America. He recounts the murder of Francis Scott keys bond and the trial that followed. Excited to have chris derose. He was here last week chris was in sweden last week, so we are thrilled he took the time out. He is a New York Times bestselling author of the starspangled scandal, which is what were talking about today. He was former senior litigation counsel to the Arizona Attorney general, professor of constitutional and international law, and clerk of superior court for americas fourth largest county, maricopa. Chris sits on the board of directors for the Abraham Lincoln association and the board of scholarly advisors to president lincoln college. He and his wife reside in phoenix. Without further introduction, i present to you chris derose. You, tammy,thank for that introduction. Thanks to the Gettysburg Center for having us here, pennsylvania tv, and cspan booktv. This will be my for the parents and thank you for all you do to promote books and promote office. Who here has heard the one about the congressman who killed his wifes lover across from the white house . When i came across this story, i knew it was too extraordinary not to share. I was working on my last book called the president s war, which is about the five former president s who lived to see the american civil war. Im reading through their letters and diaries, and they are appropriately focused on the great challenges facing the country as the country teeters toward the edge of civil war. Then all of a sudden, all they want to talk about is the sickles affair. Whats the sickles affair . I had to stop what i was doing, fall into a Research Rabbit hole this happens to me once in a while. Sickles did indeed kill his wifes lover across the street from the white house. The victim was no ordinary victim, barton key, sun of the author of our National Anthem son of the author of our National Anthem and one of andicas most prestigious important families, american royalty. This is just where the story starts. I do want to read to you what set all of this in motion. Sickles is flying high. Hes a congressman from new jamesand intimate of buchanan. He is considered one of the most forceful and persuasive speakers in the house of representatives. He has talked about for big things in the future, and he and his wife sit atop the washington social scene until one night, i thursday after the parlor of his house is cleared out and they have gone to the after party at willard hotel, and he comes home before trying to get to get some work done before going to bed. He remembers before the party winds down, a messenger had come to him with a letter. He opens it and reads the following dear sir, with deep regret, i enclose to your address a few lines, but an indispensable duty compels me to do so, seeing your greatly imposed upon. There is a fellow, i may say, for he is not a gentleman by any means, by the name of philip theon key, and i believe District Attorney who rents a house by the name of john gray situated on 15th street between k and l street for no other purpose than to meet your wife, misses sickles. He hangs a string out the window as a signal to her that he is in and leaves the door unfastened and she walks in, and, sir, i do much theu, he has as use of your wife as you have. With these few hints, i leave the rest for you to imagine. Most respectfully, your friend, rpg. No one asked me what i think the author meant to lead to the imagination. I think the point was conveyed with shocking clarity. Leave to the imagination. Sickles understands that gossip is the coin of the work of , but that letter is awfully specific. He realized he is going to have to verify one way or another, and he will either be greatly relieved or this entire life that he has built for himself is going to be completely upended. So he goes to the house of representatives. Georges his friend wooldridge. If you look at henchmen in the dictionary, you would probably see Something Like him. He wears a bowler hat, has a thick mustache, a huge upper body, and he walks on crutches because of infantile paralysis. Men with a massive chest walking on crutches, big mustache, bowler hat, and he first meets sickles when he was a doorkeeper at the new york assembly, but he is an old tammany person. He grows up to manage a brothel and a barroom, and he hears all kinds of great information in his capacity and decides the real money is a newspaper and to print these stories in the press. He realizes as a newspaper editor, its one thing to sell advertising, but what if you could blackmail people who could not afford to see their names appear in the newspaper . This gets him in trouble. He ends up in prison. When he leaves, he goes to europe for 10 years as the manager of the first minstrel show, and reappears in albany, where he makes a connection with senator sickles. When sickles is elected to congress, he brings wooldridge with him and get him a job as a clerk. It is to wooldridge, his old friend, that he turns and confides about this awful letter he has received, so they begin to stake out in this neighborhood. The neighborhood north of the wherehouse and this house barton key and his wife are supposedly meeting. They begin a stakeout. Everyone agrees it is artan key going into the house, but they also say the woman wears a veil, so they are trying to catch these two going into the house, trying to catch them in the act. What happens is they are able to match clothing description of the woman seemed going into the outfitith key to an owned by teresa, so theres no hiding it. Daniel sickles will say often over the next few days that follow, i was the last person to know what happened in my family. Hes not far off the mark, and indeed, he tries to deny it as long as he can, though he cannot ignore the evidence any further. His wife and gets her to sign a