by Chris DeRose
“Never saw anybody go in but theirselves. I am sure I did not.”
John Graham asked about an incident where Key and Teresa left the house but turned in a different direction after seeing two policemen on K Street.
Stanton asked the court to excuse Sickles for the balance of Nancy Brown’s testimony. The state did not object. An officer escorted him from the courtroom.
“Did you see them come back that day?” Graham asked.
“It is not likely they returned that day. Not likely, gentlemen. I did not watch more after that. I knew they were not so foolish. After they seed the police, not likely after that.”
Ould asked where she lived. “Next door but one to John Gray’s,” she answered. Brady introduced evidence of a map from the surveyor’s office pinpointing the location.
“How do you know it was Mrs. Sickles?”
“Because I inquired and was told. I asked different people, and they all told me it was her, and when I saw her at her own house, I knew it was the same person. [Officer] Mann who called for me to go and see Mrs. Sickles, and there I identified her as the person whom I used to see go to that house. The shawl was shown to me the next week, week after the death of Mr. Key.”
“How do you know that [Key] made the fire?”
“Because there was nobody else to make the fire and because I saw him to go down and fetch the wood.”
The courtroom was thoroughly entertained by her testimony, and the judge tried to maintain order. “There is no cause for laughter,” he said.
Brown continued. “Saw the string out of the window three or four times. If I had looked oftener I might have seen it oftener.”
“How did you come to notice it?”
“Because I knew it was the signal, of course.”
“You did not know whether he was there by himself?”
“I should think he was not when I saw the signal flying.”
And with that, Nancy Brown’s turn on the national stage came to an end, much to her chagrin and that of the audience.
But Brady had an exciting follow-up: a demonstration for the jury. Brady held the lock that had been removed from No. 383 and used one of the keys found on Key’s body to open and close it.
Policeman Charles Mann followed. He had gone to No. 383 with Magruder and Ratcliffe on the day after the killing. They found Teresa’s shawl inside the house and brought it to Nancy Brown to be identified. They then took her to the Ewell House, where she confirmed that Teresa was the woman who had been meeting Key at No. 383.
Ratcliffe took the stand and testified that Officer Mann had let them into 383.
“That is all,” Brady said.
Congressman John Haskin was called to the stand. Sickles approached him on the floor of the House of Representatives, days after the Beekman affair, with a favor to ask. He had been called to New York on business. Would you and your wife drop in on Teresa occasionally and see if she needed anything?
The next day, Haskin and his wife were headed to Georgetown to buy shoes. They passed the White House, and Haskin was reminded of his promise.
He pulled his carriage in front of the Ewell House, and he and his wife stepped down. To minimize delay, they rushed up the stairs and went inside without knocking.
“On entering the little library, I found Mrs. Sickles and Mr. Key seated at a round table with a large bowl of salad. She was mixing it. There was a [half-empty] bottle of champagne and glasses on the table. I excused myself for the abrupt entrance.”
“Mrs. Sickles got up, blushed, and invited us to take a glass of wine with her. After sitting there for a moment, I hastened away with my wife. On entering the carriage, or immediately after, my wife said that ‘Mrs. Sickles is a bad woman.’ ”
“Did you have any conversation with Mr. Key at that time in that room?”
“Very little. I think Mrs. Sickles on that occasion introduced my wife to Mr. Key.”
“Did your lady ever visit there afterwards?”
“No, sir.”
“Did you see Mr. Key and Mrs. S. any time after that?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“Shortly after that, I met Mr. Key and Mrs. Sickles in the cemetery. Saw them at the theater once or twice. And once or twice on the avenue.”
Haskin never told Sickles what he had seen.
Carlisle asked the witness: “She was mixing the salad for him?”
