Star Spangled Scandal

by Chris DeRose

  The courtroom was abuzz. Someone had a copy of the confession. The Star reporter had never seen “more nervous anxiety manifested” in reporters to get a story to their editors. Sickles was desperate to stop it from getting out. But he couldn’t leave the prisoner’s box, much less the courtroom. Sickles sent someone to the telegraph office to stop the transmission. But Teresa’s words were miles away. The Post accused Sickles of leaking the confession. William Stuart set the record straight. Sickles had the confession in his hands since it was written. He could have released it at any point.4

  The coverage was about to enter an entirely new level of scandal. The newspapers, when they had charged full-speed into the case, committing column inches and complete coverage to their readers, had no idea where the case was going. Was it time, they wondered, to pump the brakes, starting with the confession?

  “The appearance of a foul confession of shame by Mrs. Sickles, in this afternoon’s Star, is the subject of much comment,” wrote the Boston Journal, and it is a matter of wonder how any woman would thus chronicle her fall.”5

  The Post printed a redacted version of the confession: “it is altogether too disgusting to be laid before our readers.” The Times accused the Post of “cheap virtue . . . suppressing in the evening what it very well knew that everybody had seen in the morning.”6

  The Cincinnati Gazette refused to print the confession. The Lafayette Daily Journal pointed out that the testimony was just as salacious. The London Morning Post, which did not publish verbatim coverage of the trial, printed the confession word for word.

  The Evening Bulletin was prosecuted by the state of California for obscenity for publishing the confession. The owners were fined one hundred dollars each.

  Laura Crawford Jones wrote in her diary: “Mrs. Sickles’s confession is in the papers tonight, it is shocking! Such grossness in such a young woman. Only 23! I think she must have been a great fool as well as a very low minded, ungrateful creature.”7

  Verina Davis, wife of Jefferson, wrote her husband about the “Everlasting Sickles trial.” “Have you seen her confession? Filth-filth—beastliness in its most bestial form.” One of her friends joked that she herself might have done the things confessed, but she should never have told it.”8

  Octavia Ridgley was the next witness. She entered court with a double veil of blue and black but removed it at the request of the lawyers. “A blonde with sparking blue eyes,” every man was looking at her. She was a guest of the Sickles beginning on the Thursday before the killing. “After we returned from the hop I noticed a change in his manner. The change was more particularly observable on Friday.” It was “a wild, distracted look, especially on Saturday.”

  “Octavia was on the verge of fainting. She took a drink of water, which seemed to make things right.”9

  On Saturday night, she went to Teresa’s room where she saw her writing. Teresa asked her to sign her name to the paper. They spent the night in the same room. Octavia in the bed. Teresa on the floor with her head leaning on a chair.

  In the morning, she dressed and ate breakfast alone. Daniel Sickles “was very much agitated. While sitting at the breakfast table I heard sobbing. He was going up stairs. I could hear him all over the house,” uttering “unearthly,” “fearful groans” that “seemed to come from his very feet.” She last saw him on Sunday, as he lay on the bed with Butterworth by his side.

  Bridget Duffy was recalled to the stand. Watterson described her in the Press as a “Pretty, intelligent looking, black-haired Irish woman, of some twenty-five years,” who “gave her evidence with great clearness and self-possession.”

  She returned from church shortly before 11:00 a.m. George Wooldridge was in the study. Bridget went upstairs to clean Sickles’s room when he entered, tearing at his hair and calling on God to witness his troubles, crying and sobbing. She heard the door open and Butterworth come up the stairs, saying, “Where is Mr. Sickles?”10

  She saw Key sometime after 11:00 a.m. He entered Lafayette Square as if coming from the Club House. She saw him “take out a handkerchief and wave it, as he passed, three or four times.”

  The Sickles dog came and greeted him familiarly.

  “You’re positive of that?” Carlisle asked.

  “Sure,” she answered, “spiritedly and indignantly,” “and you don’t think I would lie?” The courtroom laughed.

