conquests of another kind his frequent visits to
the White House had revived the buzz of speculation. Manifestly,
with one leg, he now was more fatal to the feminine than ever he
had been with two. And in delicious anticipation the drawing rooms
awaited the explosion of a fresh scandaL . . .

But what the drawing rooms did not know, or preferred not to
know, was that Sickles, ruthless with women, was scrupulous with
a friend; and that his hours at the White House were spent not in
the boudoir but in the library deep in conference with Lincoln over
the plans for the "New Liberia.*'

As a matter of fact it was upon one of these visits that Sickles had
offended the First Lady past forgiveness. Pausing at the drawing
room to pay his respects to her, he had found her entertaining her
foster sister Emiliawidow of the Confederate general, Hedin Helm!
The sight had touched off all his fierce allegiance to the harried
President, the still-battling Union. And unsparingly he had rebuked
her for daring to place her family ties above the obligations of her
position. Deliberately, knowingly, he had struck Mary Todd on her
most sensitive nerve her much criticized devotion to her southern
relatives. And from that moment, so far from enjoying her favor, he
had become to her the most detested of her husband's detested
friends!

All things considered and assuming the foregoing speculations to
be somewhere near the mark it is small wonder that all but a few of
the documents in this curious chapter of American diplomacy still
remain tightly bound in their original ribbons, unbreakably sealed.

But whatever might have been his secret business in Colombia,
Sickles had but short time to accomplish it. Prompted by the be-
lated news of Lee's surrender, he was returning to the coast to put
his dispatches aboard a gunboat and obtain die last reports from the

Struggling ivith Chaos 215

capital, when, at La Honda, an Indian runner brought him a canvas-
bound package. Within it was a black-edged official envelope. One
glance at the enclosed black-edged letter told him that it had been
six weeks in transit. Stunned, he stared at it. Lincoln assassinated!
Seward wounded! . . . He was summoned home.

CHAPTER XXVIII

Struggling with Chaos

JLHE WAR now belonged to history, Lincoln "to the ages." The
heroic epoch had passed. And before the last taps had sounded, the
era of capitalistic expansion had seized the stage. Abnormally stimu-
lated by the demands of the Grand Army, northern industry had
grown fat. The vast new accumulations of capital, in turn, cropped
a new craze for speculative enterprise, and with it what proved to be
an enduring dynasty of financial buccaneers proficient in stripping
the public purse by ruthless market manipulations and in suborning
courts, legislatures, and the avenues of public information and opin-
ion in favor of their schemes to reduce white labor below the level
of the prewar black and gain monopoly control of the national
resources. For nearly seventy years die regime of "The Plunder-
bund" as it came to be known pocked with political putrescence
at home, "dollar diplomacy" abroad, gargantuan thieveries, hysterical
speculations, boorns^ panics, glutted markets, catastrophic disemploy-
ment, delirious wealth, crawling destitution, ravaged forests, swollen
slums, was to careen along its path of havoc until, like a stricken
dragon (every bank in the country closed! ), it drooped a slobbering
head in the kp of the first President of the United States to base his
domestic policy on the proposition that a political democracy must
set itself to the progressive realization of economic democracy or
suffer itself to be destroyed by economic dementia.

216 Dan Sickles

A new age had been born symbolized by a Republican-dominated
Congress far more concerned with capturing the black vote, crip-
pling the South and exploiting it as a lucrative field for graft and
bureaucratic jobholding, than with any reconsolidation of the Union.
Against this crowd of little men avid for loot and safe vengeance,
Andrew Johnson President by tragic chance stood well-nigh alone.

Himself an unprivileged son of Tennessee, Johnson, from the first,
set himself to carry out Lincoln's policy toward the erstwhile Rebel
states and, in the spirit of "let bygones be bygones," restore them to
the national family circle with the least possible delay. But it was a
policy that probably not even Lincoln himself for all his tact, pa-
tience, persuasive eloquence could have hoped to pursue in the face
of a Congress so little touched by grace or good wilL And Johnson
was no Lincoln. Honest he was, and right-minded. But years of
struggle to overcome the poverty, illiteracy, social contempt that
were the lot of southern "po* white trash" had bred in him a defiant .
determination fatal to the wise handling of a House wholly at odds
with his views. First taught the alphabet by his schoolmistress bride,
he had risen by his own efforts from patching rustic pants to a place
among the four or five ranking senators of his time. The battle had
taught him but one answer to opposition fight! And now as Presi-
dent, with all that was brave and upright in his heart, but also with
all that was crude, tactless, uncouth in his breeding, he met defiant
congressional measures with even more defiant vetoes always over-
ruled. By a single vote escaping vindictive impeachment, he was to
complete his term with little to show for his bitter bout but his
three ever expanding Amnesty Proclamations virtually the only
expression of his policy permitted him.

In the fall of 1865 Grant, as commander in chief of the Army of
Occupation, divided the southern states into five military depart-
ments, placing each under the control of a military governor, aided
by post commanders and supported by such troops as he deemed
necessary for the maintenance of public order pending the recon-
stitution of civil government. Among the major generals selected
for the new administrative task, Sickles 'was the only one among his
confreres Meade, Halleck, Pope, and Sheridan with a background
experience in diplomacy, politics, law. To him, therefore, Grant gave
the most difficult assignment: the Department of South Carolina

Struggling irith Chaos 217

credited with the touchiest temper and possessing the largest and
most backward Negro population of any state in the Union and, the
following year, under the Reconstitution Act passed by Congress,
added North Carolina also to his charge.

The duties of a military governor were only slightly military so
slightly, in fact, that Sickles, disdaining a show of force, rapidly
dismissed all but two of the regiments placed at his disposal, thus
reducing his command to one soldier for every thirty-three square
miles! For the rest, he found himself called upon to exercise a fan-
tastic complex of functions legislative, judicial, executive. In part
they involved: the supervision of the liberated Negroes in their new
status as hired hands of their former masters, and the regulation of
their right to use common carriers such as railways, streetcars, steam-
boats; the organization of the new system of free labor in agricultural
communities; the establishment of pooihouses and hospitals for sick
and infirm ex-slaves hitherto a traditional charge of their owners; the
proclamation of stay laws to protect a mass of helpless small debtors,
white and black, from sheriffs sale; the establishment and administra-
tion of quarantine and sanitary regulations against yellow fever and
cholera both menacing southern cities in '66 and '67; the organization
and supervision of provost courts for the settlement of disputes ordi-
narily within the jurisdiction of the civil courts; the distribution of
rations to a starving population, white and colored, in almost every
county; and, finally, the re-establishment of civil government by
registration of all citizens entitled to the vote including the enfran-
chised Negro; and the superintendence of the elections required by
Congress as a prerequisite to die restoration of a rebel state to repre-
sentation in House and Senate.

It was a pretty large order too much for any one man, particularly
a northern general, to fill without provoking criticism. Sickles, realiz-
ing this, laid down for himself three principles of policy in the task
ahead: order must be maintained and the law enforced; consideration
must be shown to southern sensibilities; immediate relief must be
provided for the distressed elements of the population, and every
encouragement given to the normal resumption of business and agri-
culture. Grant, visiting with Sickles at Raleigh, warmly approved
these principles; and their famous all-night conference ended in a
mutual understanding never afterward beclouded* Add that thence-
forthdespite some characteristic flashes of anger, impatience, im-

zi8 Dan Sickles

petuoshy Sickles strore consistently to promote the prosperity of
the state and the welfare of impoverished aristocrat, debt-ridden poor
white, bewildered Negro alike, is writ in the record of his acts, in his
popularity among the depressed classes, and in the high, if belated,
praise accorded him, at last, even by planter and banker his most
persistent critics.

Sickles, needless to sajr, firmly believed that the presence of an
impartial authority in the South in the form of a temporary military
administration was as essential to the protection of the white popu-
lation as to the welfare of the black; that, lacking it, the two races
almost inevitably would drift into an antagonism and bloody clash
fatal to the tranquillitj* required for the reconstitution of civil gov-
ernment. In this, of course, he reflected the northern view as expressed
in Congress. But; as a matter of fact, while holding himself consti-
tutionally responsible to congressional directive, he was far from
sharing the congressional attitude* Many distinguished southerners
had been, and still were, his friends. A soldier, he wished no ven-
geance. He left that to civilians. On the other hand, he was deeply
concerned with the problem of the Negro and the poor white.
Between the creditor class, his social friends, and the debtor class,
white and black, his mournful charge, tact bade him steer a fine, if
determined, line. To the one he gave all due consideration; to the
other he gave Order Na 10.

The issuance of die famous Order was at once the most important,
the most socially beneficial, and the most abused, action of Sickles's
administration. Devised to alleviate at one stroke a vast amount of
distress among wage earners and small property owners, white and
colored, it abolished imprisonment for debt; established a year's stay
of execution on all causes of action arising during the war; sus-
pended, for a like period, all sheriffs sales on judgments recovered
prior to December 19, 1860 save by the debtor's consent; exempted
a homestead of twenty acres, and personal property in the amount
of five hundred dollars, from levy or sale for any debt; prohibited
infliction of the death penalty for burglary and horse stealing; abso-
lutely forbade whipping for any cause; declared the carrying of
concealed weapons a crime; and, finally, conceded the pardoning
power to the civil governor of the state.

Although framed as a general measure of relief to a festering situa-
tion, the Order, of course, was aimed specifically at the recent inva-

Struggling with Chaos - 219

sion of northern "carpetbaggers" then gluttonishly engaged in buying
up delinquent claims and using them to despoil already desperate
families of hut and corn patch, mule and plow and cradle. On these
locust gentry, Order No. 10 descended with an obliterating thud
To their howls were added the loud protests of the business and
plantation element. The ban on enforced collections pleased the one
no better than the loss of the whip pleased the other. The intransigent
Charleston press, assailing Sickles as a "dictator" and "despot," opened
a determined campaign to have Johnson remove him from office.
But so obvious were the salutary effects of Order No. 10 that his
critics soon found themselves compelled to concentrate their com-
plaints against him on such minor grievances as inevitably arose out
of the confusion of authorities. And of that there was plenty!

In the first case, from Washington poured contradictory orders
from a President and a Congress locked in a struggle to abort each
other's reconstruction policies. The abolition of whipping is a good
instance in point. Sickles decreed it; Congress authorized it; Johnson
forbade it; Sickles enforced it; federal courts overruled it; state offi-
cials ignored it and so forth.

But this was only the beginning! Grant held that the authority of
a military governor over his department was paramount subject
only to Congress and to himself as commanding general. And so
Sickles viewed it. But there were also four other bodies of authority
or quasi-authority in the field each jealous of its own actual or sup-
posed spheres of control. These included the state and local officials,
judicial and executive, under the aegis of a civil governor: two
cabinets, one radical, the other conservative-so antagonistic to each
other that they refused to sit together and, consequently, had to be
consulted separately: the federal courts determined to brook no
interference with their prerogatives; and, finally, the Freedmen's
Bureau established by Lincoln, given amplified powers by Congress,
and charged with a wide range of duties appertaining to the rights
and welfare of the emancipated Negroes. As a result, Sickles, coining
upon a sick scene as emergency surgeon, could do practically nothing
without cutting through one or other of these already conflicting
zones of state and federal authority to the great indignation of the
officials concerned. Nevertheless he proceeded upon his course; and
in subsequent orders reinforced No. 10 by abolishing distraint for
the collection of rent; prohibiting common carriers from making any

220 Dan Sickles

distinction in their treatment of patrons by reason of race, color, or
previous servitude; forbidding the commercial production of spiritu-
ous liquors; declaring all persons assessed for taxes eligible as jurors
without regard to race or color; and prescribing that sheriffs, chiefs
of police, city and town marshals must obey the orders of the mili-
tary provost marshals.

However, if these new edicts raised a fresh sizzle of criticism, they
also brought their lowly meed of praise. In April '67 the freedmen
of the Charleston district, gathering spontaneously in thousands be-
fore the executive mansion on Charlotte Street, proceeded to serenade
the author of Order No. zo in a chorus of song that ended in mighty
uproar when at last his becrutched uniformed figure appeared on the
balcony. Surprised and stirred, Sickles thanked them in a little speech
well matching the spirit of his administration:

. . . You are now citizens of the Republic. And you must try to vin-
dicate the hopes of your friends and repel the forebodings of the skeptical
by proving yourselves worthy of the privilege to which you have been
admitted. . . . Whenever any large additions have been made to the
voters of a state, the same apprehensions have been expressed that are
now heard with reference to yourselves. . . . Let me advise you as a
friend to preserve at all times the utmost moderation of language, temper,
and conduct. Avoid everything like violence or impatience. . . . What-
ever seriously impairs the interest of one race must result seriously to the
other. . . . Without a happy, prosperous, and contented laboring class,
society lacks an essential element of strength. ... I promise you that
every man in die Carolinas entitled to a voice in the decision of die great
questions to be passed upon under my supervision shall have a fair chance
to act his part without let or hindrance from anyone.

Three months later, when a delegation of freedmen called upon
him by appointment to thank him more formally for his many serv-
ices in their behalf, and especially for his recent active promotion of
schools for Negroes, he spoke more at length and now for the
record. While counseling and encouraging his colored friends, he
used the occasion to shoot a few sarcastic shafts over their heads
at the critics who had prophesied nothing but calamitous results from
his policy toward them.

By midsummer of '67 Johnson had become estranged from Con-
gress to a degree unparalleled in White House history. And, natu-
rally enough, he had come to view with mounting disfavor the

Struggling with Chaos 221

military governors entrusted by Grant with the direction of con-
gressional reconstruction policies in the South. If that disfavor was
shared by Halleck, Meade, Pope, Sheridan, it fell particularly upon
Sickles. That "one-man legislature" as Greeley dubbed him pre-
sented a curious and irksome problem to the White House. While
siding, on constitutional grounds, with Congress against the President,
he yet had conducted his administration much in the spirit of Lincoln
himself; and had dramatized both attitudes by daring to enforce the
abolition of the whipping post in the teeth of both the federal
courts and a special presidential order. That something had to be done
about him was evident. Johnson could not dismiss him without lock-
ing horns with Grant. He therefore tried diplomacy, offered the
recalcitrant General: first the collectorship of New York, then the
post of minister to the Netherlands. But Sickles, at Grant's urg-
ing, resolved to stay where he was. Foiled in his attempts at seduc-
tion, Johnson decided to try castigation. Angrily he invoked the
services of Attorney General Stanberry to issue an opinion declaring
Sickles guilty of illegal and unconstitutional procedure in the conduct
of his office, a censure that, according to the Charleston correspond-
ent of the New York Times, "dropped like a bomb on the city."

The same day Sickles, in consultation with Grant, wrote out his
resignation, and demanded a congressional investigation of his ad-
ministration. Grant, outraged, forwarded the document himself. It
was a bold counterstroke shrewd as it was unexpected. Too late
Johnson realized that the demanded investigation only could redound
to Sickles's prestige and popularity and diirnnfali what was left of his
own. Outwitted, he refused the resignation and bided his time. Re-
marked the New York Times, "a vindication for General Sickles!"

To Johnson, as their champion, the southern states always had
looked for sympathy in their complaints against the congressional
reconstruction policies in general and the military administration in
particular. And Johnson's endorsement of Sickles negative though
it might be was not without its effect upon the die-hards* This
combined with the unblenching attitude of Sickles himself, the bene-
ficial results of his emergency measures in terms of general tran-
quillity, restored confidence, and a remarkable increase of agricultural
production finally turned the tide of criticism against hi into a
flow of general appreciation. But the Executive axe was on the
grindstone!

222 Dan Sickles

By supporting his friend and appointee, Grant for the first time
had placed himself in open opposition to the White House. And see-
ing now nothing to lose in that direction, Johnson, the following
September, summarily dismissed both Sickles and Sheridan. And
rumor had it that he only narrowly was dissuaded from dismissing
Pope likewise.

Ironically, Johnson based his action against Sickles, not on any
charge of oppressing the people of the Carolinas, but on a charge of
interfering in a whipping casewith the authority of the federal
courts! And with equal irony, it was from the camp of his former
critics, "the leading citizens" of Charleston headed by James L. Orr,
the civil governor of South Carolina, that Sickles received at a fare-
well banquet give in his honor a conclusive verdict of vindication
and praise upon his administration. Said the governor:

He has made even the burdens of the military government upon the
people of South Carolina as light as it is possible to make diem under the
circumstances. He has secured to all their rights and attended to, and
advanced, their material prosperity. By his orders he has developed the
resources of the state, secured to labor, fair wages, and to the producer,
protection. . . . Under his administration the laws of Congress pertaining
to Reconstruction hare been faithfully and honestly administered, and
he has left nothing for his successor to do but see that a fair and just
election is held by the people. . . . The crop of '67 was the largest and
most valuable gathered in South Carolina in a decade, and that result was
due in large measure to the aid afforded by General Sickles in settling
the difficulties arising out of the Act of Emancipation.

