Daniel E. Sickles

Major General Daniel E. Sickles

Daniel Edgar Sickles (born October 20, 1819 in New York City , †  May 3, 1914 ibid) was a general in the United States Army in the American Civil War and a diplomat and politician of the Democratic Party .

Early life and first political activities

Sickles was born in New York to George Garrett Sickles and Susan Marsh Sickles. His father worked as a patent attorney and politician. Sickles studied law at what was then the University of the City of New York and was trained in the law firm of Benjamin Franklin Butler . In 1846, Sickles was admitted to the bar. Already in 1842 he was in the parliament of the State of New York , the New York State Assembly have been elected.

In 1852, at the age of 33, Sickles married 15-year-old Teresa Bagiogli, against the wishes of his parents and also against the wishes of the bride's parents. In 1853 he briefly held the office of representative of the City of New York in civil litigation; then he resigned and was appointed Secretary of the United States Legation in London by President Franklin Pierce , where he worked for the Secretary of State and later President James Buchanan . In 1855, Sickles returned to the United States and was a member of the New York Senate from 1856 to 1857 and then from 1856 to 1857 representative of New York State in the United States House of Representatives .

The shooting keys

Sickles shoots Key

Sickles' political career was overshadowed by scandals early on. He was reprimanded by the New York State Assembly for having gone into parliament with the well-known prostitute Fanny White. She also accompanied Sickles to London. While his pregnant wife stayed behind in the United States, he is said to have even introduced White to Queen Victoria , using the last name of a political opponent . In 1859, Sickles shot and killed Philip Barton Key , the son of the author of The Star-Spangled Banner, in Lafayette Park in Washington, DC directly across from the White House . Sickles had found out that Key, who served as a federal attorney for Washington, DC, had a publicly known love affair with his wife.

After the fact, Sickles confessed to the responsible public prosecutor. He was taken into custody, but that didn't stop Washington, DC high society from continuing to associate with Sickles. He received so many visitors to the prison that he was allowed to use the prison director's office to receive them. He was also allowed to keep his personal weapons, which was unusual even at the time. Attendees included Congressmen, Senators, and other senior members of Washington society. President Buchanan sent Sickles a personal message.

Sickles, who was accused of murder and had excellent connections due to his relationship with Tammany Hall , was defended in court by several leading politicians, including the later Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton . The defense strategy was to plead Sickles' temporary incapacity at the time of the crime. It was alleged that Sickles was driven insane by his wife's infidelity and that he was not sane when he shot Keys. This was the first time such a defense has been brought before a court in the United States. Public opinion was on Sickles' side anyway and there were articles in the newspapers celebrating Sickles as the hero who saved Washington's women from a villain.

It was crucial that Sickles' wife admitted the affair with Keys and asked his forgiveness. Although this was not allowed to be introduced into the process, Sickles passed the information to the press. In any case, the nature of his defense had meant that the process dominated the headlines for weeks. In the end the defense was successful, and Sickles was acquitted on April 25, 1859. He then publicly forgave his wife and briefly disappeared from public life, but kept his office. Due to the strict morals of the time, the population was more angry that Sickles had forgiven his wife than about his deed.

In the Civil War

When the Civil War broke out in 1861, Sickles was anxious to make his public image more positive again and he was instrumental in the establishment of four volunteer regiments in New York. He was soon made colonel of one of these regiments and promoted to volunteer brigadier general in September 1861 . He was one of the most prominent political generals in the Union Army. Although Sickles was forced to resign in March 1862 because the US Congress refused to confirm his promotion, he managed, using his political connections, to regain both his rank and his command on May 24, 1862. He rejoined his brigade, which took part in the Peninsula campaign of the Army of the Potomac under George B. McClellan , but missed the Battle of Williamsburg , in which the brigade was particularly prominent, due to the interruption of his command . Despite his lack of military experience, Sickles skillfully commanded his brigade in the Battle of Seven Pines and the Seven Day Battle . It soon became known as the " Excelsior Brigade ". Sickles was not involved in the Second Battle of the Bull Run as he had used his political influence to obtain permission to raise new troops in New York. He also did not take part in the Battle of Antietam because the corps, to which he was already assigned as division commander, was deployed to protect the capital.