“There was a large bowl containing salad with a large wooden thing to fix it,” Haskin said, trying to demonstrate what he meant. “She was using the wooden thing.” The courtroom laughed at the Congressman’s attempt at fake salad mixing.4
“She is a bad woman,” said Abraham Lincoln, cracking himself up, and others around him. That line of testimony “tickled Lincoln’s fancy,” and fellow lawyers on the Eighth Circuit of Illinois “heard him tell it over and over again.”5
Lincoln, like many attorneys, enjoyed following the Sickles trial. It gave them a chance to think about what they would do with such a case. For his part, Lincoln was in Champagne County for the spring term of the Circuit Court, fighting over groceries. Lincoln represented the county against the city of West Urbana, who was taxing groceries, monies the county believed rightfully belonged to them. The court ruled for West Urbana.
In the middle of the week, Lincoln handled six eviction cases. But on Thursday, he had a homicide case of his own. A drunken Samuel Dehaven came into Tom Patterson’s store to buy a hatchet. Dehaven had exhausted his credit, and so Patterson refused. Dehaven left, then decide to return and menace Patterson with one of his own spades. Dehaven threw a two-pound scale weight at his head, killing him. Community sentiment ran strongly against Patterson. Dehaven, notoriously drunk and violent, was their reprobate and Patterson a relative newcomer. The trial had been delayed while Lincoln ran for US senate. Defeated by Stephen Douglas, he found himself in the Champagne County Courthouse defending Dehaven. He was found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to three years. When president, Lincoln lobbied the governor successfully for a pardon.6
Chapter Forty
“Revelations Respecting the Intercourse Between Key and Mrs. Sickles”
* * *
“Of what crime has Sickles been guilty? Of making a Skeleton Key.”
—Cleveland Plain Dealer
DAY FOURTEEN—Tuesday, April 19, 1859
France and Austria were at war in Italy. But as one newspaper pointed out, “something else is upon our minds, our counters, our book tables, work tables, tea tables, chairs, sofas, window seats, door steps, in our heads, pockets, and every nook and cranny where a newspaper can hide himself . . . The Sickles Trial! Even politics holds its head downcast before the overshadowing importance of the great theme, which is discussed, they say, ‘in every place where men—and women too, meet.’ People who ‘never read an improving book,’ or have ‘one moment per day for self-cultivation’ . . . find hours to pore over the closely printed columns of the city daily that publishes the evidence in such cases.”1
Officer James Mann testified to the contents of No. 383 on the day after the shooting. He produced a gentleman’s gloves and a comb taken from the scene. There were cigarettes also, he testified, but he did not preserve them.2
Sickles was excused from the courtroom in anticipation of upcoming testimony.
John Thompson was a young Scotsman who had driven the Sickles coach from November 16, 1857 to February 4, 1859.
Shortly after taking the job, he noticed they were seeing an awful lot of Mr. Key. Mrs. Sickles would leave her house alone around noon and return before dinner. They would see him in the street: “Good morning, Madam,” he would say, with a salute. They would see him at the daily receptions around the capital: the President’s, the Donaldsons’, the Gwyns’, and the Slidells’. Sometimes Key would get in the coach. The command was the same: “Drive through the back streets.” Key always exited the coach before they returned to the house.
“I knew hi
m only once to come home with Mrs. Sickles, that was in April or May of last year. He went into the house and when he came out I could not say. I have known Mr. Key to come to the house while Mr. Sickles was absent in New York. He always came at dusk. I knew him to be there every night almost. Sometimes I knew him to remain until late at night. At other times I did not know how long he would remain.” He and Mrs. Sickles always remained in the study with the door shut. One night he arrived at 7:00 p.m. and didn’t leave until at least 1:00 a.m. “I think that was May of 1858.”
“Did anything particular occur to which your attention was called?”
“Yes, sir.”
Relate it to the jury, said Brady.
Thompson was headed to bed at 1:00 a.m. He saw Bridget Duffy at the head of the stairs. Both had heard the hall bell ring.