confession about what she did. It happens at his house when hes gone, what happened at the house specifically rented for the purpose of carrying on this , and sickles affair with artan key, whom he had believed was his friend, and sickles has to decide what to do about this. He takes it to another old tammany men who had had a variety of postings in this administration. U. S. Attorney of mississippi, now the head of the office that tests the purity of coins. He is in d. C. On business. Just got two of his old tammany stalwarts, George Wooldridge and samuel butterworth, in the room with him. Butterworth advises him to send teresa back to new york, go to europe, filed for divorce, no one will know what happened. Sickles says its pretty good advice, but it sounds like everyone in town already knows about it, so that route is closed off. Hes trying to figure out what to do. Enter barton key. Sickles lives in a home on the west side of Lafayette Square. What might be particular interest to this audience, it is known as the go house the yule house. Doctor, alt by a physician who came to the Nations Capital when it was new york city, and had big dreams to open up a hospital, fell into alcoholism, some bad financial mismanagement, and ended up having to sell the house. So sickles is in the west side in thete square home in the west side of Lafayette Square. Goes to the house and uses the prearranged signal for sickles wife to meet him at the rendezvous house. Sickles is watching everything he built his entire life it looks like its all going up in smoke. This beautiful wife that he had was the most popular woman in washington betrayed him with one of his best friends. Shes the mother of his child. Hes trying to figure out what to do, and there is key walking in Lafayette Park waving the. Andkerchief at his house butterworth actually leaves to go visit a sick friend on the east side of Lafayette Square in a building very imaginatively known as the clubhouse. It is a private members club on the east side of Lafayette Square. Again, a particular interest, and the end of the civil war, this is the home that will be occupied by william seward, and its the home where he is attacked and fatally killed at the conclusion of the civil war. Butterworth goes to visit a friend of his who is sick. He encounters key, they have a conversation, and then he sees Daniel Sickles show up. Sickles tells key, you have dishonored my home. Prepare to die. He brings three guns to the fight. In a trenchcoat on an unseasonably warm february day. And of course, where do you go if you are a congressman who just killed the u. S. Attorney . Cannot go to the home of the attorney general. Word spreads that key has been killed, that sickles is the killer. People leave their homes, leave their boarding houses, leave the bars and restaurants and all try to get a look at what is happening. You have over 100 people show up for the coroners inquest with keyes body right there on the ground with one witness after another being summoned to testify to what happened. You have people going into sickles house and standing out on his lawn waiting for him to get arrested. He is allowed to go and say goodbye to his wife. His promise that he wont harm her is good enough for the police officers, even though he has just killed u. S. Attorney for d. C. Walks into his wifes room, triumphantly announces, i have killed him. This is just the beginning of where the story starts. It all gets crazier from here. Was there to create a Media Firestorm and a sensation in society unlike anything you had ever seen. This will be the most covered American History up until this point. I found articles from hawaii, from bermuda. There was daily coverage in the United Kingdom, regular coverage in france. I found a book written about it in german. The entire world was paying attention to this fantastic case, and its the first story that we as americans all followed together because we just got the telegraph. People are finding out about this story in as close to realtime as had ever happened up to this point, so you have people in new york finding out about it that evening. Sickles family and friends in new york are finding out about it that evening. You have newspaper correspondents running around d. C. Trying to collect as many facts as they can, trying to get it out on the wire. I should back up a little bit and talk about how news was changing at this time. Originally, the concept of newsworthys expensive commercial newspapers where you learn the price of cotton in copper and other commodities. Worship is leaving, what ship is going nothing exciting. And you had political newspapers financed by Political Parties to orher promote a candidate pull them aside as a candidate or party. Then you have the interest of the penny press. We dont want to talk about politics or the shipping news. Lets talk about politics, tragedies, and true crime. Stories,human interest and they financed it with advertising. The number of newspapers that could be printed in any given day, the lateness of the hour, so you could get a story like this out on the street hours after it happened, and that is what happened. The reports were shockingly detailed. Of course, you have some fake news in there. You have People Racing to. Uickly too quickly they said butterworth had been arrested as an accomplice, teresa was arrested, teresa was pregnant with bartons baby, all kinds of information, but a lot of Accurate Information as well. Yes, this was not a surprise. Sickles really was the last to know. You have this daily media frenzy blurring the line between news and entertainment, and i think it has never been more relevant to look back and see where it happened. Sickles, if hes going to have any hope of surviving the hangman snooze he had just killed the chief federal prosecutor