Johnson's dismissal of Sickles and Sheridan, of course, was not only
a personal revenge and a smart slap at Congress. It was a mailed glove
tossed at the commanding general And Grant was not slow to pick it
up. When the two ex-governors arrived in Washington he wel-
comed them ostentatiously with a reception and banquet attended by
the highest officers of the Army and Navy and the ranking members
of the Diplomatic Corps!

The following night and not at all to Grant's dissatisfaction-
die two generals were made the recipients of a military serenade
at Willard's Hotel But what started out to be a musical tribute on
the part of the garrison regiments of the Grand Army, and of the
various local political associations^ both white and colored, soon
turned into a mass demonstration of welcome such as Washington

Struggling 'with Chaos 223

had seldom seen. According to the genteel report of the Globe, "The
balconies of Willard's were filled to overflowing with ladies and
gentlemen of the foremost circles; and even the corridors leading
from the generals' quarters to the parlors were lined with enthusiastic
admirers who showered bouquets upon them as they passed by to
receive the compliments of the assemblage in the street." Phil Sheri-
dan, responding to the tumult of cheers, answered with a few brief
cliches and withdrew. Not so Sickles. When he appeared, supported
on his crutches, what was tumult became a tornado; and his response
was no this-is-the-happiest-hour-of-my-life kind of thing but a
spirited, and uproariously applauded, defense of the temporary mili-
tary administration in the South in its constitutional legality, human
necessity, and good result.

But naturally enough it was in New York, his home town, that
Sickles was to receive his most vociferous acclaim. There thousands
of veterans of his Excelsior Brigade and famed Third Corps united
with War Democrats and sons of Tammany to organize a monstrous
ovation in his honor. For five hours, despite a light rain, the Brevoort
House, his hotel, was beset, in typical American fashion, by a rocket-
illuminated mass of hero-worshiping humanity mingling cheers with
the blare of bands and stirred to fresh bursts ever and again by the
invasion of marching, bemedaled battalions come to salute the Chief.

In Washington, sensing his moment, Sickles had spoken for the
record Now, with the same infallible timing, he spoke briefly simply
as a soldier to former comrades in arms.

Still a Republican in practice, if still a Democrat in theory, Sickles
now threw all his energies into promoting Grant's candidacy for
President. For months he literally "stumped" the country, north,
south, east, and west, rallying the vote as much perhaps by his
crutches, his personal prestige and popularity as by his knack of com-
bining polished speech, cogent argument with an instinctive touch
upon the pulse of the crowd. And Grant, swept into office in No-
vember '68 by a huge majority over his opponent, Horatio Seymour,
governor of New York, was not unmindful of the aid. Almost his
first act as President was to promote Sickles from his previous posi-
tion on the retired list as colonel of the Forty-Fourth U.S. Infantry,
to his full rank as major general something that, as a decent recogni-
tion of the man who had stopped Jackson at Chancellorsville and
baffled Longstreet at Gettysburg, he had long planned to do. Inci-

224 w Sickles

dentally, the promotion was one of the highest honors accorded any
commander of the Grand Army whether Volunteer or West
Pointer. But Grant did not stop there. He immediately offered to
reinstate Sickles in his former post as military governor of the Oaro-
linas. Sickles, however, declined on the grounds that his work there
was done and that his successor, General Canby, was too good an
administrator to be disturbed. Grant then suggested the post of
minister to Mexico. Again Sickles declined. He knew the President's
ill-timed ambition to annex Lower California to the United States,
and he had no wish to be a party to it. Finally Grant offered him
the most difficult diplomatic post in Europe, that of minister to
Spain. Sickles instantly closed. He had one reason Cuba!

TERESA B. SICKLES

Aged 31 years
Died Feb. 5, 1867

This morning a solemn High Mass of Requiem was offered for the
repose of Mrs. Sickles, the wife of the distinguished Major-General, at
St. Joseph's Church, Sixth Avenue. The sad occasion attracted an im-
mense congregation to the sacred edifice to witness with devout attention
the impressive ceremonies which called it forth. Every portion of the
temple, from the porch to the sanctuary, was thronged long before the
hour appointed for the services.

At half past ten o'clock, the remains were conveyed up the main aisle,
and placed on a catafalque which was surrounded by brilliant tapers.
They were followed by the pall bearers-Dr. John M. Carnochan, James
T. Brady, Maj.-Gen. Gordon Granger, Maj.-Gen. A. Pleasonton, Gen.
Henry E. Tremaine, Gen. K. Graham, Otto Gabriotti, John Krug, Wil-
liam H. Field, Edward Vermylie.

General Sickles and the parents of the deceased kdy, Mr. and Mrs.
Bagioli, occupied the pews near the altar. The venerable father of the
General was also present.*

Early in the second year of his military governorship Sickles had
been summoned home by the news that Teresa, slowly dying for
eight years, had passed into a coma. Death had supervened before he
could arrive.

*New York Express, February 5, 1867.

Struggling with Chaos 225

It was with grave misgivings that the thirteen-year-old Laura had
been allowed to attend the funeral. In the dim church she had hud-
dled in a corner of the pew a thin, ghostly little figure, quivering
with grief, vague shame, fierce childish anger against her father. The
service ended, she had collapsed.

As soon as she had been well enough to travel, Sickles had taken
Laura back with him to Charleston. There he had endeavored to place
her in the fashionable academy conducted by Madam Tivane. Com-
pletely horrified at the suggestion, however, Madam had declared that
she would close her school rather than accept the child of such heri-
tage. A rival academy fortunately had proven less righteous. The
headmistress, Mrs. Alston, a southerner of the blood, gladly had en-
rolled the delicate, lonely child, announcing that if the parents of
any pupil objected they "would be welcome to seek another school!

Baffled, feeling himself at a cruel disadvantage, Sickles had striven
and with an nnfamiliar sense of awkwardness to win his little daugh-
ter's confidence and affection. Too late! Frustrate, confused, perverse,
she was not to be wooed. And as her repining slowly waned under the
stimulus of new scenes and companions, she had developed a moody
resistance broken with sudden bursts of temper. And Sickles, watch-
ing her anxiously, had been forced to admit to himself that if she in-
herited her mother's fragile dark beauty, she also inherited his own
strong passions, headstrong will. Too busy, too inapt for the delicate
work of reconstructing a tortured child psyche, he had petted her,
pampered her, and as with Teresa had showered her with expen-
sive, enticing gifts. But all his efforts to please had failed. His gifts
were pushed aside, his sallies received without a smile. Nothing he
could do could overcome her stubborn withdrawal. And hoping that
time, growth, and an impersonal environment would soften her atti-
tude toward him, he presently had placed her in a New Jersey
academy in the care of his own parents. But in his heart he doubted
if she ever would cease to blame him for her mother's desolation, her
own blighted childhood. Already the little daughter he had adored
had become a tragic phantom of the past.

226 Dan Sickles

CHAPTER XXIX

"The Yankee King of Spain"

HIARLY IN JULY 1869 Sickles was on the high seas neaded toward
Spain and eight fantastic years of high-tensioned diplomacy, inter-
national intrigue, royal amour. The main document in his dispatch
bag, however, was again one that never would be made a matter of
official record. Of his own adroit design, its purport was: Cuba for
cash cloaked in the offer of the United States Government to
mediate between the Spanish authorities and the Island insurrectos.

That objective, persistently cherished since Ostend Manifesto dap,
at last seemed to him well-nigh within grasp.

Cuba just had flamed up in new insurrection and now with a
force predicating serious civil war.

Spain, after twenty years of misrule by an irresponsible queen
counseled by a vicious camarilla, had upset the throne amid political
chaos, national bankruptcy.

In those two facts Sickles had divined his long-awaited oppor-
tunity to add "the Pearl of the Antilles" to Columbia's crown; and
they had constituted the main, if not the sole, reason for his promptly
accepting the post of minister to Spain.

The proposal he took with him was, in substance, if not in form,
no novelty to the Spanish authorities.

Long ago the thievish and conscienceless Maria Christina, Queen
Regent of Spain during the .infancy of her daughter, Isabella, had
offered to swap Cuba and the Philippines to boot with Louis
Philippe for a paltry twenty million reales; and had failed only
because her agent, in utter shame, had refused to grant a demanded
last-minute reduction in price! Aware of this, the United States
Government twice had offered to purchase the unhappy island for a

"The Yankee King of Spain" 227

more respectable sum on the last occasion, under President Pierce,
for a hundred million dollars and twice had been smartly rebuffed.
Sickles, however, seems to have thought three a lucky number. In any
case he knew that never had Spain such need as now to cash in on a
colony that already had lost her more in ill repute and costly cruelty
than she was ever likely to regain in pride or profit.

If the Escorial, occupied, always had been the seat of storm, now,
unoccupied, it had become, in fact, the empty vortex of a cyclone.
While the exiled Queen bored herself at Biarritz with the blandish-
ments of her last lover the Italian opera tenor, Mafori the twin
leaders of the recent revolt, General Prim, commander in chief, and
- Marshal Serrano, the interim Premier, were struggling to subdue the
ever recurring rebellion of the Pretender, Don Carlos, in the north,
and the revolt of the Federalists demanding states' autonomy in the
south. At the same time five other parties, Absolutist, Moderate, Con-
servative, Republican, Radical, subdivided into warring factions each
pledged to a different leader, were clamoring, plotting often as not,
rioting for control of the administration. And Cuba, if it were not
to be taken over by the despised Creoles (native-born Spaniards) at
the head of their hybrid hordes of peons and bkck slaves, urgently
demanded a powerful army of repression. And, what was more im-
portant at the moment, chronic civil war, Isabella's extravagant rule,
the staggering peculations of the also exiled Queen Mother, Maria
Christina, and her gang of courtiers, and the almost universal mal-
feasance practiced in public office, had bereft the Treasury of its last
real and reduced Spanish credit into a wry jest on the Bourse and in
Threadneedle Street. Prim thus faced a crisis as desperate financially
as it was politically. That Spain, with her monarchial tradition,
feudal psychology, stubborn regionalism, and vast illiteracy, was not
ripe for the republican institutions demanded by her more progres-
sive elements, he well knew. Feverishly he was seeking as a rallying
point for the national consciousness a new occupant for the throne.
But first, he realized, he must have some semblance of solvency,
public order. For that he needed, above all, a handsomely replenished
exchequer. And it was precisely on this well-understood point that
Sickles staked his high hope of a successful deal for Cuba. A high
hope it was and large! To adorn the administration of his admired
Grant, the prestige of the restored Union, his own diplomatic career,
with "the Pearl of the Antilles," bought and paid for, seemed to him

228 Dan Sickles

an accomplishment lustrous enough to compensate him even for the
loss of that other once high hope, the presidency.

Grant, an innocent on most matters not immediately pertaining to
his trade of war, had viewed Sickles's project with high favor. Not
so the better-informed Hamilton Fish. Cautious to the point of
timidity, the new Secretary of State had been at much pains to bring
up for inspection the various dangers involved in reviving memories
of Ostend

Louis Napoleon still smarting from Seward's curt ultimatum to
remove his troops from Mexican soil was no friend to the United
States; and he was likely enough to welcome any pretext for a
vengeful salvage of the prestige he had lost in the Maximilian fiasco.
And Great Britain almost certainly would view with disfavor the
extension of American influence into her West Indian sphere. Both
powers might protest even the most peaceful hoisting of the Stars and
Stripes over Cuba. And should a premature disclosure of the pro*
posed negotiations alarm Spain, and a new party, riding into power
on a wave of nationalism, proceed to spurn the gold and draw the
sword, both powers well might come to her support. In that event
there was the further dark probability that the South, still recal-
citrant, would seize the opportunity to cry havoc in aid of the
enemy. . . . Yes, there was much to be considered.

So Fish had argued, inculcating Grant with some of his own hesi-
tation. In the upshot, however, Sickles, warmly seconded by Secre-
tary of War Rawlins, had won both to his project and had been given
a free hand in its accomplishment subject only to the stipulation that
he conduct the negotiations in absolute secrecy, with General Prim
alone, and under the guise of an offer of friendly mediation between
revolutionary Cuba and the Spanish administration.

Once settled at the Legation, Sickles set out to cultivate such
amicable relations with Prim as presently might enable him to broach
his proposal in a tentative, off-the-record chat. This was not an
altogether easy matter. The Cuban authorities, hounding after the
many and various filibustering expeditions surreptitiously dispatched
from American ports to the aid of the rebels, had resorted to flagrant
interference with even the most legitimate American shipping. And
Congress, in retort, was debating a proposal to grant the insurgent
party the rights of belligerency and thus open assistance. Under the
circumstances cordial relations between the new master of Spain and

"The Yankee King of Spain" 229

the new American minister hardly could be expected. But Prim was
large-minded, concerned only with essentials. In his view the strained
situation between the two countries was the fault of the regime he
just had overthrown and was something to be regretted and rem-
edied; that was all. And it was not long before Sickles, with his
crutches, his prestige as a soldier, his frank and magnetic charm, had
become a welcome visitor at the Ministry of War.

In those last months of '69 Prim, Serrano, and the faction-riven
Cortes had agreed at last upon constitutional monarchy as the future
form of the Spanish government. The three claimants to the throne-
Don Carlos, the bellicose Pretender; Isabella's eleven-year-old son,
Alfonso; and her brother-in-law, the Due de Montpensier were, by
the logic of events, barred from consideration. The choice of candi-
dates lay among that honest "elder statesman," Espartero, Due de
Vittoria, who had risen from the ranks to become Regent of the
Realm during Isabella's minority; Ferdinand, the former King Regent
of Portugal; Amadeo, Prince of Aosta, second son of Victor Em-
manuel, King of Savoy; and Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern Sig-
maringen, grandnephew of the King of Prussia. The first wisely had
refused to serve, pleading age. The second, as wisely, preferred pri-
vate life and the society of his American bride. The third, as heir
presumptive to the throne of Savoy, could not accept a foreign
throne until such time as his elder brother might produce an heir.
The choice thus narrowed fatefully to Leopold. But the trouble
there was France. Louis Napoleon, well aware of Bismarck's ambition
to transform the loose federation of German principalities into a
solidly unified empire under the aegis of the Hohenzollerns, wanted
no Hohenzollern on the throne of Spain as well! The Spanish Cabinet
knew it, pondered, hesitated. And in any case, how could they invite
the scion of a proud house to assume the throne of a country so
pauperized that it could not even pay its scattering of schoolteachers,
much less the wretched dole allotted the conscripts in the national
forces? Money money where to turn for money? So went the all-
night conferences.

It was at this point that Sickles approached General Prim with
his carefully rehearsed suggestion for the solution of Spain's financial
problem. What arguments he used in its favor are not known, but are
not too difficult to guess! . . . Cuba had become, and was likely to
remain, a serious liability. Its present insurrection, apparently sup-

230 Dan Sickles

ported by the vast majority of the native population, could be
suppressed only by large-scale and costly military measures. Should
the insurgents triumph, Cuba would become a dead loss to Spain.
Should they be crushed, they assuredly would rise again. Therefore,
presuming that Cuba could find the funds to purchase her own inde-
pendence, would it not be the course of practical wisdom to co-
operate with her and thus convert a ponderous liability into a most
helpful asset in time of need? The transaction, of course, would
arouse a certain amount of popular uproar, but if it were presented
to the public as the only means of avoiding further crushing taxation,
it soon would be accepted. In any case, how else could Spain swifdy
stabilize her finances, restore her credit, and pave a tranquil path
for the entry of the new monarch? Spain's pride might weU be
touched were Cuba wrenched from her by force of arms. But surely
that could not be the case were Cuba to ransom herself for such a
handsome consideration as would mean peace and prosperity for the
motherland! This .then was the proposition: the United States, acting
as friendly intermediary in the matter, stood ready to loan Cuba the
funds required to purchase her freedom; and would underwrite the
bonds, taking in return a long-term mortgage at nominal interest on
the island as a whole.

