Star Spangled Scandal

by Chris DeRose

  In New York, Sickles worked for a printer on Fulton Street. At night, he ran around the notorious Five Corners, free from his parents, with disposable bank notes in his pockets. But no matter what he’d gotten into the night before, he was renowned for hard work and accuracy.3

  Across the river in Brooklyn, Sickles delivered his first speech: a full-throated “Houzee!” for the presidential bid of Martin Van Buren. Van Buren was a fellow New Yorker, made of the same stock as the original Dutch settlers, like his own ancestors, the Van Sickelns.

  “Who is that young man?” asked one of his listeners, who was old enough to remember speeches for George Washington. “If he lives he will be great.”4

  Sickles’s father, George, was a real estate investor. Riding the latest upswing and hedging against the next crash, he bought a farm across the Hudson in Livingston, New Jersey. It took all his negotiating skills, but his son agreed to join him there. Sickles endured his bucolic exile for a year before hitting the road. With the tall sails of the Hudson River in view, it was a miracle he lasted that long.5

  With his belongings tied in a handkerchief and “a few shillings in his pocket,” Sickles left the farm. And he just kept walking—until he found himself in Princeton, “hungry and dusty.” The local newspaper had no openings. They hired him anyway.6

  When he had saved a dollar, he set forth for Philadelphia. He had underestimated the cost, however; he’d spent a quarter of his money by the time he reached Bristol. Sickles explained his problem to an innkeeper. He was cared for that evening and left in the morning “…with a loaf of bread under his arm and sixpence in his pocket.” When he knocked on a farmhouse door outside Philadelphia and asked for a glass of water, the woman who answered insisted on giving him milk.

  Arriving in the city with no place to stay, he called at a fashionable boarding house. “Yes, you shall stay with me,” said the landlady, as if it could never be doubted that she would admit a young man with no luggage or money. Sickles stayed in the attic at first until one of the lodgers, so impressed by the young man, invited him to share the finest suite. Sickles found work at Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine. It was a literary monthly that would soon feature Edgar Allan Poe as editor, and it was the first outlet for several of Poe’s stories, including “The Fall of the House of Usher.” Before long, Sickles heard from his father: if Sickles would return to New York, his parents would assist him with his education.7

  In New York City, Sickles was lodged with the Da Ponte family to prepare for college. The household at 91 Spring Street consisted of Lorenzo DaPonte, the patriarch; his three sons; his daughter Maria; and their families. Maria was presented as adopted but was suspected to be every bit a natural Da Ponte, the result of an encounter when Lorenzo was in his 60s. She was married to Antonio Bagioli, a famed composer and music teacher from Italy, and they had a little girl named Teresa.8

  A new, very different apprenticeship began for Sickles. Lorenzo Da Ponte had been born to a Jewish family in Venice, but his father converted to Catholicism for a woman. Other considerations were secondary to those of the heart, a lesson absorbed by little Lorenzo and one he may have passed on to his family. Da Ponte became a priest, taught languages, and made his first attempts at poetry, including a tribute to wine.

  He passed on priestly pursuits for nights of gambling, drinking, and women. The staid merchant princes of Venice eventually had enough. Citing his mistress, two children, and possible residence in a brothel, Da Ponte was convicted of “public concubinage” and “abduction of a respectable woman” and banished from the City of Canals for fifteen years.

  The fallen priest found his way to Vienna as the poet laureate of Emperor Joseph II. There he collaborated with Wolfgang Mozart, putting words to the music of The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni (inspired by his friend Casanova), and Cosi Fan Tutte (Women Are Like That). Leaving the theater amidst a sex scandal, he found his way—circuitously, of course—through the courts of Europe and finally to Manhattan, where he became a professor of Italian at Columbia. He introduced opera to the island and managed to keep the New York Opera Company open for two years before it was liquated to pay debts.

