Sex, Murder and the Trial
By Chris DeRose
The shots heard round the country were fired by Congressman Daniel E. Sickles February 27, 1859, in Lafayette Square, across the street from the White House. Who was his target? Philip Barton Key, son of Francis Scott Key (the author of the Star Spangled Banner), and his wife’s lover. Key and Teresa Sickles had been having a year-long love affair in a rented house just a few blocks from the Sickles’ home. Dan Sickles killed Barton Key, and was soon after taken to jail and put on trial for the murder. It was the trial of the century, and thanks to the telegraph wires spanning the country the scandalous news of the trial was sent around the country and across the Atlantic Ocean in nearly real time. Sickles became a household name overnight.
Chris DeRose, author of “Star Spangled Scandal: Sex, Murder and the Trial that Changed America,” explores the murder, the trial and the verdict in spectacular detail in a narrative that moves back and forth through time during the first half of the book, and then day by day through the through jury selection to the verdict. The book is packed with first hand accounts of the events that led up to the death of Key, and its author frequently gives word for word testimony from the trial transcript.
People who make their appearance in “Star Spangled Scandal” make up a who is who list of antebellum Washington, D.C. society, from President James Buchanan, Secretary of State Jeremiah Black, socialite Virginia Clay, wife of Senator Clement C. Clay (who would later become a Confederate States Senator from Alabama), Senator Jefferson Davis (soon to be President of the Confederate States), Senator Stephen A. Douglas, socialite Rose O’Neal Greenhow (who would be a Confederate Spy and who certainly played a role in the Confederate victory in the 1st Battle of Bull Run), Congressman John Haskin, and Robert Ould who succeeded Barton Key as United States Attorney for the District of Columbia and go on to serve as the Confederate agent of exchange for prisoners of war under the Dix–Hill Cartel.
James T. Brady and his partner John Graham headed up the Sickles defense and soon convinced Edwin M. Stanton, future Attorney General during the closing days of the Buchanan Administration and Abraham Lincoln’s 2nd Secretary of War, to join the team. Together they argued and for and won a verdict in favor of Sickles: not guilty by reason of temporary insanity. It was the first ever successful temporary insanity plea in American history.
In the last chapter of his book DeRose covers the legacy of “the unwritten law,” citing case by case examples of the use of the temporary insanity defense to justify the murders of those accused of killing the lovers of their spouses. Truly an eye opening chapter of American legal history.
Oddly, Sickles is more remembered more for what he did during the Civil War, specifically moving his troops out into The Wheatfield and getting his leg shot off on the 2nd day of the Battle of Gettysburg, rather than the murderer of Philip Barton Key. An interesting side note, the fence that encircled Lafayette Square on that fateful day of 1859 now forms part of the fencing in Gettysburg National Cemetery.
“Star Spangled Scandal” is a very well researched and well written in a very easily read narrative. I highly recommend it for anyone who is interested in Daniel Sickles, true crime stories, or the American Civil War in general.
ISBN 978-1621578055, Regnery History, © 2019, Hardcover, 320 pages, End Notes, & Index. $29.99. To purchase this book click HERE.
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