Prim listened in grim silence. As a Spaniard everything -in him
recoiled from such a proposal. But as an administrator confronting a
finanrtg] crisis that, unsolved, might precipitate national anarchy and
disintegration, he dared not thrust it aside not for the present. Re-
luctantly, at last, he agreed to give it careful consideration, insisting,
however, that since the slightest hint of it bruited abroad would cost
him his office, his reputation, and almost certainly his life, the
discussions must be kept in complete confidence, and that in any
code dispatches regarding them they must be ascribed, on the part
of Spain, to unspecified sources.

In the meantime the search for a king continued. Under Prim's
urgings the Cabinet and Cortes had secured Leopold's acceptance
of the throne. But, eight days later, warned by the fury of the
French press, the prospective monarch had withdrawn his assent.
Elated by such easy victory, Benedetti, the French ambassador to
Prussia, then proceeded to demand of King William his solemn
assurance that the House of Hohenzollern would not again coun-
tenance the candidacy of a German prince for the Spanish throne.

"The Yankee King of Spain" 231

Snubbed, he insolently repeated his demandonly to be refused fur-
ther audience. Bismarck did the rest. Adroitly editing the King's
dispassionate report 5f the affair in such fashion as to give it the ring
of deliberate challenge to the "Gallic cock," he shot over the inter-
national wires his famous "Ems dispatch." The next morning Paris
was aflame. The half-invalid Louis Napoleon climbed into his saddle,
brandished his sword. The war he wanted and thought he could
win was on. Bismarck and Moltke grinned at each other, shook
hands. Three months later, at Sedan, Louis Napoleon, chastised and
chastened, was climbing limply out of his saddle and offering his
sword to King William. He much preferred de luxe captivity to
facing the Parisian mob! But if the craven Emperor had capitulated,
the French people had not. Ahead ky the grim siege of Paris, Gam-
betta's escape from its walls by balloon that he might raise new armies
in the provinces, a year of hopeless struggle culminating in the
fratricide of the Commune, before, by the Treaty of Frankfort,
humiliated France, reconverted to a republic, could resume her trou-
bled way among the nations minus Alsace-Lorraine and five milliards
of francs!

In the interval the Duke of Naples, Victor Emmanuel's eldest son,
had taken his first-born to the font. Amadeo, the second son, was
now a free agent. Eagerly the Spanish Cabinet seized upon him. A
cultivated liberal, of meticulous honor, wide sympathies, and the
coldest courage, he was that rare royal phenomenon a natural king.
But he had no yearnings for a foreign throne. Only Rim's urgent
plea and his father's shrewd challenge to his courage at last made
him attempt an adventure he seems to have felt foredoomed. But
when he set foot on Spanish soil, the man who most anxiously had
awaited his coming was not there to greet him. The previous mid-
night General Prim, driving from a stormy session of the Cortes to
the Ministry of War, had been shattered by a fusillade from the
dark by whom, for what, never has appeared. To his tomb went
Sickles's high hopes for the acquisition of Cuba. . . . Had the secret
leaked?

Upon his accession to the throne it was customary for a Spanish
monarch to review the Army and receive its oath of allegiance, regi-
ment by regiment. In the case of Amadeo the day appointed for this
ceremony of La Jura turned out to be one of the most inclement in
the history of Madrid. Nevertheless a sullen, curious crowd jammed

232 Dan Sickles

the narrow streets to watch the parade pass and to jeer rather
than cheer the new sovereign. Anticipating disturbance, Marshal
Serrano had lined the route with infantry and provided the closed
royal coach for the King surrounding it with a screen of dragoons.
Amadeo, however, bored with the implication that he dared not
show himself to his people, waved the carriage aside, mounted his
horse, ordered his escort to fall back, and boldly rode alone at the
head of the procession. The howling blizzard had driven the dis-
gruntled diplomatic corps into closed carriages. But not Sickles. In
his major general's uniform and wearing for once his despised knee-
action metal leg, he rode with Serrano close to the King. Bowed to
the blast, greeted with ironical cheers and yells of "Fueran los ex-
trmjeros! Viva el Rey Macaroni! [Away with the foreigners! Long
live King Macaroni! ]," the royal procession proceeded on its tortu-
ous march from the Plaza del Oriente to the Presidio on the city's
outskirts. Suddenly Serrano, intensely on the alert, noted a suspicious
movement in the crowd, a glint of pistol barrels, and a bearded
Catalan with upraised arm apparently giving a signal to his fellows.
Whirling his horse and drawing his saber, he plunged into the group,
cut down the leader, slashed the others into terrified flight, and re-
turned to his pkce in the march as though nothing had happened.
To Sickles he remarked calmly, "With us, the leader is everything
deal with him, and the trouble is over." Under a driving sleet the
Army performed its maneuvers, lined up for review, plodded
drearily through the Ceremony of the Oath. Drenched and shiver-
ing, it returned to its barracks, and Amadeo to his gloomy palace.
Sickles noted in his diary, 'The unhappy inauguration of what I
fear will be a brief, unhappy reign."

There was now no one with whom Sickles dared discuss his cher-
ished project. Prim had been virtually an honest dictator in search
of a king and a treasure chest, and his personal power had been
paramount. But Serrano, the Premier; and Sagasta, the Minister of
State, were essentially politicians and, as such, beyond reach in a
matter pregnant with political suicide. Moreover, Sickles's relations
with both had become severely strained by recent events.

Early in the same year the American steamer, Colonel Lloyd
Aspinwatt, with legitimate cargo, perfect clearance papers, and
bearing important government dispatches for Admiral Poor, com-
manding the North Atlantic Squadron stationed at Havana, had

"The Yankee King of Spain 9 ' 233

been stopped on the high seas by the Spanish cruiser Herndn Cortes
and taken first to Nuevitas, and thence to Havana, over the indignant
protests of her skipper. Captain McCarty. For three months, tinder
one pretext or another, captain and crew had been confined aboard
the impounded ship in dilatory defiance of the repeated, and in-
creasingly angry, protests lodged by Secretary Fish with the Spanish
minister to the United States, Lopez Roberts, and by General Sickles
with the Spanish minister of State, Sagasta. Driven from one excuse
to another, the Cuban authorities, in a last evasion, had declared the
vessel "sub judice," promising that it would be restored to its lawful
owners if and when the prize court adjudicating its status should
decree that it had been engaged in legitimate commerce. This had
given Sickles his opening. In an incisive interview with Sagasta, he
had replied that, according to international kw, prize-court proceed-
ings in a case of this kind could be recognized only in the event that
a "state of war" existed between the parties concerned, bluntly add-
ing that while the Spanish authorities had made no formal declara-
tion of war against the United States, their present action constituted
such, and could be construed by his government in no other way.
This had brought results!

And after some fourteen days of further procrastination, by the
Cuban authorities, the vessel had been released but even so, only
under the guns of the North Atlantic Squadron, dispatched to protect
her from threatened last-minute destruction by the upper-class Span-
ish mob known as "The Volunteers." So dose had it come to war!

The "incident," coupled with the open advocacy of Cuban in-
dependence on the part of many members of Congress, was one well
calculated to chill the reception of the United States minister in the
highly chauvinistic circles of Madrid society. Nevertheless a military
reputation, a personal dignity equal to that of the most fastidious
don, soon won him something more than a polite acceptance among
the grandee families opposed to the r6volt6 administration. For his
own part, disregarding a tilted nose here and there, he revived, on
a more lavish scale, the hospitable traditions of Stockton Mansion;
and the Legation dinners, official and unofficial, were appointed with
a splendor savoring more of Spanish royalty than of Yankee de-
mocracy! In this studiedly handsome entertaining he was gready
helped by his mother. Knowing well her skill in management, he
had sent for her soon after his arrival, to come and play Legation

234 m Sickles

hostess for him; and had arranged to have Laura come with her.
For the first time in ten years he had hoped to enjoy again some
taste of home life. With her gracious old-fashioned competence, his
mother, indeed, had proven a great comfort to him. But not so
Laura. He had dared to believe that, under the influence of the novel
scenes and pleasures of the capital, she might become reconciled to
him. But in the intervening years she had developed into a thin
nervous creature with a certain wild beauty and equally wild moods.
Hopelessly neurotic, she quickly had shown herself intractable, full
of scornful bravado, and openly hostile to him and his world. Within
a week of her arrival Sickles had regretted having brought her again
under his roof. Almost at once she had become violently enamored
of a young Spanish officer. Her reckless conduct of the affair had
forced Sickles to intervene. And in an outburst of defiance she had
destroyed the last possibility of more than a formal relationship
between them.

Curiously, it was with the exclusive and ultraconservative Court
clique accustomed to foregather in the massive old mansion presided
over by the widowed Marquise Creagh that Sickles formed his more
intimate contacts. A charming reactionary, blind to everything but
the divinity of Bourbon blood, the Marquise, from girlhood, had
been Isabella's devoted friend. Her husband descendant of an Irish
nobleman attached to the Royal Bodyguard of Carlos Ill-had held
various decorative posts at Court, as also had her brothers; while
her young daughter, Caroline, at that moment, was playing lady-in-
waiting in the exiled regal menage. The Creaghs, in fact, were the
very heart of the "legitimist" reaction in Madrid. But despite his demo-
cratic principles Sickles found them particularly simpdtico. A re-
publican as much by the accident of birth as by intellectual con-
viction, he still retained in his blood the tastes and temper of his feu-
dal forebears. And it, perhaps, was not so surprising that he should
find in the royalist atmosphere of the Creaghs no bar to his friend-
ship for them, nor that he should be intrigued, rather than other-
wise, by their romantic allegiance to the woman he well remembered
as a vivid, tragic young queen. In any case his curiosity was piqued.
And when, toward the close of the Franco-Prussian War, diplomatic
affairs summoned him to Paris, and the Marquise begged him to

"The Yankee King of Spain" 235

stop off en route at Biarritz and deliver certain confidential dis-
patches to Isabella, he readily agreed to play courier.

The subsequent meeting was as human in its naturalness as it was
fateful in its consequences. At the Chateau Mont D'Or loaned her
by the Due de Montpensier Isabella received Sickles alone, and as
was her negligent wont with visitors high and low in artistic dis-
habille. Clad in little but a gorgeous tea gown so loosely swathed
about her that it half bared her great breasts, her heavy hair show-
ering her to the waist, her bold obsidian eyes a-sparkle with sex, she
seemed far more some fat gypsy witch than the Bourbon queen of
the most convention-ridden country in Europe. Sickles was not un-
prepared for such reception, for he had heard much of her idio-
syncrasies. Nor had the letters of the Marquise failed to depict this
"americano jntiy siTnpdtico" including the crutches. As the door
closed behind him, Sickles bowed ceremoniously. But Isabella, ap-
praising him in one swift glance, came forward, smiling welcome. "It
is a long time, wi general, since I had the pleasure of seeing you"; and
lightly patting his crutches, she gave him her hand to kiss, then put
her arms about him and kissed him in return. <c We both have
changed c6mo no? But you have become a great general while
I " Sickles bowed again. "You are more adorable than ever, Your
Majesty. 57 She laughed. "Ah I see you are more gallant than ever!
But no 'Majesty,' please you know how I hate all that. I am Ysabel
to my friends." Chattering, she led him to. a divan, took away his
crutches, and pouring two glasses of her favorite white sherry,
sat confidentially beside him while she scanned the heavily sealed
missive he had brought her.

After a brief silence Isabella looked up, tapping the bulky letter
on her knee. "It's good to know that I have friends at least and
some faint hope." Then, voicing the question always uppermost in
her mind, "Tell me, my friend, tell me truly, what do you think of
my son's prospects for the throne?"

Sickles spoke quite honestly and very much in the -terms of his
last dispatch to the State Department. "I think that four or five
years from now his chances will be very good." Isabella put an
impetuous hand on his knee. "Why, my friend why?" Sickles
pondered a moment. "Well for two reasons. One is Amadeo, the
other is Spain. The King is really a very good fellow. He is doing
his utmost to win the confidence of his people. But in Spanish eyes

236 Dan Sickles

nothing can ever overcome the damning fact that he is a foreigner.
And he is far too punctilious to remain loijg where he is not wanted.
If he lasts two years I shall be surprised. His abdication would pre-
cipitate a Republican reaction. But it would not last long Spain is
too monarch-minded for that. I don't care to play prophet, but I
would venture to guess that after a year or two there will be a gen-
eral clamor for the restoration of the throne. Spain will never try
another foreign king. She never will accept the Pretender, Don
Carlos. And what choice will there be but Prince Alfonso?"
. Isabella relaxed with a sigh. "That is really the way you see it?"
Sickles smiled wryly. "As a Republican I ought to wish it the
other way, I suppose. But that's the way the stream runs, I think-
but the canoe may need a little steering here and there."

"And you will help steer?" The urgency in her eyes was hard
to resist.

"For your sake." The words came impetuously their thanks a
kiss by no means formal

So began between these two disparate beings the nineteenth-
century democrat, the sixteenth-century absolutist a most com-
panionable liaison, sensual, merry, mutually understanding, that,
laughing at all surface barriers, was to remain for many years the
central fact of their lives. In truth, diverse as they might be in
tradition, they had certain strong resemblances in temperament.
Both were prodigals in sex and purse; both were egocentric, yet
unfailing in hidden acts of graceful kindness;*.both had the magnetism
of rich vitality, the power of evoking great personal devotion.

At dinner Isabella introduced her guest to a slight, prim young
Spanish beauty with the tight mouth and wooden expression so
characteristic of the convention-bound but highly sex-conscious
senorita of rank. Sickles found himself chatting with Caroline
Creagh, daughter of his good friend La Marquise, with the sense
that, against Isabella and the rather lush atmosphere of the emigr6
ladies and courtiers surrounding her, she seemed a little like a nun
at a masked ball But when kter he happened to catch her glance,
he noticed that her cheeks flushed, and she seemed suddenly confused.

*Scores of letters from humble folk thanking the General for services he had
rendered them, services sometimes trifling, sometimes critical such as rescuing
a household from eviction, saving a wild lad from court-martial came to light
in his archives. Isabella's winsome trindnfsg to high and low preserved her
popularity long after she had rightfully forfeited it by her negligent misrule.

"The Yankee King of Spain" 237

On the sea-front promenade at Biarritz, where, for the next few
weeks, they were accustomed to stroll, deep in talk, the two in-
fatuates were the focus of attention. Of IsabeUa herself Lady
Louise Tenison wrote:

She has grown very stout; and with the most good-natured face in the
world, has certainly nothing to boast of in elegance of manner or dignity
of deportment. She looks what she is a most thoroughly kindhearted
creature, Hiring to enjoy herself, and hating all form and etiquette; ex-
tremely charitable but always acting on the impulse of the moment,
obeying her own will in ail things instead of being guided by any fixed
principle of action. . . . The one point on which she made a firm stand
against her Ministers was to insist upon her right to exercise mercy, and
she insisted upon the right even in the case of her would-be assassin, the
priest, Martin Marino.*

As for the Queen's new lover, grown a litde portly and heavy-
shouldered from the use of crutches, accoutered en rdgle frock
coat, silk hat, white choker collar, striped gray cravat, peg-top
trousers in the French mode he had brought from the battlefield
and his subsequent strenuous experience as envoy and military
governor an authoritatively mature air that La Marquise had hit off
rather happily when she wrote of him, "Un americano magnifico y
romantico! He is very gallant; but has great force; and wears his
crutches as though they were medals as he should!"

But Sickles could not dally long at Biarritz. France was in the
throes. The siege of Paris just had ended; but Gambetta was still
holding the field; and the revolt against the armistice that was to
culminate in the Commune was looming up. Tbiers had risen from
a sickbed to undertake a desperate embassy to the Court of St.
James's, St. Petersburg, Vienna, in the hope of obtaining the inter-
vention of the powers on behalf of less drastic terms of peace for
France. Returning empty-handed, he had sought the good offices
of the United States. But while the State Department had declined
to undertake any official representations in a matter so exclusively
the concern of the two European sovereignties, it was not averse
from permitting its diplomatic agents to use their influence personally
and unofficially on behalf of the reborn Republic. As the United
States representative in France, and close friend of Thiers, Minister
Washburne felt that his own intercession would be discounted from

*The Gentlemarfs Magazine, London, 1889.

238 Dan Sickles

the start. Accordingly, the Comte de Paris, titular head of the Royal-
ist party and Bourbon claimant to the throne, in consultation with
Thiers requested Sickles to assume the task of endeavoring to soften
the Iron Chancellor. Both trusted the General's persuasive powers,
skill in negotiation. And they wisely concluded that a disinterested
spokesman who had held high command in a victorious army and
who thereafter had administered conquered territory would know
how to talk Bismarck's language better than a civilian diplomat.