in broad daylight in front of many witnesses he has to put together the best legal team. This is the first Legal Dream Team that is assembled, and it looks as though it is chosen very deliberately. Heart out, johnnie cochran, this is the first Legal Dream Team. Once the news of sickles being arrested hits the streets, his family members and rents start hiring lawyers, and by the end hashe first day, he already four lawyers representing him, including edwin stanton, who is a short time away from his eternal glory as our secretary of war during the american civil lawyer, but at this time, he is a prominent lawyer in washington , d. C. , and he is the first lawyer who came to represent Daniel Sickles. The prosecutors in this case, no slouches either. Daniel carlisle, one of the first choice is to represent him, happens to be a very close friend of barton and has no interest in helping bartons murderer. Then you have the future assistant secretary in the Confederate States of america in , prisonerhostage swaps for the confederacy, also go on to be Jefferson Davis but at the time, he is the deputy u. S. Attorney. Key was not actually the best u. S. Attorney. Hes there because of his family name, because of his political connections. Wool does a lot of the work. Interesting was that he really vexed robert rules in life by putting all this work off on him, and now by dying, he has given him the biggestcase under the microscope in the world. He would be appointed by president buchanan to replace key as u. S. Attorney. I think this might be a singular phenomenon in u. S. History where you actually have to wait for a new u. S. Attorney to be appointed in a murder case because the other one has been killed. So hes got this incredible. Ineup hes been appointed by president polk and has resided over every major trial in washington, d. C. , up to that point. One of the things that struck me was the confluence of all these fascinating people who either were witnesses in the trial, who in the courtroom who participated in some way in this extraordinary story, or were part of the life of Daniel Sickles. Sickles meets his wife when she is very young. Boarder in the of heris father father. The mans name is lorenzo dupont but he starts off as a young man in venice, becomes a priest, decides the priestly life is not for him. He is ultimately expelled from the city of vision a venice and is charged with concubinage. He connects with mozart, has the like to famous shows performances and operas we have probably all seen or heard of and circuitously finds his way back to new york city where he starts the first Opera Company on the island. One of his daughters teresa is an adopted daughter but was suspected to be very much a biological daughter of his due to a liaison in his 60s. Thats going to be the mother of bagsa bell julie teresa ioli sickles. He will stay in touch with her as he enters the law, becomes a new york assemblyman. As she grows up, he decides he is in love with her. The family was opposed to the marriage at first because of the age difference. She is still in the equivalent of high school, so they married in secret with the mayor of new york performing the ceremony. Let it never be said that Daniel Sickles was not one for grand gestures. Eventually, the family will be reconciled with the idea of this marriage when they are married a second time in a public ceremony. Its a pretty good start to the marriage. You have the blessing of the mayor of new york city and the highest ecclesiastical office of the city. It should have portended good things. Sickles will end up going off to the United Kingdom when James Buchanan is packed off by president pierce. President pierce wants to be the first president since Andrew Jackson to win a second term. The only real figure of stature is buchanan. Him he resolves to send buchanan off as minister of the United Kingdom. Buchanan is a longtime senator and congressman, does not need the appointment, is not interested in the appointment, but pierce makes every accession, makes every demand, so he sends buchanan packing. Sickles ends up pitching his wagon to this guy who looks like he is in the last chapter of a long career of public service, so they end up going to the United Kingdom together, where teresa really shines. Her familiarity with languages, her familiarity with people and culture, she is really in her. Lement they probably should have stayed there. He will come back to paved the way for James Buchanans campaign for president. Pave the way. To endhad sent buchanan the onlyr, but democrat with the hope of winning the presidency in 1856 is someone who is untainted in any way by the kansas nebraska meanto the very act that to end buchanans career ends up being the thing that will ensure he becomes the next president of the United States. Sickles comes ahead of him to lay the groundwork. Sickles is not interested. This is a recurring theme throughout his life and career. Daniel sickles is his own man. Let me read something to you which i think is illustrative of his general life philosophy. He rights that as a congressman he writes this as a congressman, but think about him in gettysburg and every aspect of his life and see if this doesnt fit. I cannot play courtier to the multitudes, much less individuals. I know all the consequences and have many a long year since resolved to enjoy it, even at the price which must inevitably be paid. I do not deem it a wise course, nor prudent, nor recommend it to any friend, but i have adopted it. It is mine, and i will follow it, come what may. Come what may. Thats sickles in a nutshell. That is sickles at gettysburg, home in Lafayette Square, wanting to kill the attorney general in front of a crowd in washington, d. C. Sickles is his own man, so hes going to run for congress, and he wins. He immedia