  At the foot of the old maestro, Sickles learned of the world’s highest pursuits—and the lowest.9

  Sickles, scion of new (and occasionally no) money, a journeyman printer and academy dropout, would have to keep pace in a household where philosophy, music, wine, and politics were debated in Italian, French, English, and Spanish. At the end of the summer of 1838, in his ninetieth year, Da Ponte wrote his last song, “Parti de la Vita” (“Farewell to Life”), and died the following day. He was buried in an unmarked grave—a nod to Mozart, the man whose genius ensured that his work would live forever.10

  The head of the household was now Lorenzo Da Ponte the Younger, a man of such intellectual achievement that only a father such as his could overshadow him. It was the son, a professor of belle letters (literary works) at the University of New York,11 who oversaw Sickles’s admission to college.

  Six days before finals, to coerce the administration on some matter or another, the entire faculty resigned, except Da Ponte. Finals consisted of a personal exam in the student’s field of study. Da Ponte agreed to examine every student in every subject. He would rely on his closest pupil: “Dan, I can examine all the classes with your help.” Successful, Da Ponte was rewarded with the chair of philosophy, the first such post in the Americas; and Sickles was rewarded with all the privileges of the university.12

  Lorenzo the Younger was blessed with his father’s genius but not his longevity. On a winter’s night in 1840, students gathered in the university chapel and adopted a resolution, expressing “deep regret of the afflictive death of our much esteemed and respected professor,” a “model for exertion and source of encouragement and counsel.”

  Sickles never returned to the University of New York.13

  It was time to move on again. Sickles had decided on a career as a lawyer. He studied law under Benjamin Franklin Butler, attorney general for Presidents Jackson and Van Buren. Sickles passed the Bar in 1843 and opened a law office: Daniel Edgar Sickles, Esq., Counselor at Law, 79 Nassau Street.14

  Sickles proved his mettle early by winning a major patent claim. Daniel Webster, Secretary of State and one of the nation’s finest lawyers, was one of three commissioners who heard the case. He singled out Sickles for praise. Sickles soon developed a reputation for his “fine legal mind,” “graceful and effective oratory,” and large fees.15

  With his education behind him and his legal career underway, Sickles could focus on what he really cared about—politics. In New York City, the road to civic success ran through “the Wigwam” at the corner of Franklin and Nassau Streets, headquarters of the Tammany Society. Named for a mythical chief of the Delaware Indians, this fraternal organization had evolved into the most powerful political machine in the country. Careers were made or destroyed in the noisy street-level bar and quiet upstairs corridors. Tammany politics were not for the faint of heart: one had to be ready to defend himself with reason—and any other tool available.16

  Sickles published The Sober Second Thought, a popular newspaper promoting “Success! Triumph! Victory!” for James K. Polk’s presidential campaign.17

  Sickles was also a frequent guest at 161 Mercer Street, a house that attracted the elite of politics, business, and the diplomatic corps. Its visitors enjoyed the best wine in the city; looked at themselves in large, gilded mirrors; walked ornate carpets; and left their troubles on rosewood bedsteads. Fanny White, the proprietor, fell for Sickles. Her patrons used their money to widen their circle of intimates. Fanny used their money to try to settle down. She made sure her new beau had the best tailored suits and jewelry to wear. Though he prospered in the law, Sickles had nothing on the most successful madam in Manhattan. Only Sickles could patronize a high-priced bordello and come out ahead.

  Kindred spirits, they followed their own paths in life and twisted setbacks to their favor. Fan
ny, born Jane Augusta Funk, was from a good family, was a gifted pianist and poet, and had many prospects for love. All of that changed in the face of false promises from an older man and an encounter she couldn’t take back. Disgraced and disowned, she followed the one path open to her. Four years later, she was running her own establishment. On one date, she and Sickles drank their way through the saloons of the Eighth Ward. Women weren’t allowed, a problem temporarily solved by Fanny dressing as a man. She had assumed so much of a man’s role in the 1840s—financially independent, in charge of her personal life—that slipping on a man’s clothes seemed minor. But Fanny’s feminine qualities were not easily concealed, and their detection earned them an overnight trip to the local jail.18

  In 1846, twenty-seven-year-old Sickles was elected to the New York Assembly. Sickles was unsurpassed as a “debater and parliamentary leader,” in the eyes of Governor William Marcy. Fanny came to visit him in Albany, much to the chagrin of his hotel messmates. He gave her a tour of the Capitol, which ended abruptly, just before the sergeant at arms got involved. Sickles didn’t care. His colleagues went to places like hers and did things in Albany their wives wouldn’t appreciate.