Thiers was deeply touched by Sickles's hearty acceptance of the
adventure, as was Sickles by the shrewd, scholarly old statesman's
steadfastness under crushing responsibility. And their conferences
proved to be the birth of a lasting friendship between them.

At Brussels, Sickles, provided with a letter of introduction from
the Cpmte de Paris, a prewar intimate of Bismarck's, had no diffi-
culty in securing a hearing. When his appointment came, Bismarck
received him unceremoniously, soon wanned to him, but, learning
his business, showed a strong preference then as in subsequent in-
terviewsfor discussing the Gvil War, hunting, the virtues of
Munich lager and Rhenish wine in fact, anything and everything
else. At the same time Jules Favre, the French Minister of State, was
struggling heroically at the Green Table to save part of Alsace-
Lorraine and reduce what seemed, at the time, the bankrupting in-
demnity. Sickles, however, soon saw the hopelessness of persuading
the Chancellor to make any substantial concessions and shrewdly
concentrated his efforts on trying to save, at least, the industrial
center and strategic fortress of Belf ort. How much his genial diplo-
matic chumming with Bismarck contributed to the winning of this
sole concession, it would be impossible to say. But it may well be that
his frank good will, soldierly talk, connoisseurship in Rhenish may
have helped more to that end than the strenuous official representa-
tions of Thiers and Favre themselves. In any case, when, a few years
later, Thiers, as President of the French Republic, had the power
to thank Sickles for his services officially, he did not hesitate to
confer upon him, at the request of the Comte de Paris, the all but
supreme French honor hitherto never accorded an American-
Grand Croix de la Legion d'Honneur.

At the same time Isabella removed to Paris and re-established her
court-in-exile in a baroque old mansion on the Avenue Kleber.
Hesitantly she sent the eleven-year-old Alfonso to the Lycee, but,

"The Yankee King of Spain' 7 239

dissatisfied, soon transferred him to Vienna for tutoring under
Count Morphy. Finally, however, upon the. advice of her faithful
but liberal-minded former State Councilor, Don Antonio Canovas
del Castillo, she dispatched him to England there to absorb British
constitutional ideas at Eton and Sandhurst.

A bizarre affair that court on the Avenue Kleber. Even in the
Escorial the Queen had boldly ignored the stiff hedge of convention
about the throne, had dressed as she pleased, and had chosen her
associates purely on the basis of her own predilections often in the
teeth of her ministers. But now, for the first time in her life, she
was really free to indulge her very human, if rather indiscriminate,
taste for all kinds of people and to surround herself with the com-
panions of her fancy unconcerned with the bugbears of rank and
respectability.

A bizarre court in a bizarre time! Paris in '71 was on the loose.
With the fall of Sedan, the Empire had vanished almost unnoticed;
and with it had vanished much of the old social decoruhi. After a
few weeks of theatrical gestures as Regent, the Empress Eugenie
had stolen away to that refuge of royalty, Windsor, there to shelter
beneath the ample skirts of Queen Victoria. While the popular
sentiment was Republican, the Corps L6gislatif no real constituent
assembly, but a mere fagade for Napoleon's dictatorship was
strongly monarchial and clerical With the Empire not only dead
but damned, the crisis called for the decisive establishment of a new
order. But the Chamber, splintered into factions, seemed not to
know from day to day what course to pursue. It was an interim of
social disorder, political confusion, well typified by the scarred walls,
fallen roofs, rubble of brick, disfiguring a city blasted by German,
and again by French, guns within six months. From Versailles to
the Hotel de Ville the air was thick with intrigue. Gathering, each
clan to its favorite caf 6, the partisans of the Prince de Joinville, of
the Comte de Paris, of Thiers and the Republic, of Karl Marx and
Borodin, drank and argued around the clock. Clashes and brawls
were frequent. And as the lights came on, the street corners were
blocked with groups fiercely discussing, in the characteristic fashion
of the Parisian ouvrier, the last canard.

And Isabella's Court reflected both herself and the wise en sc&ne.
The thrones of France and Spain were at dice. And the house on
the Avenue K16ber was the natural place for the play. And with

240 Dan Sickles

that kind of play go pawnbroking financiers, gentlemen with schemes
to exploit, secret agents, prospective concessionaires, fringe politi-
cians, the genteel riffraff likely to gather about a royal menage gone
astray. All these wended in and out of Isabella's doors. And rubbing
disdainful shoulders with them came the bout noblesse. Sneer as
they might at this "bltmcheuse" and her assorted associates, these
gentry of a vanished day could not disregard the fact that she was
a Bourbon. And who could tell but that she or her son yet might
reign at the Escorial, and a Bourbon be crowned King of France?
So the Faubourg called lending a touch of distinction and decorum
to haphazard assemblies basking in Isabella's bohemian bonhomie.
More welcome were the writers and artists of prestige most of
whom, however they might rail against royalty in the saddle, found
something of allure in royalty unhorsed. Not Victor Hugo, that
godly man, but George Sand, Gustav Flaubert, Jean Paul Laurens,
several of whose paintings Isabella purchased for her walls, Felicien
David, the venerable composer, Louis Vielliemin, the brilliant Swiss
historian and intimate of Thiers, were among those who decorated
her jumbled but jolly salons- And behind these came also, here and
there, a neophyte of Montparnasse some indigent painter, poet,
more akin to the Queen's taste, picked up by chance and, as often
as not, liberally helped from her purse.

Into this milieu Sickles, fresh from the Spartan court and diplo-
matic drudgery of Madrid, stepped with the sense both of a school-
boy on vacation and of a kingmaker in the making! If to him Isa-
bella was Holiday, her plea that he help her further Alfonso's cause
had set him thinking also about another cause that of his old com-
rade on campaign, the Comte de Paris. When Louis Philippe abdi-
cated, he had named this eldest grandson of his then only nine years
of age as his successor. And the growing monarchist agitation in
the French Chamber made it plain to the General that now, if ever,
was the moment for the Comte to strike and assert his historic claim
to the throne.

Once started on this road of Royalist intrigue, Sickles suffered
no doubts as to the value of its success to the countries involved.
So far as Alfonso was concerned, he had good hope that this young
Bourbon's unusual intelligence, well nurtured in British liberal tradi-
tions, would make him the type of constitutional monarch Spain so

"The Yankee King of Spain" 241

urgently needed. And through four brutal campaigns he had come
to know the Comte's integrity and breadth of mind, his innate benev-
olence, high capacity. There was no man he more admired, none
that he deemed more competent to lead France out of her present
weltering. And if affection and self-interest 'largely motivated his
ambition to see the son of his mistress on the throne of Spain, his
friend on the throne of France, the General was well satisfied that
his aims, fulfilled, would serve the best interests of both realms.

But in the case of the Comte there was a novel difficulty. The
author of The History of the Civil War seemed, for the moment,
more interested in polishing the proofs of his monumental work
than in claiming his ancestral rights. Against this philosophic de-
tachment Sickles brought to bear all his arts of argument, persuasion.
. . . Two Republics had failed. Royalist factions preponderated in
the Chamber. And the Comte's strong leadership could easily unite
them into a force capable of placing him on the throne if only he
would come out of his retirement and take his stand. Deky would
be dangerous; and France needed him.

So Sickles presented the case. Nor could he be deterred by his
friend's disinterested attitude, frank reluctance to place himself at
the head of a clique or accept the throne in response to less than
a national mandate.

Thus all summer, almost living on the Paris-Madrid Express, now
closeted at the Creaghs' with the Due de Serbo, Don Antonio Cinovas
del Castillo, General Martinez Campos, Isabella's devout supporters,
anon in dose conference with the Comte and his royal relatives at
Chantilly, the General nurtured his projects not unmindful of the
fact that, should time and tide bring them to successful issue, it
would redound vastly to his prestige, give him intimate pkce, unique
influence at the courts of Versailles and Madrid, make him an Amer-
ican power in European politics. *

Power the General coveted, but that it was the Queen herself he
loved, he made no effort to conceal. If, seated beside her, playing
genial king to her motley court, driving with her on the Bois, es-
corting her to the Op6ra Comique, or on bankrupting shoppings to
the Rue de Rivoli or the Rue de la Paix, it ever occurred to him that
this was hardly correct diplomatic procedure for an American min-
ister to a rival court, he showed no sign of it, continued unperturbed.

242 Dan Sickles

And soon all Paris ever ready to twinkle at an amour, especially
one in high places was dubbing him, "Le Roi Amfricain de
FEspagne"the Yankee King of Spain.

Aleanwhile he was too much occupied to notice more than
momentarily and then with irritation that Caroline Creagh seemed
pointedly to avoid him, and yet was always swishing her skirts
across his path.

Suddenly to this bold dreaming came a rude, realistic shock. The
Due de Serbo, Canovas, and General Campos appeared at the house
on Avenue K16ber in a state of dour dudgeon. Angrily, if respect-
fully, they reported that Bourbon circles in Spain were dismayed
that the Queen of their allegiance, the mother of the prince they
strove to make king, should be openly flaunting herself in Paris as
the mistress of the American minister. Isabella must choose between
her lover and her son's chance of the throne. She could not have
both. Unless the scandal were stopped immediately, the strong and
growing support for Alfonso's claim would melt and be lost.

Isabella was a creature of many passions, but one dominated them
all her desire to see Alfonso on the throne. Rudely confronted with
the possible results of her laxity, she broke down in one of her
characteristic fits of violent contrition and promised to make amends.
But a half-hour later, in the midst of sadly bidding the astounded
Sickles adieu, she, as characteristically, dried her tears and began
plotting how to circumvent fate and her promise, pacify outraged
convention, and still keep her lover.

>As they stood at the window in low talk, the solution appeared
in the garden below. Watching Caroline Creagh moodily pacing
about the lawn, Isabella only half caught Sickles's angry and stub-
born "If that's the trouble why, then, shouldn't we be married?"

Without turning, Isabella shrugged. "You forget that to these
people you are what they like to call a commoner. No. That is im-
possible. In their eyes I should no longer be queen, Alfonso no
longer heir apparent." Then, suddenly pointing, "There is your
marriage. The dbfld is going sick and insane for love of you. But
she won't give you a smile because she will not cross me." Sickles
stood completely baffled. Isabella became urgent, imploring, "Don't
yon see? It's the only way out unless we part for good right now!
I know you Americanos don't understand our Latin manage de

"The Yankee King of Spain" 243

corwenance; but you know as well as I that most of our marriages
are affairs of that kind and are perfectly respected. And in your
position you need a wife, a wife of wealth, rank tend complete
loyalty to me. Don't you understand that, married to my lady-in-
waiting, you could always be with me as much as you pleased, and
no one would question it? With us Spaniards, so long as the outward
conventions are preserved, we are not concerned with other peo-
ple's private affairs. . . . And then, allied with my Court, what in-
fluence you could wield for Alfonso in Madrid!"

Against the torrent of her tongue Sickles could only blurt out an
expostulating "But my God! She doesn't interest me. She knows
we're together day and night! Has she no pride?"

Isabella, intent upon her idea, caught his hand, swept on eagerly.
"You won't be doing her an injustice. She will have what the Span-
ish woman wants most established position, security, a distinguished
husband. She won't expect love!"

But the General would have none of it. For days Isabella, amid
fits of weeping and hysterical appeals to the Virgin, exhausted herself
in dramatic efforts to overcome his scruples, his American distaste
for such a "Continental" solution of their problem. But her insist-
ence only stiffened him. Suddenly, with woman wile, she switched
her tactics, bade him go.

Gloomily the General went to his room, ordered his bags packed.
Only then did he realize how much Isabella with her impulsive
warmth and whimsy, her careless bravado, overflowing laughter,
quick understanding had released and refreshed fr, how necessary
she had become to him.

Impatiently he dismissed his valet, paced the room, brooding.
. . . Why was he finding it so hard to take Isabella at her word?
He remembered how he had written his friend Seaver, the year be-
fore, "Somehow, without any effort on my part, I find myself pro-
vided with a new sweetheart every month." So it always had been
with him. Beguiled and beguiling, he had amused himself with in-
numerable mistresses darlings of a day. They had cost him plenti-
fully in perfume and jewelry but scarcely a pang in parting. In
no one of them had he found a companion. . . . That was the
trouble now. Isabella was mistress and companion in one the first
in his life. It meant nothing to him, fastidious connoisseur of the
feminine as he knew himself to be, that she was plain, fat, and forty.

244 & an Sickles

It mattered less that she was a disgraced and discarded queen per-
verted by a foul marriage and her own rebellion into a reckless
courtesan. Nothing mattered but that, at long last, he had met a
woman whose nature and need meshed with his own.

Staring out of the -window, he noticed a slim figure restlessly saun-
tering about the garden. From the room adjoining came the sound of
sobbing. He hesitated. "Here I am, making two women wretched
and tormenting myself, simply because "

At the same moment Isabella was weeping tears of strange taste.
She had seen this man of fierce energy, restless ambition, abandon
himself like a boy in her presence. For the first time she had realized
her need of being needed, had tasted the joy of being the joy, in-
stead of the sport or pawn, of a lover. Coming from another world,
another century, he had no reserves with her, no scheme behind his
kiss, no eye upon her purse or power of appointment. There was
nothing she could give him, nothing he wanted, but herself. For the
first time she, too, had found a lover who was also a companion.
. . . Why was he so stubborn? Such an American provincial in his
notions! So bite/ . . . Disheveled, tear-smeared, she ran to his room.
His half-packed bags stood about. He was gone. She glanced into
the garden. There in an arbor he sat, talking earnestly to Caroline,
her hand in his. In an outburst of the childish religious fervor that
swept her at moments Isabella threw herself before the niched Ma-
donna in the corner pouring out passionate, if incongruous, thanks.

CHAPTER XXX

Le Manage de Convenance

J:ROM THE FIRST, Caroline had been a misfit at Court. Even in
childhood her meticulous propriety had excited the Queen's fond
amusement; and the fact that she was a Creagh was sufficient to

Le Manage de Convenance 245

make her a favorite. But while reared in the Royalist credo, "The
King can do no wrong," she had been trained at a fashionable con-
vent school in the strict doctrines of the Church and had grown up
as devout a religionist as she was a monarchist. Thus when, on Caro-
line's eighteenth birthday, the Queen-to the delight of the worldly
Marquise had put a string of pearls around her neck and announced
her a lady-in-waiting, she had been more fearful than flattered. And
only her mother's urging, her own sense of duty, had induced her
to follow the Court into exile. If, with her strict ideas of marriage
dignity, she often was shocked by Isabella's disorderly soul, ephem-
eral infatuations, she was too mindful of the etiquette of her posi-
tion to permit a hint of her feelings to appear. So she had lived
in a kind of stupor, cultivating the art of discreet blindness, con-
venient deafness, distracting herself by painstaking attention to her
manifold petty duties. But when the General had appeared, she had
waked suddenly had become an impassioned, unpredictable woman.
Aloof, straitlaced, disdaining the young fashionables frequenting
the Court, she had succumbed at a glance to this crippled Americano,
with his mature masculinity, richly informed folk, his air of domi-
nation over circumstance and women. And since that moment, real-
izing that he had eyes for none but the Queen, she had been twisted
between a wild desire to flee and an equally wild need to stay.
That the General was studiedly courteous to her, and sometimes
would be at great pains to be entertaining, only maddened her. And
her behavior if it perplexed him, amused the Queen often bewil-
dered herself. But when at last, obviously agitated, the General had
sought her in the garden and stammered out something about his
need of home and stability and what they might do together on behalf
of the Queen and Alfonso, and then, after a few awkward compli-
ments, had blurted out his formal proposal of marriage, she had been
too raptly surprised to taunt and test him too glad that her moment
of triumph had come so soon. That, as he had added, he was speak-
ing with the Queen's full approval, had filled her cup for the royal
blessing was needful. And that blessing had been given with disarm-
ing ingenuousness. Kissing her maternally, Isabella had murmured,
"My child, the General has told me that he wished to marry you.
I would not dream of standing between you two. I only regret that I
cannot be present at the wedding."
In an hour Caroline had been transformed from forlorn fury to

246 Dan Sickles

radiant self-confidence. And any doubt as to the sincerity of the
General's sudden volte-face had instantly been dissipated by his im-
petuous demand for an early marriage.

Once he had decided upon his course, the General, in fact, had
pursued it with whirlwind energy and dispatch. Within the next
few weeks he had swept compliantly through the necessary for-
mality of conversion to Catholicism, made a flying trip to Ma-
drid, secured the delighted consent of La Marquise, her brothers,
aunts, uncles, all duly assembled in family conclave, had published
the banns and had made all the necessary arrangements for the
wedding. . . .