  “Don’t fire up so, Bridget,” Carlisle said with a smile.

  “He does not mean anything by it,” Brady assured her.

  She repeated her testimony about the dog.

  Carlisle asked, “The waving of the handkerchief was one continuous act or whirl?”

  “It was not a continuous whirl,” she responded. “It was so-so-so,” demonstrating the act.

  “About as fast as you would turn the handle of a coffee-mill?”

  “I am not in the habit of turning coffee mills.”

  Deputy Marshal Phillips tried to stop the laughter. “Silence, silence, gentlemen, in court.”

  Carlisle attempted to restate her testimony.

  “I did not say any such thing,” Bridget said.

  “Repeat what you have said.”

  “I have repeated it twice already, and that ought to be sufficient. The dog fawned on Mr. Key.”

  “How came you to take particular notice of where the dog was when Mr. Key whirled his handkerchief last?”

  “Because I saw the dog at the house. I cannot exactly say the certain spot where the dog was at the fourth whirl.” She did not see Sickles leave the house and did not hear the shots. When he returned, Sickles went upstairs with Teresa for three or four minutes. She “did not see him sobbing or crying.”

  William Mann, a lawyer from Buffalo, was called to the stand. He was traveling in Washington and saw Key on the day of his death.

  “State where you saw him,” Brady said, “and the circumstances connected with it.”

  “I saw him in the square, opposite the President’s house, where the Jackson monument is. I came up towards the monument and met Mr. Key walking along. I passed the time of day with him; stated to the person with me who he was. We saw him leaving the park by the southwest corner.”

  “What did you see him do?”

  “I saw him whirling a handkerchief as he went along. He had the handkerchief first in his two hands, this way, and he drew it out and waved it.” He illustrated this backward and forward.

  Thomas Miller was then called. He had been in the Club House with Key’s body. Brady asked if there were any items removed from his body other than that which had been placed into evidence.

  “A gentleman present examined some of the pockets and removed some scraps of paper, or folded papers, which seemed to be of very little importance.”

  “We do not ask their importance,” Brady said.

  “There was also an old card case, with one or two visiting cards. These were handed to me. I did not examine them, but I put them into an envelope and directed them to Hon. Mr. Pendleton.”

  Judge Crawford announced that he was indisposed from “the oppressive atmosphere of the courtroom.” They adjourned at quarter till three.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Give Vent to Your Tears

  * * *

  “The Sickles trial is the only topic of conversation just now. Mother and Papa sympathize with Sickles, [my brother] with Key, and I feel sorry for them all.”

  —diary of Laura Crawford Jones

  DAY TEN—Thursday, April 14, 1859

  For the first time since the trial began, Congressman George Pendleton and Key’s brother appeared in the courtroom.1

  The prosecution opened by announcing that they were prepared, if Teresa’s confession had been admitted, to produce a guest registry from Barnum’s Hotel in Baltimore. A January entry shows that Sickles stayed there, and ten rows below in a different handwriting was the name “Mrs. Daniel E. Sickles.”2 The signature would belong to a woman other than Teresa.

  George Woo
ldridge was called to the stand. He testified encountering Sickles on the Saturday before the murder in the House of Representatives, “affected and distressed.” He arrived the morning of the killing and found Sickles in his library, eyes “bloodshot and red. There was a strange manner about him. He would go upstairs and then come down stairs again. Then he would talk about matters and go upstairs again. Every time he came into the room where I was, he pressed his hands to his temples,” leaned on the secretary desk, “and sob.”

  “Give vent to your tears,” Wooldridge told his friend, “as they will relieve you.”

  “Did you see Mr. Key that Sunday?” Brady asked.

  “I did, twice.”

  “Where and when?”

  “The first time between ten and eleven o’clock” in Lafayette Square. He saw him again around a quarter to two o’clock, “directly in front of the library window of Mr. Sickles’s house. There was a lady and gentleman with him then.”

  “Did you observe Mr. Key do anything while passing?”

