November 12, 2025 • 25 mins
In 1859, Congressman Daniel Sickles murdered Philip Barton Key (son of the man who wrote The Star-Spangled Banner) in a fit of jealous rage just steps from the White House. The resulting trial became America’s first true media circus, and gave rise to the “crime of passion” defense. In short, it basically became legal to kill a man for sleeping with your wife. While this wasn't technically a law, it was the "Unwritten Law" for way longer than you might think.
Chris DeRose, author of Star Spangled Scandal: Sex, Murder, and the Trial that Changed America, joins Bob to talk about how this legal defense played out in America.
GUEST: Chris DeRose, author of Star Spangled Scandal: Sex, Murder, and the Trial that Changed America
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I mean, this is the oj case of the nineteenth century,
but in DC and with political people, this is the
most covered event in human history to this point, and
it's a story that Americans are experiencing almost as one
for the first time in American history. And so I
think this really creates this impression on people that, you know,
what what Sickles did was right. The jury was right
(00:22):
to acquit them. We should stop punishing people for this,
and then it's off to the races as far as
the unwritten law goes.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
You've reached American History Hotline. You asked the questions, We
get the answers. Leave a message. Hey, they're American History Hotliners.
Bob Crawford here, thrilled to be joining you again for
another episode of American History Hotline, the show where you
(00:52):
asked the questions. I'm just your humble, obedient servant trying
to get you some answers. The best way to get
us a question is to record a video or a
voice memo on your phone and email it to American
History Hotline at gmail dot com. That's American History Hotline
at gmail dot com. Look, many of you have direct
(01:13):
messaged me on Instagram with questions. That's great. I always
reply to you, though, go back record yourself asking you
that question and post it to American History Hotline at
gmail dot com. Okay, today's question is a spicy one.
Here to help me answer it. It's author of the
(01:33):
book Star Spangled Scandal, Sex Murder and the Trial that
Changed America. He's also an old dad like me.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
I am Chris Rosan. I am an old dad like Bob.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
Okay, Chris. Here's the question we got from a listener.
It's from Jason in Chicago. I heard it used to
be legal to kill a man for sleeping with your wife,
and it wasn't that long ago either. Is that true?
Speaker 1 (01:57):
That is substantially true. So in starting about the mid
nineteenth century and going until the nineteen fifties, it was,
to varying degrees, almost impossible to hold someone legally accountable
for the murder of someone who had dishonored their household
in the words of time.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
So we need to let our listeners know why you
are the expert to answer this question because you wrote
a book called Star Spangled Scandal and it's about a
murder from eighteen fifty nine committed by a Congressman Dan
Sickles tell us a little bit about the Sickles story,
(02:39):
and then we'll get into how this plays with something
called the Unwritten Law.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
Sure, so, Daniel Sickles is on top of the world.
He's been elected to Congress from New York City. His
beautiful wife is quickly rising in the ranks in Washington society.
She puts on the most sought after parties and prominent
(03:08):
members of both political parties will be in attendance. The
ambassadors from other country is business leaders, and people think
while sky's the limit for Daniel Sickles, he was a
protege of then President James Buchanan. He had served as
Buchanan's aide when Buchanan was Minister to the Court of
(03:30):
Saint James. So what we would note today is the
ambassador to the United Kingdom. And so as far as
Daniel Sickles knows, he's on top of the world and
the sky's the limit, and someday he's going to be
living across the street from his Lafayette Square mansion in
the White House. Then one day, after a party, he
(03:51):
pulls out a letter that had been handed to him
earlier that day by a messenger, and he reads it,
and the letter tells him it's a pseudonymous lets it's
signed RPG, and it tells him in great specificity that
his wife, Teresa Sickles, is meeting Philip Barton Key, the
(04:11):
US Attorney for the District of Columbia, so the chief
federal prosecutor for our nation's capital and American Royalty, the
son of Francis Scott Key, the author of our national anthem.
And the letter explains that barton Key, as he has known,
is meeting meeting Teresa Sickles in a house on Fifteenth Street,
(04:34):
and that, as the letter writer says, he has as
much the use of your wife as you do. And
so Sickles would ordinarily have ignored something like that, except
for the details which made it both hard to ignore
and easy to substantiate. And so Sickles goes into the
(04:55):
map room of the House of Representatives and he finds
what I'll describe as his henchmen, a guy that he
had brought with from Tammany Hall in New York, got
him a job in d C. And kind of his
eyes and ears in the Capitol, he says, he tells
him what happened, shows him the letter, and they are
able to verify the truth of the letter, and Sickles
(05:19):
confronts his wife, who admits her guilt, who signs a confession.
And then Sickles is beside himself, what do I do?
What do I do about my marriage? What do I
do about my wife and my daughter and my political career?