  And how did they even recognize Fanny?19

  From his childhood home in Manhattan to Glens Falls and Philadelphia to the courthouse and Tammany and now at the seat of power in Albany, Sickles did things his own way. He wrote a friend: “I cannot play the courtier to the multitude, much less to individuals . . . I know all the consequences . . . and have many a long year since resolved to enjoy it even at the price which must be inevitably paid . . . I do not deem it a wise course, nor approve it, nor recommend it to any friend; but I’ve adopted it: it is mine, and I will follow it come what may.”20

  Soon Sickles found a new love with someone he had known a long time. Fanny White learned of the courtship and gave Sickles a taste of a bullwhip, a singular event in the history of New York’s Carleton Hotel.21

  Years later, as a member of congress, at the height of his political power and domestic felicity, Sickles wrote a letter to a friend about an upcoming profile of him in the New York Sunday Courier, in an age where such treatments of any politician were exceedingly rare. The story would serve as “a skeleton sketch of my life,” he wrote.

  But some of the more interesting details would, by necessity, not be included.22

  Chapter Three

  Teresa

  * * *

  “The Helen of our melancholy Iliad.”

  —diary of Laura Crawford Jones

  ST. JAMES’S PALACE, LONDON, March 30, 1854

  Remember what you were told.

  Teresa Bagioli Sickles followed every step on her way to see the Queen. The train of her dress was folded over her left arm as she approached the throne room. The long, red chamber was dotted with colorfully costumed functionaries: Ladies of the Bedchamber, Yeoman of the Guard, and Mistress of the Robes. As she crossed the threshold, she dropped her train, as instructed, and Lords-in-Waiting used wands to smooth it out behind her.

  At the other end of the room was Queen Victoria, in a dress of white poplin, satin, opal, a diamond diadem, and feathers. From her throne, she reigned over the Pyramids, the Cape of Good Hope, and the Taj Mahal—from Canada to Australia.

  Teresa was getting close to the Queen. All she had to do was follow the people ahead of her. The French ambassador presented an aristocrat from Hanover. Countess de Lavradio introduced the wife of a Brazilian naval officer. Now it was her turn. Lady Clarendon, wife of the foreign minister, would present Teresa.

  A card with her name on it was handed to another Lord-in-Waiting, who read it aloud: “Mrs. Daniel E. Sickles, wife of the Secretary of the American Legation.”

  Teresa curtseyed as low as possible, almost kneeling. Victoria extended her hand. Teresa kissed it, rose, curtseyed to Prince Albert, and made her way out, keeping her face toward the Queen as she left the room. She could hear the name of her mother, who was presented next.1

  Most diplomatic wives would be lost among the viscounts and marquesses and the different languages and cultures at court. Teresa was different: “[b]rilliant, beautiful, and highly educated,” the perfect balance of firmness and feminine grace.2

  Daniel Sickles had factored in her earliest memories and impulses. She had been little when he boarded with them, but he was a frequent visitor as she grew older. First, he came to see her parents, Antonio and Maria, the last link to those happy days when her uncle and grandfather were alive. Eventually, she realized, he was there to see her.

  He asked her to marry him. She wanted to. Her father objected. She was too young, he said. She was seventeen and didn’t know her own mind.

  But who was he to advise caution?

  Antonio Bagioli arrived in the New World as the conductor of a touring symphony. He stopped at 91 Spring Street to pay homage to the great Da Ponte, but his attention quickly turned from father to daughter. He remained while his opera company went on to Havana. Teresa arrived four years later, the result of a decision to marry no less practical than the one she now intended to make with Dan.3

  Teresa married Sickles in secret, on September 27, 1852, in a civil ceremony performed by the Mayor of New York. Her parents knew when they were beat: they were in attendance six months later when she married him again, this time before the Catholic Archbishop.