  “I saw him take a handkerchief out of his pocket and wave it three times. While doing so his eyes were towards the upper window of Mr. Sickles’s house.” Sickles entered the library “very excited.” Butterworth “endeavored to calm him. That is the last I saw of him until he came into the house with the police officers,” and Mayor Barrett, Chief Goddard, Walker, “and some other gentlemen. I never want to see another day as that.”

  Brady asked whether he had communicated anything to Sickles when he saw him at the Capitol on Saturday.

  Ould objected on the same grounds as before. Only the effect on Sickles was relevant. Not the trigger.

  Stanton demanded the rights for Sickles that would be given a slave in North Carolina, referencing a murder trial there.

  “I could let my argument and conduct in this case go before the court and before the world in contrast with the disreputable rant which this counsel had exhibited,” Ould said, pointing to Stanton. He mocked the oversized defense team and their various roles: “There seemed to be divisions assigned to counsel for the defense—to some, high tragedy, to some, comedy, to some, the part of walking gentlemen, and one gentleman appeared to fill the office of clerical supe, to set the theological part of the house in order.” A “supe” was a meaningless extra in a play, and the “clerical supe” was a clear reference to the ever-present Reverend Haley. “One of the counsel,” Ould continued, “had carried out the part . . . of the bully and the bruiser.”

  Stanton looked “thunderbolts at him, and “sprang to his feet” with such a “rapid and violent . . . utterance that the reporters laid down their pencils in despair. They combined the rush of an avalanche with the impetuosity of a cyclone.”3

  Stanton replied that Ould’s version of the law “would send my client to the gallows by those who are malignantly seeking for his blood. I have not the honor of his acquaintance, and after his language just uttered, do not desire it.” Stanton was interrupted by commotion in the audience. He continued when the police had restored order. “I cannot reply to the counsel’s remarks. I defy them. I scorn them. I don’t fear them.” The courtroom lost order again. They couldn’t be expected to behave better than the lawyers.

  Carlisle responded for the prosecution. The evidence offered “was not competent to prove insanity by the declarations or communications of other parties, but by the acts and declarations of the prisoner himself. Whatever communication this witness, like Iago, poured into the ear of his friend was not important.”

  “I appeal to the hearts of other men, Stanton said.

  Ould replied. “There are a great variety of human hearts in the world.”

  “Yes, sir, and some of them very bad ones.”

  “And I am happy to say that mine does not contain many things which seem to exist in the hearts of some other people, though like all other human hearts, I suppose it is filled with much that would be better out of it.”

  “It would be better were something else in it.”

  Judge Crawford intervened, finally. “Really, gentlemen, this thing must be interrupted.”

  Crawford ruled against the defense.

  Stanton persisted. “Will your honor be good enough to explain a little further, so that we can understand how to meet your Honor’s views on that point. Your honor will recollect that we are trying to get in evidence to save the prisoner’s life.”

  Brady interjected. We offer to prove that this witness had communicated to Sickles that his wife had gone to a home with Mr. Key on the Wednesday before his death “for the exclusive purpose of having there adulterous intercourse with her.”

  The judge sided with the prosecution.

  John Cuyler, a plasterer, was the next witness. He knew Key for three or four years. He saw “Key in the vicinity of the house the week before his death.”

  Carlisle objected. What did this have to do with Sickles’s mind on the day of the killing?

  “It is now too late to shut the door to that kind of evidence,” the judge ruled.

  “We want to know whether Mr. Key waved the handkerchief to excite the admiration of the dog, or anything else,” Brady said to laughter.

  Cuyler entered the corner gate of Lafayette Square and saw Key enter through the center gate. Key sat on the iron bench beneath the Jackson statue. Cuyler thought his behavior was curious: he hid behind General Jackson and watched. Key rested his head on his left hand and pulled out his pocket handkerchief, waving it at the Sickles home. The courtroom laughed at his imitation. When Cuyler’s curiosity had worn out, Key was still sitting on the bench. “I have often seen him loitering back and forth in the square. For two months he had been attracting my attention.”