Teresa and Key both poked their heads out of the study and into the hall. No amount of discretion could cover up for accidentally ringing the hall bell. But they were relieved to see nobody there. They shut the hall door and locked it again, walked through the study into the parlor, and locked that door for good measure.
Now Thompson and Bridget were curious. Thompson testified: “I stood a little while and heard them making this noise on the sofa for about two or three minutes. I mentioned to [Bridget] that they were making a noise.” Thompson made what he thought was “a little joke,” which sent Bridget running away. “She would not hearken to me as it was not language suitable for her to hear.”
Thompson listened for two or three minutes. “I knew they was’nt at no good work. I had been out that night and came in at 12 o’clock. I knew they were and it was the conversation among us all that—”
“Never mind that,” Ould said.
Teresa took the carriage to the Congressional Cemetery two or three times, and two or three times to the burying ground at Georgetown. Key would meet them wherever they went.
“The first time I saw [Key] was in April 1858, from that time to the 1st of July never a week passed without my seeing him.”
Key “always visited at night when Mr. Sickles was away,” whether it was to New York, Philadelphia, or Baltimore. “By the time I returned from the train station to drop of Mr. Sickles, Key would already be at the house.”
George Emerson had a butcher stall in Centre Market, “an unsightly, unsanitary, and overgrown sprawl, row after endless row of fruit, vegetable, and meat vendors, and marketers, that pushed outside the building to the streets around it and still could barely contain all the market activity it supported.” Key and Teresa came together on the Thursday before his death. Teresa came earlier than expected, between 8:00 and 9:00 a.m., rather than her usual time of between 10:00 and 11:00 a.m.3
She came to the bench and gave me the order, he explained. “She asked me how much it came to and handed her wallet to Mr. Key, saying, ‘Pay Mr. Emerson.’ He took a ten-dollar gold piece out and handed it to me and I gave the change. Key had regularly come to market with Teresa last session. But not as often as this session.”
John Cooney moved to Washington early in 1859. He was delighted to find himself as the Sickles’s coachman after a month of searching. On his second day, he drove Teresa down Pennsylvania Avenue. She rang the bell, signaling him to stop. Key boarded the coach. Cooney thought nothing of it. But then he started seeing Key “pretty much every day,” picking him up in the back streets. He always entered and exited the coach away from her house. Sometimes, they met at the greenhouse or the bookstore.
In the late afternoon of Thursday, February 24, Teresa drove around from one reception to another with Octavia Ridgeley. Cooney noticed that Key arrived at all the same receptions, either a little before or a little after. Their last event of the day was at Rose O’Neal Greenhow’s. She was a popular widow and the aunt of Mrs. Stephen Douglas. From there, Teresa and Octavia headed home to her reception for Mrs. James Gordon Bennett.
Wooldridge was recalled to the stand and identified the R. P. G. letter and envelope that Sickles had presented him. It was read aloud and handed to the jury. With deep regret I inclose to your address a few lines . . .
Brady wanted to question Wooldridge as to what Sickles had said before leaving the house to kill Key.
Ould objected. I do “not see how this could, on any ground, be received as evidence.”
Magruder handled the argument for the defense. It was “offered as bearing on the prisoner’s state of mine.”
Judge Crawford ruled that a defendant’s declarations are generally not admissible in his favor. However, “the acts and declarations of a man alleged to be insane are the best possible evidence of insanity. And if these declarations are offered for that purpose, I do not feel at liberty to reject them.”
Brady returned to his questioning of Wooldridge. What did Sickles say to Key’s waving of the handkerchief on the day of the shooting?
He said, “that fellow, who had just passed my door, has made signals to my wife.”
Did you make inquiries as to the truth of the R. P. G. letter?
“Yes, sir.” Wooldridge detailed his investigation of Friday and Saturday, Sickles’s reaction, and the events inside his house on Sunday.
