Star Spangled Scandal Read online

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Seeing the News

  Saturday, March 12, 1859

  * * *

  “Well, brother what do you think of this affair at Washington?”

  “Perfectly right. I would have done the same myself.”

  “The Same as which?”

  “Either.”

  “So would I.”

  —Fictional dialogue in the New York Picayune

  This was the story the illustrated newspapers were waiting for. Frank Leslie’s was only four years old; Harper’s only two. Several smaller and lesser imitators had entered the market, but the big two remained dominant. As the newest arrivals on the media scene, they were subject to criticism by the last wave of media innovators. The New York Times called them a “Prostitution of fine art.” Harper’s responded: “This is a newspaper, not a nursery tract or a child’s hymn-book . . . For us, our purpose is to present our readers with an illustrated account of the events of the day, be they what they may.” The technology did not yet exist to print photographs, but for the first time in history, readers could see detailed drawings of people and places alongside stories.

  They covered the substantive as well as the sensational. In Harper’s March 12 issue were headlines such as: “Love in a convent”; “Lion at Large on Board Ship” (a situation that had presumably resolved itself by the time of printing); and “A Bride Burned to Death,” alongside national and global politics. There were sketches of the closing scenes of congress, Bostonians engaged in the rare sport of ice skating, and Prince Frederick of Prussia presenting his baby to the royal household (Wilhelm II, Kaiser of Germany during World War I).

  They were not as nimble as the dailies: drawing, printing, and distribution meant their coverage of “one of the most awful tragedies that ever occurred in this country” took thirteen days to reach subscribers. But they needn’t have worried about waning interest. As Harper’s wrote: “The public mouth is still full of stories about the lamentable affair which took place at Washington on Sunday 27th February; and the public ear, it seems, can not be satisfied with details of the catastrophe.”

  The illustrated papers made good use of that time and their space to go further in depth than the newspapers. Harper’s presented a detailed biography of Daniel Sickles, the basis for all that followed to the present day. Under the headline “Drama of crime, retribution and death” appeared drawings of Sickles, Key, and Teresa, arrayed in a triangle with Teresa above and between. Readers could see different vantage points of Lafayette Square: the Sickles’s house, the Club House, the scene of the homicide. There was a detailed map of general area, including the White House, the cabinet departments, and their proximity to Sickles’s home and the crime scene.

  Frank Leslie, a British-born artist who worked for that country’s first illustrated magazine, had brought this new medium with him to the New World. He wrote: “Our presses have been going night and day without cessation.” By the time we’re done, “our edition will have far exceeded two hundred thousand copies,” and if they had printed 500,000, they would have sold them all. The illustrations, he argued, were better than “lifeless photographs.” They “are living sketches, with all the action of reality.”

  From an initial printing of 75,000 copies, Harper’s sold 120,000. Harper’s made the mistake of featuring reports on the end of Congress on its cover, while Leslie’s had a sketch of a crazed looking Sickles firing at a prostrate Key (Harper’s had a similar sketch, but it was further into the magazine). Harper’s would not repeat their mistake: the next week, Sickles was on the cover, alone in his cell, his hands clasped in prayer and his eyes heavenward, beseeching the almighty for deliverance.1

  Leslie’s touted “the only correct illustrations published; made from sketches by our special artist.” This is unlikely, as Harper’s hired Mathew Brady to take photographs from which drawings were made. On the day of the murder, Leslie’s artist had sketched Key’s vest at the Club House, complete with bullet holes. The steward of the Club House saw no problem with this.2

  One of the lesser illustrated publications, unable to get their own drawings or looking to save a few bucks, reused images of other people from previous issues. Opera singer Jenny Lind, “The Swedish Nightingale,” was used for Teresa. Alfred Bunn, the manager of London’s Drury Lane Theater, was passed off as Key. And in an ominous sign, “two criminals recently hanged” were substituted for Sickles and Butterworth.3

  The Congregationalist, a religious newspaper, wrote: “The pictorial journals appear to feel that their harvest time is now at Washington, and that they must put their Sickles in and reap. It is rather a mortifying commentary, however, on the state of the public taste, that there is such an appetite for portraits of the criminals whose doings are now ventilated at the seat of government, and for photographs of the scenes which they have disfigured.”4

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Another Sickles Affair

  * * *

  “The town talk is still of the Sickle and Key affair. Intelligent Washington, living in the hotels or resorting to them, has not yet sprung a new topic: and stupid Washington is of course agape . . . Never was a place [more] mad for scandal than Washington.”

  —The New-York Tribune

  The American public refused to accept it: after two weeks of non-stop coverage and no new developments, the newspapers might possibly have said all that there was to say on the Sickles matter. To satisfy their readers, some reported on similar killings. As one newspaper wrote, every other day it seemed you could find the headline: “Another Sickles affair.”