Sickles maintained a close relationship with Major General Joseph Hooker , who was initially Sickles' superior division commander and later the commander in chief of the Army of the Potomac. Both men had a bad reputation as hard drinkers and philanderers. Reports compared the headquarters of both to bars and brothels.

Sickles was promoted to major general of the Volunteers on November 29, 1862. His division was kept in reserve at the Battle of Fredericksburg . In February 1863, Hooker, now commander of the Army of the Potomac, gave him command of the III. Corps of this army. This decision was controversial within the army, since until now only officers trained at the United States Military Academy in West Point had been given command of an entire corps of the Union Army. However, Sickles then demonstrated his military qualities on May 2, 1863 in the Battle of Chancellorsville . First, he gave Hooker the unnoticed advice to pursue and attack Confederate troops he had identified in his sector. As it turned out later, it was the Confederate units of Stonewall Jackson , which were on a secret march around the flank of the Union forces. He then protested unsuccessfully against Hooker's order to withdraw his corps from a well defensible position on elevated terrain.

The Battle of Gettysburg

Sickles made his most famous and controversial appearance at the Battle of Gettysburg . On July 2, 1863, the new Commander in Chief of the Army of the Potomac, Major General George Gordon Meade , ordered Sickles and his corps to take up a defensive position protected on one side by another corps of Union forces and on the other by a hill . Sickles, who probably remembered the battle of Chancellorsville, did not carry out this order, but instead led his corps forward about a mile further to an area slightly elevated, where it took up positions. The effect of this was that the defensive position of the corps was not as deep as actually planned and that a bulge was created in the front of the Union troops, which the Confederates could fire and attack from three sides. When Meade went to Sickles to confront him, it was too late because the Confederate attack had already started. The Confederate Corps of Lieutenant General James Longstreet and especially the division of Confederate Major General Lafayette McLaws smashed Sickles' corps so that it was no longer operational in battle. Sickles was hit in the right leg by a cannonball and had to be taken to the hospital on a stretcher. As he was carried back past his troops, he puffed on a cigar, grinning, to encourage them. The leg had to be amputated and Sickles was transported to Washington, DC. He arrived there on July 4, 1863 and was one of the first to bring news of the Union's victory at Gettysburg to the capital. Immediately, Sickles launched a campaign to spread his version of the course of the battle after which he had been instrumental in the victory.

Sickles' leg and the cannonball that shattered it. Exhibited at the National Museum of Health and Medicine

Sickles was aware of an order from the Union Forces Medical Corps commander General William A. Hammond to sample the body parts and organs that had been injured in combat, along with the projectiles and debris that led to the injury, at the newly established Army Medical Museum in Washington , DC should be collected. He therefore had his amputated leg preserved and handed it over to the museum together with the cannonball that had smashed it. The gift was accompanied by a visiting card on which he had noted: "With compliments from Major General DES". After that, he is said to have visited his leg on every anniversary of the amputation. In addition to Sickles' leg, the museum's collection now contains other well-known artifacts, such as the waist of Major General Henry A. Barnum and the vertebrae of Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth and President James A. Garfield .

His disobedience at the Battle of Gettysburg did not lead to a court martial, as Sickles' wound was taken into account and it was also assumed that there would be no further trouble with him now. In addition, Sickles' excellent political connections were well known, so it was to be expected that he would not be convicted without a lengthy trial and that he would take revenge. After the war ended, Sickles was to wage a vicious campaign against Meade, whose achievements in the war he publicly questioned. Sickles said that Meade did not understand his behavior at Gettysburg correctly and that the credit for the Union's victory in this battle should actually be due to him. In several newspaper articles, and with Daniel Butterfield , another major general with close ties to Hooker, also in an interrogation before a congressional committee of inquiry, Sickles alleged that Meade had secretly planned to withdraw his army on the first day of the Battle of Gettysburg. In addition, although the forward movement of Sickles' corps was in breach of an order by Meades, it was still correct, since it had diverted the Confederate attack from its actual goals and thus protected them. Indeed, Sickles' movement took the Confederate commanders by surprise and to this day historians debate the consequences of this movement for the outcome of the battle.