On cross-examination, Wooldridge said that he did not know Sickles had left the house and that he was wearing an overcoat when he returned. From where he was sitting, he could see anyone leaving the house by the front stairs. Butterworth was the only person he saw. To pass the time, Woolridge set his crutches aside and went to pick up a nearby stereoscope, a device for viewing three dimensional images. By the time he came back to his chair, he saw people running outside. Sickles must have left through the basement door.
A New York correspondent reported that the city was unusually quiet, as it seemed everyone was at the Sickles trial as an observer or witness.
Chapter Forty-One
“Conclusion of the Evidence for the Defense”
* * *
“If anything could reconcile the relatives of that unfortunate individual [Key] to his hasty departure, it would undoubtedly be the reflection that he thereby escaped the intolerable nuisance of seeing in the newspapers every day the report of the everlasting Sickles case.”
—New London Daily Chronicle (Connecticut)
* * *
“You know?”
—Felix McCluskey of Brooklyn
DAY FIFTEEN—Wednesday, April 20, 1859
The Albany Evening Journal printed an apology to their readers for not properly sanitizing their coverage of the Sickles trial. They promised that, if they couldn’t clean up future editions before deadline, they would discontinue coverage. “We do not intend that our columns shall contain any paragraph which may not be read in the family circle.” The Boston Recorder thought the “publication of the trial must have a bad moral effect upon the community.”1
Felix McCluskey of Brooklyn testified to his attempts, mostly unsuccessful, to insert himself in the story. He arrived on the scene after the shooting and followed the crowd to the attorney general’s. He knocked on the door and handed the attorney general his calling card. McCluskey waited for ten to fifteen minutes until Sickles, Butterworth, and the rest walked right past him to a carriage and rode to Sickles’s house. Undeterred, McCluskey then walked into Sickles’s house.
He saw Sickles looking “like a man frightened to death . . . with his hair over his face. I thought he would kill every man, woman, and child in the house.” McCluskey saw Sickles climb the steps to tell Teresa. “I thought, even, that if he went upstairs he might injure his wife.” McCluskey wanted the world to know that he took a few steps forward, ready to act. Sickles “stayed upstairs only a few minutes, for if he had stayed longer I know I would have gone up.” His opinion was that Sickles “was not responsible for anything he did. Mr. Black looked scared and excited too.”
“Do you think the attorney general is crazy too?”
“No, sir.”
Sickles departed for jail less than an hour after he arrived.
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br /> “While I was in the entry, I heard this confusion, you know? I thought it was Mr. Sickles crying, you know? Everybody was excited, you know? Mr. Walker appeared to be taken aback, you know?”
Then the question everyone was wondering: who are you and why were you there?
“I went there,” McCluskey said, “in the capacity of a citizen, you know? I heard that somebody had shot somebody in cold blood.”
Charles G. Bacon brought a certificate from the surveyor’s office. Madison place, the street between Lafayette Park and the homes on the eastern edge of Lafayette Square, is 90 feet wide, the same as Jackson and Seventeenth Street. The park is 419 feet north to south and 725 feet across, not counting Jackson and Madison places. This was entered into evidence.
John McDonald, “a smart young Irishman,” was called. He had served as a groom and footman to the Sickles since February 10. As part of his job, he accompanied John Cooney when he was driving the coach. On Thursday, February 24, they traveled from one reception to another and seemed to see Key wherever they went. As they were leaving the last event, a reception at Rose O’Neal Greenhow’s, Key sat with his hip on her carriage and his legs out. He sat in that position, looking straight in Mrs. Sickles’s face.
“Are you going to the hop at Willard’s?” Key asked.
“If Dan will allow me,” she said.
“I expect to meet you there.”
“Your eyes look bad.”
“I don’t feel well,” Key said.
Key entered the carriage and she told them to drive to 11th street. They stopped and let Key out on K between 15th and 16th. From there, they stopped at Gautier’s, the confectioner. Teresa went in and came out as fast as she could. “Drive home rapidly,” she said. She arrived at her own party, just in time.
The defense rested.