  Thus, the Sickles’s union began with the sanction of the highest civic and ecclesiastic authorities in the city.4

  Chapter Four

  Men of Force and Originality

  Sickles had married the one woman he could not live without. And he now planned his political comeback after a defeat for state senate. Elections were just ahead—Franklin Pierce versus Winfield Scott and the charred remains of the Whig Party. Sickles focused on helping the Tammany slate win the city.

  Empire State Democrats won up and down the ballot. Sickles was appointed Corporation Attorney, a plum position litigating on behalf of New York City.1

  Shortly thereafter, Sickles was at a dinner party where he met John Forney, a powerful newspaper publisher and Clerk of the US House of Representatives. Forney had an unexpected proposition.

  “How would you like to be Secretary of Legation under Mr. Buchanan, the new Minister to London?” he asked.

  James Buchanan was headed across the Atlantic with a long list of challenges and needed a talented young man to serve as senior aide. Buchanan had asked Forney if he had anyone in mind for the job. Forney knew that Buchanan was hard to please and would blame him for any disappointment. He hesitated in recommending anyone. On meeting Sickles, he changed his mind.

  “What’s the pay?” Sickles asked. After all, he had a child on the way.

  “$2,500 a year.”

  “Why, bless you, my dear fellow, that would hardly pay for my wine and cigars. My annual income is fifteen times more than that. I could not think of such a sacrifice.”

  But Sickles did think about it.2

  James Buchanan had been a national leader for as long as Sickles could remember. He had served with every president since James Monroe, in the House and Senate, as Jackson’s minister to Russia, and he had been a contender for the presidency as far back as 1844.

  In 1844, James K. Polk, the former Speaker of the House, was nominated on the eighth ballot and won on the ninth. Polk made Buchanan secretary of state, the most important position in his cabinet. Together, they oversaw the annexation of Texas, the settlement of Oregon’s boundaries, and a successful war against Mexico that extended America to the Pacific. In 1848, the Democrats passed on Buchanan again, to their detriment. Lewis Cass lost Buchanan’s home state of Pennsylvania, and with it, the election, to the Whigs and General Zachary Taylor.

  The Whigs were torn apart by the Compromise of 1850. Things looked good for the Democratic nominee in ’52, and Old Buck, as Buchanan was called, had reason to think it might be him. He ran a close second to Lewis Cass for nineteen ballots, overtaking him on the
twentieth, leaving Stephen Douglas and the others in the dust. But on the thirty-second ballot, they traded places again. Then, on the thirty-fifth ballot, dark horse Franklin Pierce was placed in nomination for President.

  Franklin Pierce? He’d been the youngest Speaker of the New Hampshire House at age twenty-six, the youngest U.S. congressman at age twenty-eight, and the youngest U.S. senator at age thirty-two. He’d also been out of office for ten years. His wife hated politics and forced his resignation after five years in the Senate. Popular, handsome, long out of sight but not out of mind, Pierce was exactly the kind of candidate who could carry the convention.

  And he did, on the forty-ninth ballot.3

  At age forty-eight, President Pierce added another “youngest” to his list. He also hoped to be the first president since Jackson to win re-election. Buchanan was a threat, and Pierce determined to ship him off to London. Buchanan raised objections, and Pierce answered them. Buchanan made unprecedented demands, and Pierce agreed. Buchanan couldn’t turn down the president, particularly after he had been so accommodating. He was heading back to Europe and would need a capable aide.

  Sickles found Forney the day after their initial meeting: he would interview with Buchanan after all. He boarded a train for Lancaster, Pennsylvania, on July 29.

  Buchanan knew Sickles’s reputation as “a brilliant lawyer, politician, and man of the world” with “a host of friends and not a few enemies, like all men of force and originality.” The two made an instant impression on one another. Buchanan felt Sickles’s “manners, appearance, and intelligence [we]re all that could be desired.”4 The job was his. Washington’s Daily Union praised Sickles as “a firm, fearless, and uncompromising national democrat,” a “gentleman of experience, ability, and great decision of character.” The Philadelphia Inquirer thought Buchanan had chosen a “most accomplished assistant,” an “elegant scholar, a fine linguist, a sound lawyer, and a finished gentleman.”5