  There was Arthur Holden of Saratoga, who shot the seducer of his daughter. And a newspaper publisher in Karachi, who saw his wife taking a stroll with her paramour. He found his double barreled shotgun, and killed them both.1

  John Foster of Batavia, New York, had a live-in girlfriend who was still married to David Curry, who did not approve of this arrangement. Foster gathered two friends and assaulted Curry in public. Believing the matter settled, Foster was walking to work one day when Curry appeared, shooting him in the abdomen, killing him.2

  In Meriden, Connecticut, Orrin Prim was having an affair with John Williams’s wife and decided to taunt him about it. Williams, a sixty-seven-year-old man, described as “peaceable” and “a good citizen,” grabbed a butcher knife and ran it through Prim’s heart. “Public feeling in Meriden,” it was reported, “is much in favor of Williams.”3

  There was “A colored Sickles at Chicago.” Dr. Covey fired four pistol shots “at his beloved pastor, Rev. D. G. Lott, while having a tete a tete with Mrs. Covey in his parlor,” hitting nobody. “The lady declares that the pastor spake only of spiritual things, and that Covey’s jealously had no reason in it.”4

  Alfred Hood, who had “been too intimate with another man’s wife,” was increasingly affected by coverage of Daniel Sickles. He convinced himself that the husband of his lover would kill him in some awful manner. Hood cut his own throat with a razor, nearly severing his head. It is unclear what worse fate he thought he risked by living.5

  A young man and his mother were at a Philadelphia boarding house. A man at another table looked at the mother in between coffee sips. She threw her tumbler of water in his face. He returned the favor. Her son went to his room and returned with pistols “blaz[ing] away at the unlucky user of his eyes.” None of the bullets found their mark. The Pennsylvanian reported: “Since the Key and Sickles affair, it is dangerous to look at a woman.”6

  A Connecticut woman decided that she had been insulted the night before by a man who had escorted her home. Her husband grabbed his guns and went to take vengeance. The gentleman in question, preferring not to die without knowing the cause, asked what he had done. The husband admitted he didn’t know. They returned to his house and asked the woman, who said that when he helped her over a puddle, he had squeezed her hand a little hard. The husband, who had nearly killed the man, threw away his pistols. The escort “made
up his mind that it is not safe business to gallant other men’s wives so long as the Sickles mania prevails.”7

  Then there was the “honest Scotch shoemaker” who “found his wife and a perfidious neighbor as they should not be.” He forced them to sign a confession and agree to pay for the divorce. Considering the high price paid by others in their position, they probably considered it a bargain.8

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Deliberations of the Grand Jury

  Monday, March 14, 1859

  * * *

  “As Mr. Sickles has killed the District Attorney, it will be necessary for the president to appoint another to fill his place.”

  —Albany Evening Journal

  The United States vs. Daniel Sickles would take place at City Hall. The building was designed after a Greek temple, a “large and handsome edifice” with a “commanding position on Judiciary Square.” It was built over a thirty-year period and completed in 1850, and it was home to the courts, the mayors and city councils,I and the US Attorney.1

  Before Sickles could proceed to trial, he would have to be formally charged by the Grand Jury. The defense had struggled without effect to move the case along. They petitioned the Grand Jury to hear the matter ahead of others. They declined, opting to tackle their caseload in regular order. Sickles and his ilk may run the country, but they did not run the city of Washington. Defendants like Lewis Bell, arraigned for “stealing a lot of pictures and picture frames from Charles Ellit,” took priority.2

  In fairness, some of the delay was Sickles’s fault. Sickles had killed the man who would have otherwise prosecuted him. The president had to appoint a replacement. That replacement had to be confirmed by the senate.

  Friends of Key were concerned that Buchanan would protect Sickles by picking someone weak. But they celebrated the selection of Robert Ould. Leslie’s noted his “considerable reputation as a lawyer,” reflecting “great credit upon Mr. Buchanan’s administration.”3

  Ould had been educated for the Baptist ministry and “spoke with a clerical air.” For sixteen years, his pulpit had been the courtroom and his congregants all jurors. He was “highly intelligent and well informed in the law, and full of perseverance.” For his mastery of detail, Ould had been tasked with turning a mishmash of court cases into a coherent code of laws. And while Ould was the new US Attorney, he was an experienced prosecutor. Ould was frequently tapped to serve as temporary US Attorney in Key’s absences.4

  In his first day before the Grand Jury, Ould presented them with twelve witnesses. There was no telling how long it would take. One newspaper echoed the concerns of the defense: “If the trial were put off a couple of months, Mr. Sickles could not be acquitted. He has lost ground rapidly within the past fortnight, as facts in his previous history have become generally known.”