Sickles was awarded the Medal of Honor 34 years after the Battle of Gettysburg after a long campaign . The reason given was that he had served in the field with remarkable bravery and vigorously resisted the advance of the enemy. He also continued to encourage his troops after he was seriously wounded himself.

Career after the Civil War

Despite the loss of his right leg, Sickles remained in the army after the Battle of Gettysburg. However, to his indignation, General Ulysses S. Grant no longer gave him field command. Shortly after the end of the war, he was sent on a secret mission to Colombia in 1865 , the aim of which was to remind Colombians to respect the agreement of 1846, which allowed the United States to transport troops across the Isthmus of Panama . Then he was from 1865 to 1867 during the Reconstruction called reintegration phase of the defeated states of the south in the Union commander of the Second Military District ( North and South Carolina ). In 1867 Sickles was promoted to Brevet Brigadier General and then Brevet Major General of the regular army, which he left in 1869.

Daniel Sickles' funeral

From 1869 to 1874, Sickles was the United States' Ambassador to Spain and, as such, was involved in the negotiations to resolve the Virginius affair , which was triggered by the seizure of a US ship and the execution of part of the crew as pirates by the Spanish . At the Spanish court, too, he regained the reputation of a womanizer and was said to have had numerous love affairs, including with high-ranking ladies. After the death of his first wife in 1867, he married Carmina Creagh in 1871, the daughter of a Spanish councilor with whom he had two children.

From 1888 to 1895, Sickles held various positions in the New York administration. In 1890 he was New York Sheriff . In doing so, however, he got caught up in various financial scandals. Thereafter, Sickles received from 1893 to 1895 again a mandate as representative of New York in the House of Representatives of the United States. Sickles played an important role in maintaining the Gettysburg battlefield and in establishing the Gettysburg National Military Park . Among other things, he procured the fence with which part of the site was enclosed. Curiously, this fence originally stood in Lafayette Park in Washington, DC, the place where Sickles once shot Key.

Although virtually all commanding generals who fought in Gettysburg were given a memorial on the former battlefield, there is no one for Sickles. When asked why he hadn't received a statue, Sickles replied, “The whole battlefield is a memorial to Dan Sickles.” However, a bust of Sickles was originally supposed to be included in the memorial of the Excelsior Brigade, but he is supposed to be one for them Bust certain funds have embezzled yourself. The memorial now contains an image of an eagle instead of the bust.

Sickles spent his final years in New York City. He died there in 1914 and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery .

swell

• W. Robert Beckman: Daniel Edgar Sickles. In: David S. Heidler, Jeanne T. Heidler (Eds.): Encyclopedia of the American Civil War: A Political, Social, and Military History. WW Norton & Company , 2000, ISBN 0-393-04758-X .
• John H. Eicher, David J. Eicher: Civil War High Commands. Stanford University Press, 2001, ISBN 0-8047-3641-3 .
• Thomas Keneally: American Scoundrel: The Life of the Notorious Civil War General Dan Sickles. Nan A. Talese, 2002, ISBN 0-385-50139-0 .
• Larry Tagg: The Generals of Gettysburg. Savas Publishing, 1998, ISBN 1-882810-30-9 .
• Ezra J. Warner: Generals in Blue: Lives of the Union Commanders. Louisiana State University Press, 1964, ISBN 0-8071-0822-7 .

See also

• List of generals of the Union in the Civil War

Web links

Commons : Daniel E. Sickles  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Daniel E. Sickles in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)
• Articles about Sickles at Arlington National Cemetery site (English)
• Biography Daniel Sickles (English)
• Daniel Sickles in the database of Find a Grave (English)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Congressman Daniel Sickles is acquitted in his trial for the murder of Philip Barton Key. In: House Divided: The Civil War Research Engine at Dickinson College. Accessed January 16, 2020 (English).