Meanwhile the usual property settlement dragged annoyingly.
Finally it transpired that until certain of her father's properties could
be freed from litigation, Caroline's dowry would be negligible. The
discovery and the excuse struck the General with sharp misgiving.
He knew that many of the grandee families suffered from the gen-
eral impoverishment of the country and were hard put to it to main-
tain appearances; but he had always understood that the Marquis
Creagh had inherited a vast fortune, and naturally had assumed that
Caroline's dowry would be of appropriately handsome proportions.
And what made the matter worse was the fact that, deprived of his
lucrative law practice, compelled to spend far more than his official
salary of $12,000 a year, he had been dipping dangerously into his
reserves. At the same time recent advices from his New York
brokers had apprised him that his heavy holdings in the Erie Rail-
road were rapidly becoming worthless under Jay Gould's vicious
makdministration. But it was too late to draw back.

Amid a cathedral pomp and pageantry little less than that ac-
corded a royal wedding, watched by a vast congregation dominated
by the grandee families pledged to Isabella, and so barred with rows,
and splotched with clots, of gaudy uniforms, military, diplomatic,
as to give it the air of some exotic ballet ensemble, the General and
his bride knelt before the Archbishop of the Indies and made their
vows the one with a grim, the other with a glowing, heart.

In the front pew, beside the Marquise, the bridegroom's mother,
proud and perplexed, looked on; but his daughter was not present.
Laura was abed. Nor had she feigned indisposition. Disgust at the
marriage, amounting to fury as the ceremony approached, had
thrown her into a high fever.

Le Manage de Convenance 247

Sickles already had decided to make his wedding trip an excuse
for an immediate return to New York. In need of money, he had
urgent business there. If his holdings in Erie stock were to be sal-
vaged, Jay Gould and his gang had to be ousted from their control
of the road, a new directorate appointed. The project had an air
of phantasy.

Dark, slight, malicious, with eyes of a ferret, snout of a fox, Jay
Gould was by far the most conscienceless criminal in American
finance. His "Black Friday*' foray on the gold market had precipi-
tated a disastrous panic throughout the whole country. Subsequently
filching his way into control of the Erie Railroad, he had paid no
attention to it as a business, but used it simply as a base for his
elaborately crooked stockjobbing operations. Vigorously resisted
in his efforts to gulp a subsidiary road, the Albany & Susquehanna,
and finding purchased orders from the bench insufficient for the
purpose, he had hired an army of some eight hundred thugs and
endeavored to cow his opponents with a slugging, train-wrecking
campaign known as "The Erie War." His domination of the courts
and the press was complete. Judges hastened to write his dictated
decisions and injunctions with hands that trembled or itched. Such
newspapers as did not trumpet him dared not attack him, nor deal
with him less than politely. To jolt such a buccaneer from his
quarter-deck was no light undertaking. And Sickles knew it.

Getting in touch with the British group of Erie bondholders-
gentlemen unaccustomed to the antics of American finance, and
now perturbed over Gould's strange conduct of their affairs he
secured their power of attorney; and with this by way of a club-
handy if by no means heavy he set sail for New York, immersed in
plotting the strategy of his projected ouster. Caroline, confined to
her cabin by severe md de mer y was too wretched to notice 'his ab-
sorption. Few on board suspected that they sailed with a distin-
guished bride and bridegroom.

By the time he reached New York, indeed, Sickles already seri-
ously regretted his marriage. And realizing that, as a Spanish Cath-
olic and Royalist, Caroline's reception scarcely could be enthusiastic
in his New York circle, he contented himself with introducing her
to his father and more intimate friends, carefully evading social
commitments. Nevertheless he endeavored to preserve the gestures
of a happy bridegroom at such dinners, theater and opera parties

248 Dan Sickles

as \vere plainly unavoidable. For the rest, his days and no few o:
his nights were spent at his old office at 74 Nassau Street or or
frequent unobtrusive visits to Tammany Hall, Wall Street, certair
mansions on Park Avenue.

Never had the General been more absorbed, tight-lipped, remote,
To his friends, puzzled at this sudden lapse of his old sociability, he
pleaded "pressing diplomatic business." Pressing it was, and highly
diplomatic this secret and thorough organization of an insurrection
in Erie.

Three months passed. Then suddenly New York papers blazed
with banner headlines. Shouted the Times:

GENERAL SICKLES SPRINGS COUP D'ETAT IN ERIE

EXCITING SCENES IN THE GRAND OPERA HOTJSE

JAY GOULD DEPOSED FROM THE PRESIDENCY REORGANIZATION
OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS

A most extraordinary series of events occurred yesterday at the Erie
Railway offices in the Grand Opera House, the result being the final
displacement of Jay Gould from the Presidency of the Company and a
partial reorganization of the Board of Directors. General John A. Dix was
elected and installed as President, and Mr. W. W. Sherman, of the firm of
Duncan, Sherman and Company, was appointed Treasurer, Mr. O. H. P.
Archer being retained as Vice-President. The details of this remarkable
movement are herewith presented in regular order, affording a most
exciting narrative.

It appears that the movement really commenced weeks ago, though the
proceedings were kept a profound secret in order to take the Gould party
utterly by surprise.

General Sickles and S. L. M. Barlow seem to have been the prime
movers in the matter, assisted in a great measure by George Crouch,
formerly in the pay of Gould and Fisk, but now devoted to the interests
of a portion of the English stockholders. The hour was apparently well
chosen, for Gould and his adherents seem to have been completely dumb-
founded by the strategy of his opponents.

That Sickles, in an hour, could seize possession of the Erie offices
and force a quorum of directors to resign in favor of men pledged

Le Manage de Convenance 249

to oust Gould and appoint a new and trustworthy president and
board, indicates the crushing pressure he must have brought to bear,
the military thoroughness of his preparation and organization!
Caught completely off guard, Gould had only time to rush out a
purchased injunction countering the proceedings and fill the corridors
of the buildings with his plug-uglies. The first was ignored; and the
second confronted with squads of police and Tammany boys
mobilized by Sickles against just such an emergency evidently pre-
ferred playing cards to wielding clubs. Before the sun went down
that day, Jay Gould was on the curb, Erie was in good hands, and
its stock was already rocketing on the Street.

But the play was not quite over. Gould, outguessed and over-
powered, still remained cool and cagey. He had known temporary
setbacks before, but he had always known how to make a friend
of an enemy on the right terms! This Sickles was smart he could
use a man like that. And the next afternoon he casually dropped in
at 23 Fifth Avenue, the solid, stone-front residence recently leased
by his enemy. Ushered into the library where, seated behind a mas-
sive desk, Sickles was winding up his affairs preparatory to his depar-
ture for Spain, Gould came forward with a knowing, ingratiating
air. "General, the man that can outsmart me is my friend. Maybe
I've done some pretty neat things in my time, but nothing quite as
neat as that trick of yours. What I say is, you're not the kind of
man I want for an enemy. Let's get together "

While Gould was speaking, the General was rising, slowly gath-
ering his crutches under him. Without a word he was oaring him-
self around the desk, his face a knotted fist. Gould, catching his
expression, backed uneasily away. The unfinished sentence ended
in a yelp as a crutch, slung at him, caught him square in the face.
Bloody-nosed, he stumbled backward toward the great Tudor
window, its twin panes thrust open against the unseasonable April
heat. Still without a word the General bore down on him, grabbed him
by the collar and the seat of his pants, and with only one leg to aid,
hoisted him and hurled him through the open window. Fortunately
for Gould and perhaps for his assailant! the library was on the
ground floor. And, from the ledge to the soft flower bed below, it
was only a six-foot drop. Terrified but unhurt, Gould scrambled to
his feet and fled. At that moment Moseley, the Negro houseman,
alarmed by the noise, came running in to find his master fuming at

250 Dan Sickles

the window, muttering as he gazed down at the trampled plot, "The
damned scoundrel! My poor violets my poor violets!"

That evening the New York papers ran extras with flaring head-
lines "Sickles Tries to Kill Jay Gould! . . . Sickles Attempts His
Second Murder!"

Once back in Madrid, the General, in view of his bride's ardent
if irritating devotion and his own official position, set himself to
live up to his obligations with such grace as he could. But with
Caroline caste-ridden, inflexible he could make no easy relation-
ship, while at the same time her femininity was in arms against his
rather labored attenriveness. The result was that before long both
turned instinctively from the poverty of their emotional life to
seek distraction together in the only common sphere left to them
Alfonsista society.

Fortunately Sickles was now once more in good financial cir-
cumstance. He had been awarded a handsome honorarium by the
British bondholders in Erie including the gift of his rented New
York home, 23 Fifth Avenue, and had been voted a large block of
stock by the subsequently elected directors of the reorganized
company. Also he had culled a fine profit from the sale of some of
his New Jersey real estate. This renewed affluence, coupled with
the enriched social nexus brought to him by marriage, enabled him
to give his Legation dinners and balls on a larger scale and in an
atmosphere of increased distinction. When, in fact, these two part-
ners in a counterfeit marriage were not entertaining in the prodigal
style he demanded and she adored, they were being entertained in
one or other of the fortresslike grandee mansions where the first
toast after dinner was always, "His Royal Highness soon may he
reign!" And it was only upon these occasions that Caroline the
perfect thing in dress and manner, queening it over her Alfonsista
admirers, parading her husband, sipping the nectar of envy found
passing joy in being the wife of His Excellency; and that His Excel-
lency, well wined, found himself admitting that if his marriage was
a private trial, it decidedly was a social triumph.

Laura was no longer present. Refusing to live with this strange
stepmother, she had broken completely with her father and returned
to New York. There the effects of her broken childhood still pur-
sued her. After a reckless marriage, followed soon by separation,

Le Mariage de Convenance 251

she lived on the allowance Sickles punctiliously paid her a disil-
lusioned, devil-may-care existence until her death at the age of
thirty-eight.

In the second year of her marriage Caroline bore a girl. She
named her Eda. A year later came a boy. And Sickles, combining
the name of his father, and the friend who had defended his life,
called him George Stanton.

Meanwhile, on the always convenient excuse of diplomatic busi-
ness, the General found time for frequent trips to Paris and the
house on Avenue Kleber. But now he was more discreet. And,
possibly as a gesture of atonement, he presently was taking Caroline
on a long, leisurely tour through Germany and Italy. . . .

Early in '73 Amadeo, after a conscientious effort to overcome the
prejudice of the masses against his foreign birth, had abdicated; and
once again, under the virtual dictatorship of Serrano and Sagasta,
the Republic had been re-established. But if the American minister,
in a speech widely quoted and acclaimed, officially congratulated the
leaders of the new regime, he had no illusions as to the difficulties
before them. Soon again, indeed, those Spanish fatalities, factional-
ism and regionalism, splitting the Cortes into impotent fragments,
precipitated a new era of political feuding and national confusion.
Staggering from crisis to crisis, the Republic accomplished nothing
of importance save the completion of a project fostered by Amadeo
and supported by Sickles with all the influence of his office the
abolition of slavery in Puerto Rico. And scarcely had the mint
ceased melting down the coinage stamped with "King Macaroni's"
handsome head when once more rose a general clamor for the
restoration of the monarchy while the supporters of Alfonso, per-
fecting their organization among the military element, quietly pre-
pared for a coup <F6tat. Events, in fact, were following the repetitious
pattern long ago predicted in the General's first chat with Isabella at
Biarritz and in his prescient dispatches to the State Department.

252 Da?2 Sickles

CHAPTER XXXI

'An Everlasting Stain 3

AN THE FALL OF '73 the Republic tottering Spain and the United
States again clashed to the verge of war. And it was this episode,
marked by lurid provocation on the part of the Spanish authorities,
pitiful pusillanimity on the part of Hamilton Fish, that drove Sickles,
in protest, to resign his post at Madrid.

On October 3 1 the speedy blockade runner Virgmiw, owned by
an American citizen, John F. Patterson, and -flying the American
flag in accordance with her registration, was chased, fired upon,
brought to, and taken as a prize to Santiago de Cuba by the Span-
ish warship Tornado. For three years past she had been engaged in
secretly purveying arms and supplies to the Cuban insurrectos. And
on this occasion she was bearing a number of insurgent leaders and
American volunteers to a rendezvous on the Cuban coast. When
sighted, however, she was on the high seas, far from Spanish terri-
torial waters, and thus, by international law, immune from Spanish
seizure even though loaded to the scuppers with rebels and contra-
band. But the Cuban authorities, long aware of her activities,
promptly confiscated her. And delighted at the capture of such
patriot generals as Bernabe Verona, Pedro C&pedes, Jesus de Sol,
and the doughty American filibusterer, Brigadier General Wash-
ington Ryan, they proceeded to court-martial captain, crew, and
passengers, Cuban and American alike, and stand them in batches
before the firing squad. This while an armed guard prevented the
United States consul from cabling a report of the seizure and execu-
tions to Washington! And, in the course of the next few weeks, fifty-
three of the prisoners were put to death before a British man-of-war,
steaming under forced draft to the rescue of the one British sailor
aboard, peremptorily put a belated stop to the massacre!

"An Everlasting Stain" 253

Upon receiving news of the outrage from the consul general at
Havana, Hamilton Fish, instead of demanding and enforcing the
immediate release of the ship, her passengers and crew, pending
complete investigation of the seizure, merely cabled Sickles:

The capture on the high seas of the vessel bearing the American flag
presents a very grave question which will need investigation. The sum-
mary proceedings resulting in the punishment of death, with such rapid
haste, will attract attention as inhuman and in violation of the civilization
of the age. And if it prove that an American citizen has been wrongfully
executed, this Government will require most ample reparation.

Notified of the incident and of the United States Government's
protest, the liberal and honest-minded Spanish premier, Castelar,
immediately cabled orders to Santiago to suspend the executions
and called personally at the American Legation to express his official
regrets. From this point, however, Carvajal, the Secretary of State,
a man of quite different caliber, assumed the conduct of the case.
Spain's control over her officials in Cuba was far less effective than
the local pressure of the bloodthirsty "Volunteers." As a result
with Carvajal's tacit consent Castelar's orders were disregarded,
and the executions continued. Again Sickles vigorously protested
demanding that the United States consul at Santiago be permitted
cable communications to his government, and sharply reminding
the Secretary that, under the Treaty of 1793, Americans accused
of unlawful acts against Spain could be tried in Spanish courts only
after due notification of the United States Government, with the
full protection of the law and in the presence of competent Amer-
ican officials. Carvajal's answer was a cool provocation of war: "The
affair is purely a municipal concern of Spain, and one in which
the interference of the United States Government cannot be toler-
ated." At the same time the Madrid press broke into inflammatory
editorials; while the American Legation was so beset by howling
mobs that Sickles threatened to close his doors and leave the city
unless assured proper respect.

At this moment the daily fusillades on board the Virginias had
only just begun. But although informed by the United States consul
general in Havana that they were continuing, Secretary Fish allowed
a week to pass before, aroused by a cable from General Sickles
reporting the execution of Captain Fry* and thirty-six of the crew

* Among the immortal letters is his farewell to his wife.

254 Dan Sickles

mostly Americans he proceeded to lodge a second protest. It was,
unfortunately, simply a vapid repetition of the first!

With an eagerness that quickly changed to disgust, the General
scanned the new instructions. Vain verbalisms, they still gave him
no authority to demand the instant cessation of the butchering.

Two weeks and still the executions continued!

Wishing furiously that he could change places with Fish for a
moment, Sickles did all that his instructions permitted him. And
while incisively defining the international law in the case, his written
protest to Carvajal burned with the horror and rage then sweeping
the United States. CarvajaTs reply was a masterpiece of studied in-
solence. Rejecting the protest with "serene energy," he referred in
ta quoque style to the "sanguinary acts" committed by the United
States, and closed with the pompous rebuke:

I have to fix my attention upon the harshness of style and upon the
heated and improper words you use to qualify the conduct of the Spanish
authorities. If the document subscribed by you lacks the solemnity which
might be lent to it by the right to address it to me, the temperance of its
form ought at least to have demonstrated that it was not dictated by
passion.

Sickles, in a mordant reply, closed on a note clearly reflecting
his conviction that the liberation of Cuba by American arms would
be acclaimed by the whole western world:

And if at last, under the good auspices of Mr. Carvajal, with die aid
of that serenity that is unmoved by slaughter, and that energy that rejects
the voice of humanity, this Government should prove successful in re-
storing order and peace and liberty where hitherto, and now, all is tumult
and conflict and despotism, the fame of this achievement will reach the
continents beyond the seas and gladden the.hearts of millions who believe
that the New World is the home of free men and not of slaves.