  Benjamin Perley Poore, a Washington reporter for five years, believed the “New York correspondents have done much to injure the position of Mr. Sickles in the opinion of the community here, from among which the jury which will try him is to be selected. Everyone is nauseated with their sycophantic attempts to elevate Mr. Sickles to the position of an injured hero, and to chronicle his very movements, as though the public cared what he eats, when he sleeps, or how often he ‘takes a sponge bath.’ ” The “chief adulator” he wrote, is Reverend Hale, who is “delighted” at having his “name before the public.”5

  William Stuart had cultivated a source in the Grand Jury room. He reported that Sickles would most certainly be indicted. “But differences exist as to Mr. Butterworth.” One of Key’s family, Benjamin Ogle Tayloe, was on the panel and wanted to leave no stone unturned.” He and another member had assumed “a dictatorial position” as public prosecutors, investigating every aspect of the case, which put them at odds with some of their fellow jurors.6

  Stuart was himself subpoenaed to explain a paragraph from his initial story:

  “Asking Mr. Butterworth, who was at his house, to follow Key and engage him in conversation, so that he would not get out of sight, he rushed up stairs for his pistols, and, quickly following, found Butterworth and Key together, at the corner of Sixteenth Street when the tragedy took place.”7

  Stuart explained that he was reporting what he had heard and had no firsthand information of the matter.

  Eighteen days after the killing and three days from the start of their inquiry, the Grand Jury indicted Daniel Sickles for murder. It was now Ould’s responsibility to draft an indictment—a short statement of the facts and law—and return it to the Grand Jury for final approval.8

  Butterworth was cleared of any charges. The Post objected: “I do not care a straw which way the coroner’s jury, or the grand jury, or the petit jury, or the Washington barkeepers, or the ‘highest officers of the American government’ may say on the matter. [T]o have witnessed such a scene as Butterworth acknowledges that he witnessed, between two men who were both his friends, and one of whom had consulted him on the subject of the quarrel . . . was in the last degree inhuman and dishonorable.”9

  It seemed the hard work was over. Ould had simply to prepare and present an indictment, consistent with the Grand Jury’s findings.

  But days went by.

  Stuart reported: “A mystery seems to surround the Sickles indictment. The Grand Jury say they are waiting on the district attorney, and he says the delay is with the Jury.”10

  Delay to maximize the odds of conviction was widely thought to be the motive. Others speculated that Butterworth was still in the crosshairs and that they were looking at additional evidence.11

  The Grand Jury was set to disband in two days, and it looked as though Ould would wait until the last minute.

  On March 24, Sickles’s defense team appeared in court, “extremely anxious that his trial should” proceed “at the earliest possible moment,” and hoping to force the hand of the US Attorney.

  The courtroom was filled with “scandal loving loafers,” with no “other desire than the gratification of a morbid curiosity . . . trying to see what they could see.” The States newspaper thought they would be “far more usefully employed devoting themselves to the care of their families and minding their own business.”12

  The case would be heard by Judge Thomas Crawford. Born in 1786, he was the son of a Revolutionary War officer and older than the Constitution. He had graduated from Princeton in 1804, represented Pennsylvania in Congress for two terms, and served as Indian Affairs Commissioner for Van Buren. President Polk appointed Crawford judge of the federal criminal court, and he had heard nearly every case in the District over the previous fourteen years.13

  Erasmus Middleton, assistant clerk of the court, had an unpleasant task ahead. As he began, his mind flashed back to a happy memory: New Years’ Day, 1859, one that opened with much cause for optimism. Barton Key came into the office and gave him “a large gold pen.”

  “Here’s a New Year’s gift for you.”

  “Thank you,” said Middleton, placing it in his private drawer.

  This memory played vividly in his mind as he opened the drawer and removed the pen and drafted the indictment of Daniel Sickles for the murder of Philp Barton Key.14

  Ould returned to court that afternoon: “the Grand Jury has found an indictment against Mr. Sickles for murder.”

  Stanton demanded the earliest possible trial date. He claimed they were in danger of losing witnesses as well as members of the legal team, who had upcoming obligations. He claimed Sickles’s right to a speedy trial was affected.

  Crawford refused to intervene. In his time on the bench, he had interfered once in a trial date. That was an emergency. This was not, he said.15

  “They are good lawyers,” wrote the correspondent of the London Morning Post, “and close observers of public opinion, and they know that every day the trial is postponed” brought Sickles closer to being “convicted of murder, and probably hanged.”16

  The Tribune agreed: “Public opinion at first set strongly in favor of Mr. Sickle
s, but as more and more light has been shed upon the previous history of the parties, the current has changed.”17

  April 4 was a much later date than they had hoped. But at least it was a date.

  * * *

  I. The District of Columbia consisted of the towns of Washington City, Georgetown, and Washington County.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  A Life for Sale

  March 25, 1859

  * * *

  “The trial will disclose an amount of scandal far exceeding what has already been furnished to the public.”

  —Boston Journal

  Key’s C Street house was crowded once again. At ten in the morning, a McGuire & Company auctioneer took his place, surrounded “by an animated crowd of bidders,” to sell off the estate of Philip Barton Key. Articles sold for a premium, both to curiosity seekers and to personal and family friends.1

  The visitors were mostly women, walking up and down stairs and considering their bids. There was a small mantle clock, an ordinary bed, and a five-foot-tall miniature house for his daughter. In the closet was his Montgomery Guards uniform, brass horse pistols, a sword, a rifle, and his cap. Key, who had ventured into Lafayette Square defenseless, was quite well-armed at home.