  Stanton asked, “Was that when the members of congress were at the Capitol?”

  “Yes.”

  Carlisle objected. “Argumentative.”

  “That’s all,” Stanton said.

  “The inquiry whether that was before or after congress was in session is not proper,” Crawford ruled.4

  “I think it is important as to the time,” Stanton said. “The signals must have been made when Mr. Sickles was out of his house.”

  “I can clearly see what you mean by it,” said Judge Crawford.

  Jeremiah Boyd saw Key on the morning of his death. He was coming from Reverend Pyne’s church and saw Key standing in front of the Club House, looking toward the Sickles home.

  Charles Bacon saw Key on Wednesday, February 23, in Lafayette Square. He stood near the Jackson statue twirling his handkerchief between ten and eleven in the morning. “Some hours after” he saw Teresa, Octavia, and another man, between three and four o’clock.

  S. S. Parker saw Key on the Sunday a week before his shooting. Teresa was on the platform of her residence, her hand over the shoulder of a little girl, apparently trying to keep her from falling over the steps.” Key emerged from the southwest gate of Lafayette Square, hat in hand. He “bowed to Mrs. Sickles, and twice waved his handkerchief.”

  “I ask whether when you saw him a second time, your attention was not directed to him by a remark made when you first saw him?” Stanton asked.

  “It was.”

  “Was that remark in reference to Mr. Sickles killing him?”

  The witness answered, as Carlisle tried to object.

  “It was.”

  The objection was sustained. What Key had said about Sickles killing him would not become part of the record.

  William Rapley was the next witness. “The Thursday preceding [Key’s] death I saw him in front of Green’s, the cabinetmaker’s, with a letter in his hand. Mrs. Sickles and the child were with him. She left him and went out into the shop, and when she came out they walked together up the Avenue, he was reading the letter.”

  Neither Rapley nor his friend came close enough to read the letter, but its substance had been reported: “Unless he desisted, Mr. Sickles would detect him and that in such an event the consequences would be serious.”5

&n
bsp; Frederick Wilson, Rapley’s friend, said to him that he was going to cross the street and try “to get a good look at them.” The courtroom laughed at Wilson’s nosiness.

  Stanton held up the “R. P. G.” letter, sent to Sickles that same evening, for Rapley to compare. “The paper I saw in Mr. Key’s hand appeared to be about that size of paper.”

  Wilson was the next to testify. He crossed the street and stood fifty to seventy-five feet away. Key, Teresa, and Laura walked up the avenue past him. Wilson rejoined Rapley across the street. “In about fifteen minutes afterwards they came back on the south side. Just as they passed me he put the letter in the envelope and they walked on down the avenue.”

  “What was the color of the envelope?”

  “It was a yellow envelope, something like this,” he said, referring to the envelope containing the “R. P. G.” letter.

  Stanton held up a copy of the anonymous letter to Sickles. He confirmed that it was the same size.

  “Why did you cross over to get a good look at them?” Stanton asked.

  “I saw Mr. Key” near the Sickles house “a great number of times. Nearly every day.”

  “He appeared to be making a business of it?”

  “Yes sir.” Laughter. “Between the hours of twelve and one I usually found him there. It appeared to be quite a regular business.”

  Amidst more laughter, the judge ended the questioning.

  Brady called Thomas Brown to the stand. “I reside in the city of New York. In pursuance of instructions from you, I obtained a certain lock.”

  Brady handed Brown a sealed package. He opened it and produced a door lock.

  Carlisle objected. What was the point of this?

  Brady said he wanted it identified to be introduced as evidence later.

  Brown testified that he had received it from Mr. Wagner on Pennsylvania Avenue, who took it from the door of 383 Fifteenth Street.

  Jacob Wagner was next to testify. Wagner was a locksmith who verified that he had given the lock to Brown. “I took it off a house on Fifteenth Street, No. 383. It was John Gray, the black man’s house.” Several other men, including Congressman Pendleton, were there. “This was about a week after Key’s death.”