And even while he was coding a message notifying Fish of
CarvajaPs defiant attitude, came the official report that forty-nine
of the prisoners aboard the Virginws already had been shot the
previous week. The two facts, coupled in one dispatch, moved
Fish, at last and too late, to cable the instructions the situation had
demanded, and that his minister had craved, from the first:

You will demand the restoration of the Vtrginizis and the release and
delivery to the United States of the persons captured on her who have not

"An Everlasting Stain" 255

been already massacred, and that the flag of the United States be saluted in
the port of Santiago, and the signal punishment of the officials con-
cerned in the capture of the vessel and the execution of the passengers
and crew. In case of the refusal of satisfactory reparation within twelve
days of this date, you will, at the expiration of that time, close your
Legation and will, together with your secretary, leave Madrid, bringing
with you the archives of the Legation.

Still Carvajal paltered while devising a counterplay in hour-to-
hour cable correspondence with Admiral Polo, the Spanish minister
in Washington. First he proposed an arbitration of the dispute.
This Fish refused. Then, at the last moment, half an hour after
Sickles had asked for his passports, Carvajal played his last trick.
Through the Spanish secret service in New York, acting under the
direction of Admiral Polo, he had discovered that 'the registration
of the Virginfas as an American vessel was technically faulty, and
had found persons prepared to swear that the money for her pur-
chase had been supplied to Patterson by agents of the Cuban in-
surrectos. Armed with this information, he wrote Sickles a note
stating that his government was prepared to comply with all the
demands of the United States Government "if it appear that the
Virginius rightfully carried the American flag, and that her docu-
ments were regular."

It was, of course, a brazen begging of the whole question. The
issue was not whether the Virginha was registered correctly or in-
correctly, whether she carried the American flag legally or illegally,
or where Mr. Patterson obtained the funds for her purchase. The
issue was whether a ship, any ship, carrying the American flag and
with American papers in proper order could be seized on the high
seas by the gunboat of a friendly power, and her American captain
and crew done to death without even the opportunity of appeal to
their government.

But patent as was this old courtroom trick of switching the prem-
ises of a dispute and proceeding to prosecute the complainant, it
completely befuddled Fish. Nonplussed, flustered, apparently panic-
stricken at his recent audacity, he reversed his whole attitude; and
now, strictly on the defensive, hastened to draw up with Admiral
Polo a protocol that, based exclusively on CarvajaTs wily conten-
tion, undertook to prosecute the Vfrpmus and its owner, instead
of the Cuban authorities, as the criminals at the bar!

256 Dm Sickles

A sweeping diplomatic victory for Carvajal, and a virtual apology
to Spain, it provided:

That the Virginws should be released with such of the pas-
sengers and crew as happened still to be alive.

"That if it appear upon investigation that the Virginius did not
rightfully carry the American flag, the United States isould arraign
and punish the owners?

That the question of damages be submitted to arbitration.

Requested for an opinion as to whether the Virginhis was entitled
to American registry, Attorney General Williams on the purely
technical point that the registration had not been accompanied by
the filing of the usual bond rendered a verdict in the negative. And
except for the subsequent payment of comparatively trifling dam-
ages, assessed by arbitration, the case was closed.

In vain Patterson, in a most able letter to the press, tore the Attor-
ney General's verdict to pieces; and pointing out that neither as
witness nor defendant had he been allowed to participate in the
proceedings condemning him, demanded a public investigation as
to his ownership of the Virginhis, its registration, its claim to pro-
tection under the flag. His plea was disregarded. And this Virginius
her remaining passengers and crew transferred to another vessel
sank while being towed to New York by a government tug. Never
did vessel sink more conveniently!

In the matter of the protocol Sickles had been completely ignored.
Finding him disposed to brook neither insolence nor chicanery,
Carvajal had gone over his head, convinced by the reports received
from Polo that Fish would prove much more amenable. In conniv-
ing at this breach of diplomatic etiquette Fish, of course, was guilty
of no less a breach. And in slighting his minister and taking negotia-
tions into his own hands, he had permitted himself to be betrayed
into a hapless mishandling of the whole imbroglio. Not by the
General ever could have been signed a protocol that aroused Span-
ish jeers, British scorn, and a just damnation throughout the United
States as to quote the New York Tribune "an everlasting stain
upon the American escutcheon ... a burning humiliation to
American diplomacy/*

In complete disgust, the General resigned, closed his desk and
his diplomatic career. Two weeks later, with his wife and small
children, he departed for Paris.

Holiday 257

CHAPTER XXXII

Holiday

-Ton THE GENERAL the move to Paris meant above all Isabella.
And establishing Caroline and the children in a charming small
estate he had leased at Chantilly, and also reserving private quarters
for himself at the Crillon, he soon was spending die larger part of
his time at the baroque old mansion on Avenue Kleber. As a private
citizen allied to court circles, he was at last free to enjoy the society
of the Queen without involving her, as formerly, in Spanish stric-
tures and political difficulties. In any case there no longer was the
danger of beclouding Alfonso's accession to the throne. That al-
ready seemed assured within the year. And having won a clear
field for themselves at last at the cost of a marital subterfuge the
General and Isabella proceeded to discard the last modicum of dis-
cretion. Once more at the Opera, the theater, at the races, on the
Bois, the "Yankee King of Spain" and his Queen made their ap-
pearance together jocular, middle-aged inseparables.

For Caroline hitherto tenacious in her confidence that she could
win her husband away from the Queen the situation was both a
social humiliation and the extinguishment of her hopes. Out of
loyalty to Isabella she endured it with proud stoicism for a year.
But on the day that the news of Alfonso's summons to the throne
flashed over the wires she made her decision. In Madrid now an
honored position at court awaited her. Here in Paris she saw noth- .
ing before her but the lot of a discarded wife. Abruptly she faced
the General with the demand that he return with her to Spain and
once and forever forswear his intrigue with the Queen.

jit was a hopeless demand. The past year had seen the two be-
come completely estranged. Sickles himself was enamored of Isa-

258 Dan Sickles

bella more deeply than ever. And, to a man accustomed as he to
place and power, the idea of living in Madrid as a private citizen,
merely the husband of a Court lady, was wholly unthinkable. In a
scene full of torture for both, he refused. The stark "adiof* that
ended the discussion was the last word these two were to exchange
for nearly forty years. A few days later Caroline, taking little Eda
and George with her, returned to her mother's home in Madrid.

But beside Isabella, Paris held for Sickles another persistent lure.
Recently the Due de Broglie, leading a Royalist coalition in the
Chamber, had forced the resignation of the aged Thiers as the head
of the Provisional Administration, and maneuvered the election of
the Marechal MacMahon, Due de Magenta, as President of France.
This sudden political backwash, indicating an imminent restoration
of the monarchy, had swept the Comte de Paris to the very foot of
the throne. By the Pact of Bordeaux a political truce entered into
by all parties pending the release of France from the German army
of occupation the final form of the new government had been held
in abeyance, and no general election had been held. But this state of
affairs could not long continue. And should an election come, the
influence of Thiers, the reassuring effect of his able interim leader-
ship, almost certainly would tend to return a Corps Legislatif
strongly Republican. The moment, therefore, was one to be seized
without an instant's delay. And again Sickles now through Isa-
bella brought into intimate contact with the Royalist noblesse set
himself to aid Marechal MacMahon, the Due de Broglie, and their
allies in their efforts to unite the other members of the House of
Bourbon in support of the Comte de Paris, on the basis that only a
monarch of liberal views and soldierly prestige could hope to
counter the Republican opposition. But as far as the three rival
claimants were concerned, the effort proved superfluous. The Prince
de Joinville, the Comte's uncle, by resuming his seat in the Chamber
against his public pledge, had brought himself into popular disre-
pute; while the Comte de Chambord, grandson of Charles X, and,
as such, the head of the House of Bourbon, had proceeded to com-
mit monarchial suicide by declaring, in manifesto after manifesto,
that never would he consent to be "the King of the French Revo-
lution"! At the same time Prince Napoleon, son of Napoleon III,
had disappeared from the scene in search of a life of adventure that
presently ended on the barbs of Matabele spears. Thus, in opposition

Holiday 259

to the Comte de Paris the clearly legitimate heir there remained
only three possible and secondary claimants to the throne: the Due
de Nemours and the Due de Montpensier, his other uncles, and his
younger brother, the Due d'Or!6ans. And Sickles, with his usual keen
grasp of situation, and knowing well that he served Isabella's wish,
Bismarck's preference, used his favorable position as the friend of all
parties to reconcile their differences and obtain from them a pledge
of agreement to support the Comte de Paris as the head of the House
of Orleans.

At this moment the issue whether France would become a mon-
archy or a republic quivered on a knife edge. The Royalists were
in control of the Chamber. And even Thiers, once the buttress of
the Bourbons but now convinced that their day was done, had
little heart to oppose the enthronement of a prince he so pro-
foundly trusted and admired. Meanwhile MacMahon, counting on
his own military prestige and popularity, stood prepared to break the
Pact of Bordeaux and force upon the country a new constitution
prescribing a limited monarchy as the future form of government-
accompanied by a proclamation announcing Louis Philippe Albert,
Comte de Paris, the King of France.

But there the whole carefully prepared scheme crashed on a
ridiculous quibble. At, the last moment, the Due d'Or!6ans, aware
that his support was imperative, demanded that the arms of his
House the Fleur de Lys on a White Shield, borne by Jeanne d'Arc
on her triumphant campaign be made the national emblem in place
of the Tricolor. In view of the profound sentiment of the French
masses for the flag encarnadined by Napoleon and forever asso-
ciated with the cry, "Libertt! Egalitt! Fraternite!" the Comte
stoutly opposed the change. And MacMahon, in a phrase to become
famous, roared, "Si le drapeau blanc 6tdt dvelop6 en face du
drafeau tricolore, les chassepots partirent d > etix wemes! [Were the
White Flag unfurled in place of the Tricolor, the guns would fire
of themselves!]" Bitterly chagrined, the Due d'Orteans, repudiating
his pledge to support his brother, stalked out of the conference.
With him went followed by a muttered "The damned fool!" from
Sickles, a sigh of sudden relief from the quite unambitious Comte
the last hope of monarchy in France. Out of such a cracked egg-
shell was the Third Republic born!

Born it might be; but no one at the time could be sure of it. And

2<5o Dm Sickles

when finally MacMahon was compelled to call a national election,
he still had good hope of a Royalist majority. By the same token
Thiers, despite the obviously growing Republican sentiment in the
provinces, was deeply concerned as to the result. Just then it hap-
pened that President Grant and his wife, having arrived in London
on a vacation tour of Europe, were about to leave for Paris. Thiers,
aware that MacMahon, by an ostentatious official reception and
banquet, was planning to make the utmost political capital out of
this first visit of a President of the American Republic to a Presi-
dent of the French Republic, urged Minister Washburne to advise
Grant of the situation and suggest that he postpone his arrival until
after the election. But Grant, a little obtuse in matters of diplomacy,
could see no good reason for this change of plan; and Thiers, in
despair, turned for aid to Sickles now disgusted with the mon-
archists and keen to serve the Republic. Followed an amusing episode.
Within the hour Sickles had caught the boat train for London and
in two days was back with Grant's promise to place France last in his
itinerary. Crutching it hastily up the steps of the ex-President's
home on La Place de St. Georges, he was ushered into the library
by Madame Thiers herself. At first he could see no one. Then by
the dim light of a single reading lamp he discerned Thiers enjoying
an after-dinner nap on a divan before the fire. Madame Thiers
stepped* forward to wake her husband; but Sickles interposed with
a whispered "Let him sleep." While the two were chatting together
softly, the ex-President's celebrated sister-in-law, Madame Doche,
entered. And conversing with her, Sickles presently noticed that
Madame Thiers also had dozed. In a few moments Thiers's private
secretary, Barthelemy St. Hilaire later a prominent figure in French
politics came in, eager to learn the results of the mission. Scarcely
had Sickles answered his questions before he observed that Madame
Doche, too, had dozed off! For years, it seemed, it had been the
habit of the three old people to snatch an after-dinner siesta before
their guests of the evening arrived a habit, apparently, hard to
break! And Sickles, arriving hotfoot, found his anxiously awaited
news greeted with a little chorus of sedate snores!

The subsequent elections turned thumbs down on a monarchy;
and die Third Republic was established to endure sixty-eight years
. . . and perchance longer!

But if one of his pet schemes had perished, the General had good

Holiday 261

reason to be cheered by the fruition of the other. When, on the last
day of December 187435 the result of a bloodless coup d'etat led
by Canovas, the Duke de Serbo, and General Campos Alfonso, then
seventeen, had been called to the throne, he immediately had given
promise of fulfilling the hopes of a people wearied by political chaos.
Under the tutelage of the wise old Canovas, his first speech from
the throne had begun with the pronouncement, "Senores, I would
wish to be known as Spain's first Republican." And his first action
after the coronation had been to entrain for the front. There, in a
stiff engagement with the still-recalcitrant Carlos rebels, he had
missed death by the bullet that killed the aide at his side. Thereafter
he had shown himself a good listener in council, a quick student of
affairs. Seriously bent to acquit himself constitutionally and well-
after tie patient British fashion of "progress by compromise" he
provided Spain, until his early death eleven years later, with precisely
the national focus she needed.

In the interval between Alfonso's coronation, Caroline's departure
early in '75, and the final establishment of the Republic in '77, the
General and Isabella had enjoyed to the full, and always together,
the vivid and varied life of contemporary Paris. There was the
Opera on Mondays, the Comdie Frangaise on Tuesdays, the races
and hunts at Chantilly; and in the famous salons such as those held
by Madame Alphonse Daudet, the Comtesse Brissac, Princess Ma-
thilde, Madame Aubernon, and Judith Gautier they met most of
the eminent of the day in politics, art, and letters. It was a period
rich with striking personalities. And at one salon or another might
be found among many later to achieve fame Gambetta, the fiery
leader of the Commune, and last to admit French defeat; Louis
Blanc, the economist of the Revolution; Ivan Turgenyev, the exiled
Russian novelist; Louis Ernest Meissonier, painter of French battle
scenes; Ernest Renan whose Life of Christ had scandalized the
pious; Guy de Maupassant, twenty-seven and already famous;
Charles Frangois Gounod, whose Faust had long since proclaimed
him a composer of the first rank; Echegaray, the brilliant Spanish
dramatist; Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, limning his spirituelle figures
auraed in light; Rosa Bonheur, patient anatomist, and supreme painter
of nobly muscled horses; not to forget Alphonse Daudet and the
apostolic Victor Hugo. For Sickles, with his aptitude for quick,

262 Dan Sickles

discerning friendship, his keen feeling for the world of culture born
in Da Ponte days, it was a rich interlude soon ended.

Suddenly the Cortes, at the urgent request of Alfonso, passed an
act repealing the decree of exile against the Queen and permitting
her return to Spain as a private citizen. For Isabella it mean reunion
and farewell. Tumultuous joy and deep sadness. But knowing well
her passionate desire to be with her monarch son, the General had
not the heart to withhold her. Nor could he return to Madrid. The
hour for parting had struck.

At the same time the General's mother, long invalided and under
special care at a Parisian sanitarium, died perplexed to the last by
her strange but always devoted son.

At a stroke Paris, for the '"Yankee King of Spain," had become
gray and empty empty as his purse looted by four years of lavish
expenditure. New York called. Soberly he packed his bags. Holiday
was done.

PART SIX: LONG SUNDOWN

CHAPTER XXXIII

"Tenting Tonight"

MEN OF ACTION have enjoyed so prolonged and useful a sun-
down as the General. When he returned to New York to all
appearance a man in his prime he was nearly sixty years of age.
One life the bold, varied, dramatic, strenuously expended for state
and country ky behind him. But now a new life lay ahead. Again
k was one of public service. But whereas the first had been official,
rewarded, motivated by personal ambition, the second wholly dif-
ferent in its even quietude was to be honorary, unrequited, moti-
vated only by patriotism and broad benevolence. The change was
abrupt. Scarcely had he installed himself in his substantial old mansion
and resumed his practice of law when, aroused by the sight of be-
medaled beggars on the streets, he was organizing a campaign for
the establishment of a commodious State Soldiers' Home. The com-
pletion of that project proved the birth of his new career. Himself
a crippled, if by no means disabled, veteran, his eyes were lifted to
the peak he had reached where the cannon thundered and the
cavalry threshed by and, the decision made, the command belched
from his guts meant life or death to thousands of men and the fate
of the Union. That absent leg would not let him forget it or the men
who had fought and fallen at his side. Gradually, and with increasing
urgency, those men, living or dead, absorbed his thought. And to aid
the one, commemorate the other, became the new goal of his life.
Thenceforth he threw himself into every enterprise in behalf of

263

264 Dan Sickles

the forgotten wounded. Irked by the meager pensions allotted them,
he turned pertinacious lobbyist for more liberal allowances. And
while waiting for legislative action, his house and pocketbook stood
open to every needy son of battle that sought his help. Upon his
father's death a handsome inheritance freed him to expand his activi-
ties from succoring the neglected living to honoring the neglected
dead. As a result of his efforts the New York legislature in 1886
passed an act creating the New York Monuments Commission for
the Battlefield of Gettysburg, appointing him its honorary chairman
assisted by Generals Slocum, Carr, Richardson, and Porter as fellow
commissioners. This marked the beginning of the task that was to
engross him for the next quarter of a century that of raising appro-
priate and correctly placed monuments to all the New York regi-
ments, batteries, and ranking commanders who had shared with him
his own Great Moment. It was an undertaking arduous and complex.
And, as its inspiration and director, the greater part of the work
involved in it fell, with ready acceptance, upon his own shoulders.
His first step was to plan an all-inclusive monument dominating the
cemetery where lay die sons of the Empire State one third of those
who fell in the battle! beneath their drab markers. His next was to
seek and secure a term in Congress that he might rescue the field of
Gettysburg from vandals and souvenir hunters and convert it into a
national Memorial Park under federal care and supervision. Mean-
while there were annual appropriations to be secured from the legis-
lature; an elaborate detailed map of the three-day battle to be
charted; surveyors, engineers, sculptors, f oundiymen to be selected,
and their work vigilantly supervised and co-ordinated to the end
that each path and plot and monument might contribute to a long-
range artistic whole. And as the statues, monoliths, and cupolas
sprouted upon the field recording in bronze and granite hieroglyphs
the otherwise unstoried dead there followed their dedication on each
Fourth of July. No mere glorification of Union victory, these. From
the first the Confederate survivors of the battle were invited to par-
ticipate in them as honored guests. Thus began the historic Gettys-
burg reunions of Blue and Gray, signalizing, as could nothing else,
the healing of old animosities, the closing of the Chasm. And again
on the chairman fell the burden of organization required for trans-
porting, feeding, tenting scores of thousands of veterans.
Creative planning, constant conference, endless detail daily, un-

"Tenting Tonight" 265

remittingly, the General gave them all his energies. To those
untouched by the national puke it may have seemed an activity pale
beside the drama of politics, diplomacy, war. But to frim it glowed
as the worthy completion of his life's ambit. Soon, one might say, he
came to live from one dedicatory reunion to the next, watching his
work grow. On these, his great days, his speeches, recapturing the
spirit and significance of the struggle, always deeply stirred his ever
thinning audience of aging men. Nor did the old eloquent clarity,
intuitive touch fail with the years. His last speech, delivered at the
age of ninety, able as any, closed with the most memorable perora-
tion of his career:

It is sometimes said that it is not wise to perpetuate the memories of
civil war and such was the Roman maxim. But our Gvil War was not
a mere conspiracy against a ruler; it was not the plot of some militarist
to oust a rival from power; it was no pronunciamento. The conflict that
raged from 1861 to 1865 was a war of institutions and systems and
politics. It was a revolution tanking in importance with the French
Revolution of the eighteenth century, and with the English Revolution
of the seventeenth century, and universal in its beneficent influence upon
the destinies of this country, and ineffaceable in the footprints it left
upon the path of our national progress. For all of its, the Blue and the
Gray, it 'was ~omr heroic age. The memories of such a war are as in-
destructible as our civilization. The names of Lincoln and Lee and Grant
and Jackson never can be blotted from our annals. The valor and forti-
tude and achievements of both armies, never surpassed in any age, de-
mand a record in American history. And now that time and thought;
common sense and common interests have softened all the animosities of
war, we may bury them forever, while we cherish and perpetuate as
Americans the immortal heritage of honor belonging to a Republic that
became imperishable 'when it became free.

Throughout these years, the General moved among a cloud of
friends. Upon his departure for Spain a large group of the outstand-
ing men of New York had given him a farewell rally no political
or merely courtesy affair* but a spontaneous expression of regard for
the man himself. Many of these old friends were still around him,
and as one by one they dropped away, unable to compete with his
own tenacity of life, their places in his circle were filled by the new
generation of leadership. President McKinley delighted in him, sought
his counsel especially during tie crisis of the Spanish-American

266 Dan Sickles

War and, at his request, appointed his son, young Stanton, attache
to the United States Legation at Brussels. Theodore Roosevelt held
him a man after his own heart. Sulzer fought unsuccessfully to gain
him promotion to the rank of lieutenant general. Mark Twain, his
neighbor for a while, often came to sit by his fire, twitch quizzical
eyebrows at him to note kter in his diary, "It is my guess that if
the General had to lose a leg, he'd rather lose the one he has than the
one he hasn't!" Elihu Root, Mark Hanna were his political cronies.
With George Francis Train and Charles D. Warner he loved to sit
sunning himself on a bench in Washington Square, arguing the case
of classic English against the vogue for American folk speech. Roland
Hinton Perry kter to be ranked an Old Master painted his portrait.
The Vanderbilts, from year to year, reserved a chair for him in their
box at the opera. Even the reactionary press, the former Copperheads,
renegade Democrats, Plunderbund Republicans who once virulently
attacked him at every disputed point in his career his efforts to raise
United States Volunteers, his saving change of front at Gettysburg,
his welfare measures for the poor whites and Negroes during his
military governorship of the Carolinas, his vigorous diplomacy as
minister to Spain forgot their past asperity toward him. His daily
kte afternoon walk up the Fifth Avenue he loved was a promenade
of greetings as courteously exchanged with newsy and bootblack as
with the passing financier, kdy of fashion. And in course of time he
who had been known to Paris as the "Yankee King of Spain" came
to be known to all New York simply as "the General" an institu-
tion, the living reminder of a past few remembered save as children.
But amid all this true to his favorite quotation (from "The Lady
of Lyons"), "It is astonishing how I like a man after I've fought
with him!" the friend he counted dearest was the man he once had
battled most fiercely that mystical, magnanimous, scientific man of
war, Longstreet. Nothing at the time could have so symbolized the
reunion of North and South, the spirit of chivalry pervading the
conflict itself, as the yirtual adoration of these two old opposing
commanders for each other. It was to Sickles that Longstreet, im-
poverished and broken in health, owed his timely appointment as
commissioner of railroads. And if anything could exceed the grace
of Longstreet's defense of Sickles's action at Gettysburg, it was
Sickles's defense of Longstreet's action on the same occasion. Invited

"Tenting Tonight" 267

to attend the dedication of General Slocum's monument, the venera-
ble Confederate wrote:

MY DEAR GENERAL SICKLES:

My plan and desire was to meet you at Gettysburg. . . , But today
I find myself in no condition to keep the promise made you for I am
unable to stand more than a minute or two at a dine. Please express my-
sincere regrets to the noble Army of the Potomac, and accept them
especially for yourself.

On that field you made a mark that will pkce you prominently before
the world as one of the leading figures of the most important batde of
the Civil War. As a Northern veteran once remarked to me, "General
Sickles can well afford to leave a leg on that field."

I believe that k is now conceded that the advanced position at the
Peach Orchard, taken by your corps and under your orders, saved that
battlefield to the Union cause. It was the sorest and saddest reflection of
my life for many years; but today I can say with sincerest emotion that
it was and is the best that could have come to us all, North and South,
and I hope that the Nation, reunited, may always enjoy the honor and
glory brought to it by that grand action.

Always yours sincerely,
JAMES LONGSTREET*

One likes to think of these two in their sturdy, gnarled seventies
as contemporaries reported them the guests of honor at a banquet
in Charleston, the deaf Longstreet leaning on the shoulder of the
crippled Sickles the better to hear his after-dinner speech, and then
himself singing in good voice too! "The Star-Spangled Banner"
... or after a St. Patrick's Day celebration at Atlanta, both some-
what mellowed, alternately seeing each other home, Longstreet in-
sisting at the door of his hotel, "Sickles, you're a cripple, and I can't
let you be on these dark streets alone. I'll go back with you!" and
Sickles insisting at the door of his hotel, "Old fellow, you're deaf,
and you might get run over by a hack. I'll go back with you!" and,
with nips of Irish at each end to sustain them, weaving arm in arm
their gossiping way along rickety board sidewalks ... or climbing
Round Top together, the less active Longstreet dependent on his
friend's one-legged aid, chuckling, "Yes suh you ought to help me
up now, seeing the way you kept me from getting up here in '63!"
And when in 1904, just after Longstreet died, Helen, his young
'Published in Lee and Longstreet at Higb Tide, by Helen D. Longstreet.

268 Dm Sickles

wife a vivacious southern schoolgirl when she married him in i Spy-
completed her Lee and Longstreet at High Tide in answer to the
belated attacks leveled against him on the score of dilatory response
to Lee's orders at Gettysburg, Sickles came to her aid; and in a
masterful introduction, written as one "with personal knowledge
of the battle," completely annihilated the critics. In the course of
it he paid noble tribute to the friend who "in folding up forever
the Confederate flag he had followed with such supreme devotion,
and thenceforth saluting the Stars and Stripes with unfaltering
homage, had set an example that was the rainbow of reconciliation
between the North and South." Never before in military history had
the vanquished so defended the victor, the victor the vanquished.

Surrounded by friends, yet lonely for his family, the General in
1900 was greatly heartened by the visit of his son and daughter last
seen only as tiny children. Taking a suite for them at the Waldorf,
and placing a carriage at their disposal, he lavished upon them a
fatherly if belated affection. His pride in them was as obvious as it
was poignant. In the quarter century past, Stanton, a tall, disdainful
fellow, and the youngest attache in diplomacy, had married the
Comtesse Ysabel Napoleon Magne, daughter of the prominent
French banker, Leonard Brocheton, and godchild of Queen Isabella.
And Eda, engaging as she was lovely, wi th much of the Van Sicklen
energy of spirit that later was to bring her death as a nurse at the
front during World War I had become the wife of the British
diplomat, the Hon. Dayrell Crackanthorpe. For the aging builder of
monuments, it was the last taste of family joys.

It had happened that, soon after his return to New York, the
General had found in Miss Eleanor Earle Wilmerding a middle-aged
spinster of respectable family a highly competent housekeeper. Ap-
preciating her fully, he had paid her liberally, treated her with marked
consideration. And as, with the passing decades, he became more and
more dependent upon her, she in turn had become with an ever in-
creasing jealous possessiveness more and more devoted to him. That
the General was a great trial to his feminine manager there can be no
doubt. If the emphasis of his life had changed, his old amorousness
had not! But while his many, varied and sometimes scandalous-
affairs chagrined and shocked her, she tartly resented any criticism
of him on the part of others. Her chief concern for him, as the years
went by, was on the score of his finances. As gradually she was com-

"Tentmg Tonight" 269

pelled to assume some supervision of his accounts, her thrifty good
sense was horrified by his mounting extravagance. Yet she had not
the heart to rebuke or deny him.

Generous, of course, the General always had been; but in his last
years generosity turned to wild largesse. Needy sycophants pan-
handled him unmercifully. To his door every Sunday gathered a
throng of veterans to receive his bounty usually a five-dollar gold
piece to each! And as his lifelong orderliness and acumen in financial
matters began to deseit him, and his investments turned awry, his
always abundant liberality toward his mistresses took on an oriental
tinge.. Nothing they could ask of him was refused. His bills for the
feminine were enormous the florists', the vintners', the couturiers'.
And the great bureau in his bedroom was stuffed with exotic per-
fumesy intriguing jewelry culled here and there reckless of cost-
even imported silk hosiery, embroidered Parisian lingerie that he
never might find himself, at a critical moment, lacking some graceful
gift of allure for the coy, or of gallantry to the willingly seduced.
And the Princess Parlaghy the painter of his last portrait, and his
own last infatuation had but whimsically to express a passing wish
for a lion cub, to find herself promptly presented at a cost of some
thousand dollars with a litter of six!

Inevitably came the crash. At the age of ninety-two, almost blind,
mentally failing, confined to a wheel chair, he was charged with
defalcation in the funds of his own cherished Monument Commis-
sion and arrested by his successor in the office he once briefly had
held-the sheriff of New York!

Miss Wilmerding fought the officers, screamed, "It's a lie!" The
sheriff apologized. Friends followed him to jail, instantly bailed him
out. On every corner the newsies were shouting, "The General ar-
rested! General Sickles goes to jail!" And overnight from North and
South alike came a burst of protest, a shower of wires, bales of letters,
sizzling with indignation, proffering assistance. Helen Longstreet
followed a telegram of passionate concern with an eloquent letter to
the press appealing for suspended judgment, public generosity to
him who had been so unfailingly generous. An unknown admirer, a
Mr. William Dodge, of Ohio, wrote offering to take the General's
note for the entire deficit some twenty-five thousand dollars. Con-
tributions from posts, Blue and Gray, poured in. And what gave a
touch of pathetic drama to the incident Caroline, after thirty-seven

270 Dm Sickles

years of absence, silence, hearing of her husband's difficulties, arrived
by the earliest boat in New York, bringing her rich heirloom jewelry
to offer in pawn for the payment of the default. Somehow, from a
hundred sources, in a torrent of public sympathy and endorsement,
the General's confused misplacement of funds was made good. Be-
wildered, he could only understand that once more he was vindicated
and by a world of friends!

CHAPTER XXXIV

Taps Muted

, wearing an eyeshade, the General came to his last
reunion in a wheel chair pushed by Frazier Moseley, his old Negro
valet, and attended by the ever faithful Miss Wilmerding. He made
no speech, but from the porch of the Rogers house, not pistol shot
from the spot where shrapnel had shattered his leg exactly fifty years
before, he watched the events of the three-day celebration. The
proprietor of the Gettysburg Hotel had reserved quarters for him
and had installed a special elevator for his convenience. But stub-
bornly the old General insisted on bunking with the boys," and
spent his nights on a cot in a tent occupied by "Joe" Twichell,
formerly the chaplain of the Excelsior Brigade, and now the Rev-
erend Joseph Twichell the most popular spiritual parent Yale
had ever had. A man of great love, much beloved, "Joe" as every-
one, even the undergrads, called him had been dose beside the Gen-
eral in every engagement, had held him in his arms when wounded,
had given him, through fifty-two years, an adoration fervent and
unfailing. For both it was the last reunion; and, even in their waning
strength, they talked, rather than slept, the nights away.

At the end of the third day when Woodrow Wilson had spoken
and departed, and the survivors of Hckett's Brigade, tottering, stum-

GENERAL SICKLES AT THE AGE OF NINETY

GENERAL SICKLES WITH HIS STAFF
AT GETTYSBURG IN 1909

Taps Muted 271

bling, but determined still, had made a ghostly rehearsal of their
historic charge across the upland to embrace die waiting Blues at
the wall, and the ceremonies had closeda troop of white-bearded
Grays stormed the steps of the Rogers house and, lifting the General
on their shoulders, carried him out to receive the last salutes of tie
Confederate detachments trooping homeward. As they redeposited
him, with farewell handshakes all around, he whispered to Helen
Longstreet then a correspondent for the Southern press, hovering
near all day, "How Jim would have loved all this!" Then, turning
away to the sundown, "Never mind, old fellow, soon 111 be with
you where conflicts cease and friendship is eternal!"

And when, at length, the field was empty, the General had him-
self wheeled about awhile, wistful for a last look at his beloved
monuments the lordly Empire State monolith with its surmounting
figure of Victory; the cupola of the Excelsior Brigade memorial, the
bold statues of Greene and Slocum, Hancock and Reynolds, and,
circling about them, the memorials of the eighty-five New York
regiments and batteries, many of them under his own command, that
had served and suffered with him that day could it be half a century
ago? Suddenly Twichell, walking beside him, exclaimed, "Dan, I
never realized it before, but in all this there's no monument to you,
only that plaque on the pediment of the state shaft!" With the fleet-
ing sweetness that was as much a part of him as his crusty dynamism
and determination, the General smiled up at him, "Never mind, Joe-
all this is monument enough, isn't it?"

Six months later, fatally stricken, Miss Wilmerding ceased from
shepherding her fiercely loved but unruly charge. In the interval she
had been the cause of a new breach between the General and his wife.
Dismayed and disgusted at firming her husband apparently in the
clutches of his housekeeper, Caroline had endeavored to assume com-
mand of the household. But the woman who had served the General
with all devotion for thirty years was in no mind to stand aside
before this deathbed appearance of a haughty absentee wife much
concerned, apparently, with matters of inheritance. Imperiously
Caroline had demanded Miss Wilmerding's dismissal With a last
flash of his old gusty anger, the General had refused. And Caroline,
barred from the house, had withdrawn to her suite at the St. Regis
Hotel there to await the obviously imminent end. Stanton, bitterly
critical of his father, had hastened overseas to reinforce his mother's

272 Dan Sickles

claims- And with one stroke of the old paw, the General had laid
him out dismissing him with battlefield peremptoriness and cutting
his share in a mythical inheritance to one dollar!

But now, at last, the doors were unbarred. Silently Caroline as-
sumed charge of die house and its patient. The General's heroic
vitality was ebbing fast. In his vast loneliness often he called for his
young grandson and namesake, Daniel Edgar. Only once, for a few
days, had he met him-when in 1910 Stanton had brought him on a
brief visit to New York. And the old General, finding this young
Daniel a slender, breedy boy full of high spirits, spontaneous affec-
tion, had loved him on sight. Now he wrote him a note of remem-
brance, tinged alike with pathos and prophecy :

My dear Dan, your old grandpa is very ill; he would like to see you
once more. I see big clouds in Europe. The Emperor Wilhelm n is a
litde Bismarck. I predict war, a big war in tie near future, but I will
not see it. Please ask your mother to send you over to see me.

It was April 1914. Prescient to the end!

Burglars long ago had rifled his safe, stolen his medals, and more
important his memoirs. Apart from that litde grandson overseas,
nothing was left to him now but this foreclosed house, this stranger-
wife, stranger-soncold pity in the eyes of the one, cold scorn in
the eyes of die other. Ghosts surrounded him ... the fainting cloud
of friends ... the lost comrades of the battlefield . . . the stream-
ing covey of women he had kissed and never known . . . Isabella's
jolly face grown oddly dim ... the sudden vivid image of her
whose name had not crossed his lips since that night of mortal pain
fifty-five years ago.

A vast sense of emptiness seized him, He who had never lost had
he lost everything? Had he fought a bootless fight? But had he? A
trembling hand sought the sheaf of embossed parchments he now
kept dose at his side. He could not read them, but he knew what
they said "Colonel . . . Brigadier General . . . Major General . , .
Envoy and Minister Plenipotentiary . . . Congressional Medal of
Honor . . . Grand Croix de la Legion d'Honneur."

The old hand gripped the parchments convulsively, went rigid.
The General, unanswered, had ceased to care.

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Slocum and His Men, N. Y. Monuments Commission. (J. B. Lyon, 1904)
Soldiers National Cemetery Gettysburg. (Singerly & Myers, 1864)
Trinity Church Report

Paris, Comte de, HISTORY OF THE CIVIL WAR, 3 vols. (Porter & Coates,

1888)

Partridge, Bellamy, COUNTRY DOCTOR. (McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1939)
Partridge, Bellamy, BIG FAMILY. (McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1941)
Poore, Ben: Perley, PERLEY'S REMINISCENCES, 2 vols, (Hubbard Bros.,

Philadelphia, 1886)
Proctor, Lucien B., LIVES OF EMINENT LAWYERS OF NEW YORK, 2 vols.

(S. S. Peloulet & Co., 1882)
Reynolds, John S., RECONSTRUCTION IN SOUTH CAROLINA, 1865-1877.

(Columbia, S. G, 1905)
Rusling, James Fowler, LINCOLN AND SICKLES. (Third Army Corps Re-

union, 1910)

Sandburg, Carl, ABRAHAM LINCOLN, 4 vols. (Harcourt Brace, 1939)
Sandburg, Carl, MARY LINCOLN, WIFE AND WIDOW. (Harcourt Brace,

Seymour, A. B., SEYMOUR'S REMINISCENCES. (A. B. Seymour, c. 1893)
Sprenger, George F,, HISTORY OF THE I22ND REGIMENT, vol. i. (New

Era Steam Boat Printers, 1885)
Stine, J. H., THE HISTORY OF THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC. ( J. B. Rodgers

Printing Co., 1892)
Stoltz, Charles, THE TRAGIC CAREER OF MARY TODD LINCOLN. (Round

Table, 1931)

Taine, H., NOTES* ON PARIS. (John F. Trow & Sons, 1875)
Tarbell, Ida M., LIFE OF LINCOLN, 2 vols. (Mcdure, Philips, 1900)
Taylor, E. G., GOUVERNEUR KEMBLE WARREN. (Houghton Mifflin, 1932)
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Wells, 1925)
Vandeidice, J. M., GETTYSBURG THEN AND Now. (G. W. Dillingham,

1897)

Washington, John K, THEY KNEW LINCOLN. (E. P. Dutton & Co., 1942)
Werner, M. R., TAMMANY HALL. (Doubleday, Doran & Co., 1928)
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Periodicals and Newspapers
Gode/s Lady's Book, 1850-54
Harper's Magazine, 1859

Harper's Pictorial History of the Great Rebellion, Nos. 16, 18, 20, 22, 35
New York Herald, 1859, 1861-64, 1867, 1887
New York Times, 1859, 1900, 1914

276 Bibliography

New York Tribune, 1867, l8 9 Z 94 J 9 10
Washington Daily Globe, 1859-63
Washington Star, 1865-67

Manuscripts
"Leaves from My Diary," Daniel E. Sickles in The Journal of the Military

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Daniel E. Sickles Papers, Manuscripts in N.Y. Public Library
Diary and Archives of Daniel E. Sickles PRIVATE SOURCE

Index

Index

Alfonso XII, King of Spain, 235, 236,
238-39, 240-41, 242, 243, 245, 250 ,251,
257,261,262

Amadeo, King of Spain, 229, 231-32,
235-36, 251

Anderson, Major Robert, 147-48

Astor Place, New York, riot, 58

Bagioli, Signer and Signora, 12, 24-25,

116, 121

'Barnburners," 26, 28
Bismarck, Otto von, 231, 238, 259
Slack Warrior, (SS.) affair, 44^-49
Brady, James T., 112, 116, 128-30
Brooks, Preston, 59
Brown, John, 60, 138
Buchanan, President James, 28, 33, 37-

38, 40, 41, 46, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 61, 62,

66, 69, 71, 93, 98, 117, 147, i4*-5; *a<*

Mrs. Sickles, 53-55
Buder, Attorney-General Benjamin F.,

13

Butterworth, Samuel F., 109, in, 112,
126

Cameron, Secretary Simon, 156
Capitalism, 215
Carlisle, J.M^ 122
Central Park, New York, 28
Chanceflorsville, Battle of, 173-87
Civil. War, coming of, 138-42-, begin-
nings of, 146-66
Colombia, 211, 212*14

Colonel Lloyd Aspmwatt (S&); 232-33
Conegliano, Emmanuel (Lorenzo da

Ponte), 10
Crackanthorpe, Mrs. DayreL See

Sickles, Eda

Crawford, Judge, 120, 125, 126, 130
Creagh, QroBne. See Sickles, Mrs.

Daniel E. (second)
Creagh, Marquise, 234
Cuba, 44-^49, 224, 226-30, 231, 233, 252-56

Da Ponte, Charles, 10-14

Da Ponte, Emmanuel, 13

Da Ponte, Lorenzo (Emmanuel Coneg-
liano), 10

Da Ponte, Maria, 12

Da Ponte, Teresa. See Sickles, Mrs*
Daniel E. (first)

Dougherty, Daniel, 148

Douglas, Stephen A^ 62

Dred Scott case, 60

England, Victorian, 30-33
Erie Railroad, 246-50
Everett, Secretary Edward, 46, 48
Excelsior Brigade, 154-64

Filibusters, 251

Fish, Secretary Hamilton, 228, 252-56

Flanders, 34 .

Forrest, Edwin, and Mtacready, 58

Fort Sumter, 148^49, 151-52

France, politics, 258-60

277

2 7 B

Frances-Prussian War, 230-31
Fredericksburg, Battle of, 270-71
Fremont, General John G, 62

Index

Literature in the fifties, 60-61
London, 36-38

Longstreet, General James, friendship
with Sickles, 266-0*8

Gettysburg, Battle of, 187-202; semi-
centennial J 191 3), 270-71 "Machine," political, 6-8

164

MacMahon, Marshal, 258, 259, 260

j o ~ "- i - r ir.La^.ii'jMw.ivM-i, iTiaj-aiiAi, .30, *3y, 4UU

Glens Falls, New York, Messenger, 9, 10 Macready, William Charles, and For-

f"iriil<4 T*TT * A& PA ._ _e\

Gould, Jay, 246-50

Graham, John, 116, 122

Grant, General Ulysses S., 205-06, 207,

216, 219, 223-24, 228, 260
Great Britain, cabinet, 37
Gwin fancy-dress ball, 82-83

Harrison, President William Henry, 16

Hart, Manny, 102

Haskin, John B., 87, 89-90

Helper, Hinton Rowan, The Impending

Crisis, 143

Hooker, General Joseph, 171-87
'Hunkers," 26, 28

Impending Crisis, The, by Hinton

Rowan Helper, 143
Isabella, Queen of Spain, 47-49, 226, 227,

234* *35-37i 238^45, 251, 257, 259, 261-

62,268

rest, 58
Marcy, Governor William L., 22, 46, 48,

62

Meade, General George Gordon, 189
Mexico, 21 i-z 2
Millennium, coming of, and William

Miller, 17

Monroe Doctrine, 211
Morgan, Governor Edwin D., 153, 154,

160-63

Negroes, Lincoln settlement plan, 212-14
New York Gty, mayoralty contest, 61

Ostend Manifesto, 48, 226, 228
Ould, Robert, 121

Panama Canal, 211

Paris, Comte de, 165, 238, 239, 240, 241,
258, 259

Jackson, General "Stonewall," 176-87: Pari? celebrities in the seventies, 261

death, 1 83-84 Parliament, British, 36-37

Jenkyns, the Honorable Alice, 34 Peabody, George, 42^4

~ " - - Pierce, President FranJdin, 27, 28, 42, 43,

45,46,48,62,227
"Plunderbund," 215
Key, Philip Barton, 73-77, 82-113; first Poem on Sickles-Key case, by C H.

Political "machine," 6-8

Johnson, President Andrew, 216-19,
220-22

-f 1 /J //, V*. p ***,

with Mrs. Sickles, 76; shoot-

Lane, Harriet, 50, 53-54, 69, 79
Lee, General Robert R, 175, 188
Letter of warning to Sickles in Key

affair, 100

Luicoln, Abraham, 144, 147, 150-51, 153-
56, 159, 163, 166-67, 165^-70, 174, 188,
212-14; first meeting with Sickles,
150-51; first inauguration, 151; visit to
SicMes after Gettysburg, 203-06
Lincoln, Mrs. Abraham, 170, 213-14
Lincoln, Robert T., 210

Polk, President James K, 45

Reconstruction era, 216-24
w bill, 63

r, Octavia M., 88-89, JoS, 127
James Fowler, Lincoln and
203-06

Scott, Dred, case, 6b
Secession, 142-46

Seward, Secretary William R, 209, 210-
12, 213

Lincoln and Sickles, by James Fowler Sickles, General Daniel Edgar, adniit-
Ruslmg, 203-06 tance to bar, 13; election to Assem-

Index

279

bly, 20; as lawyer, politician, and
speaker, 21-23; m National Guard, 23;
as a lover, 23-24; first marriage, 26;
nomination for mayoralty; City Cor-
poration Counsel, 28; "Father of Cen-
tral Park," 28; appointment as First
Secretary of Legation in London, 28,
30-49; heredity, and self-sufficiency,
34-35; in uniform in London, 39-^42;
at English celebration of July Fourth,
42-44; and the Cuban question, 46-
49; and Queen Isabella, 47-48 (see also
Isabella, Queen of Spain) ; amours, 52-
57; relations with wife, 55-57; election
to State Senate; in the Senate; elec-
tion to Congress, 62-66; re-election,
93; shooting of Key, 112; trial and
acquittal, 120-32; reconciliation with
wife, and letter to die press, 136-37;
speeches on the Union, 140-^42, 144-
46; part in saving Fort Sumter, 148-
50; speech to Lincoln Fellowship
(1910), 148, 149, 155, 156; first meet-
ing with Lincoln, 150-51; plan for
recruiting Army, 155-56; resignation
from Congress; enlistment as private,
raising of Excelsior Brigade, 152-63;
commission as colonel, 157; brigadier
general and major general, 162, 164,
172; speech before Society of the
Army of the Potomac, 163, 164-66;
at Chancellorsville, 173-87; at Gettys-
burg, 189; loss of leg, 190-202; visit
from Lincoln, 203-06; first meeting
with Grant, 207-08; missions to
Southern ports, and to Colombia, 207-
09; mission to Panama, 209-10; Order
Number Ten, 218-20; as commander
of the Department of the Carolinas,
216-22; dismissal by Johnson, 222;
ovation in New York, 223; military
promotion, 223; appointment as Min-
ister to Spain, 223-24; Minister, 226-
44; interviews with Thiers and Bis-
marck, 237; accorded the Grand Cross
of the Legion of Honor, 237-39; in
Paris, 240-41; second marriage, 242-
46; finances, 246, 247-50; and Jay
Gould, 246^50; return to Madrid, 250;
resignation as Minister, 252-56; move
to Paris, 256; relations with Queen

Isabella, 257; break with wife, 258;
return to New York, 263; interest in
veterans' welfare, 263; Gettysburg
Commission, 264; last speech, 265; life
in New York, 265-66; friendship with
Longstreet, 266-68; finances, 268, 269;
accused of defalcation, 270; at Gettys-
burg semi-centennial, 270-71; death,
272

Sickles, Mrs. Daniel E. (first; Teresa da
Ponte), 12, 13, 24-29, 36, 39, 49-55;
marriage, 26; and Buchanan, 53-55, 57;
relations with husband, 55-57; first
meeting with Key, 76; as Washington
hostess, 77-81; relations with Key, 88-
89; confession, 105-08; reconciliation
with husband; death and funeral, 224
Sickles, Mrs. Daniel E. (second; Caro-
line Creagh), 234, 236-37, 242-48, 250,
270^72; marriage, 242-46; break with
husband, 257-58

Sickles, Daniel Edgar (grandson), 272
Sickles, Eda (Mrs. Dayrell Crackan-

thorpe), 251, 268
Sickles, George Garrett, 8, 10, n, 23,

93, 116, 158, 247, 264
Sickles, Mrs. George Garrett, 233-34
Sickles, George Stanton, 251, 268, 271-72
Sickles, Laura, 29, 39, 96, 98, 102, 103,

104, 117-18, 134, 225, 234, 246, 250-51
Sickles, Stanton. See Sickles, George

Stanton

Slavery, 68; views of Sickles on, 140
Society women, English, 38-39
Spain, 226-44, 251. (See also Alfonso

XII; Isabella, Queen)
Stanton, Secretary Edwin M^ 116, 122,

127-28

Stebbins, Colonel Henry G., 23
Sumner, Senator Charles, 59

Tammany Hall, 8, 15, 18-20, 26-29, 61,

91, 152
Thiers, Louis Adolphe, 237-38, 259,

260
Thomas, General and Mrs. John A~, 54,

79

Trinity Church, New York, 63-66
Tweed, William M., 7
Tyler, President John, 149, 150

280 Index

United States Volunteers, 155-57 Washington, District of Columbia, in

the fifties, 67-73; society, 79

Van Buren, President Martin, 16 Webb, C H., poem on the Sickles-Key

Van Sicklens, the, 34-35 ?***> J 33-34.

Vicksburg, Batde of, 205-06 Webster, Daniel, 13

Victoriaiusm, 30-31 Wikoff, Henry, 213

Virginhis <SS.) affair, 252-56 Wilmerding, Eleanor Earle, 268-69, 270,

Volunteers, United States, 155-57 271 ,. ,

Vosburgh, Colonel, 152-53 Women, society, English, 38-39

Wood, Mayor Fernando, 63

Walker, Robert J^ 1 13 Wooldridge, George B^ 102, 103-04,

Washington, George, 8 109, 127