What do I do about Key? And so, while Sickles
is sort of talking this through with his henchman and
a guy named Butterworth who was a friend of his
(05:40):
from New York who was visiting DC, they're sitting in
the parlor of the Sickles house on Lafayette Square, and
they watch Barton Key enter Lafayette Square and start waving
his handkerchief at the house, which was the signal for
Sickles's wife to go meet him at their rendezvous house.
And so so, while Sickles is trying to figure out
(06:02):
what to do and bursting with anger and rage and frustration,
he sees this guy out there in Lafayette Square on
a Sunday, unseasonably warm Sunday in eighteen fifty nine. He
heads out there in a trench coat with at least
three firearms, and he sends mister Key to his fate.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
So he murders He murders him in broad daylight.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
In broad daylight. There are plenty of witnesses, everyone from
treasury clerks to Cyrus McCormick, the inventor of the mechanical reaper.
Is that I witness. He testifies at the trial, And
interestingly enough, there is a young man who was an
aide to James Buchanan. He runs into the White House
(06:47):
to tell James Buchanan what had happened, and the president actually,
this is one instance we know for sure in American
history where a president committed the crime of obstruction of justice.
So this young age says, Daniel Sickles is murdered Barton
Key in front of the White House. And of course,
as we mentioned, Sickles is Buchanan's close friend, he's his
(07:08):
former aide. He's kind of a protege. He tells his aid.
He goes, well, you know, as a material witness, you
might be held in jail until the trial, which of
course was not true. And he says, here, I'm going
to give you some money. I'm going to give you
a souvenir of your time here in the White House.
And he hands him a shaving razor that he had
bought while he was ambassador in the United Kingdom, and
(07:32):
he says, here's the shaving razor, which I just assume
it is not a great souvenir. It was either a
better gift at the time than it seems today, or
it was just what he had around him, hands him
that in some money and says, you'd better get back
to North Carolina. And so that story made it into
the North Carolina newspapers later in that young man's life,
and I actually was able to get in touch with
his grandson and track down the razor. So the family.
(07:56):
The family donated that razor to the to Wheatland, to
the jam Buchanan Homestead and Museum. And so I actually
helped find that raizor, find the family and got that
where people can go view it as a tangible proof
of how the President helped a witness get out of town.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
That's amazing, Chris. So so here, I'm sure Sickles is arrested, right, Sickles.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
Actually goes and turns himself in, And of course Sickles
is the guy always does things with style. Where do
you turn yourself in after you've murdered the US Attorney
you go to the home of the Attorney General in
Franklin Square. And so he went and turned himself in
at the home of the US Attorney General. And he
was held in a notorious prison called the Blue jug
(08:40):
in Washington, d c. And when he complained about his accommodations,
the jailor said, this is the These are the finest
accommodations you members of Congress have afforded us.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
And so what happens at the trial? How how does
that go? How does the trial go? Because this plays
into our you know, the undergirding of what is the
unwritten law.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
Absolutely so one interesting aspect of this trial, among many,
is that Sickles is represented by the first legal dream
team in American history. And it kind of happens by accident,
you know, news of his arrest gets out. His friends
in New York start sending lawyers, people in DC start
finding lawyers for him. So he has this extensive legal
team drawn of friends of his who were the most
(09:23):
prominent lawyers in New York City. Edwin Stanton, who is
on the verge of eternal fame about to join Buchanan's
cabinet as Attorney General, and of course in short order
Abraham Lincoln's cabinet as our Civil War Secretary of War.
But before that, he's Daniel Sickles's lawyers. I'm prominent member
of Sickles's defense team. And so you have these incredible
(09:47):
lawyers lined up to represent Sickles. You have a new
US attorney who had to be appointed by James Buchanan
before the trial could commence. At first, you know, there's
a lot of popular feeling in the country that maybe
Sickles did what was necessary or what was right. As
time passed, everyone seemed to agree that the further they
(10:08):
could prolong the trial, the likelier it was that Sickles
would hang. And so the defense makes a series of arguments,
kind of a half hearted self defense argument. Well, none
of you people saw whether Key had a gun in
his hand. Maybe Key had a gun, Maybe Key threatened him.
You know, you don't really know, you know, maybe they
did this sort of half I'm not sure that they
believed it, but they were trying to just kick up
(10:30):
dust every way they could. They argued that the affair
itself was provocation for the murder, and that the murder
was justified on those grounds alone, which was kind of
a remarkable argument to make in a court of law,
as the US attorney pointed out, because the most you'd
really seen before that was if you caught a man
(10:51):
in bed with your wife. There might be mitigating circumstances
you might get away with manslaughter, you know, some kind
of heat of the moment defense, but it was never
seen as a complete defense that would lead to an acquittal.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
So how did temporary insanity play into this?
Speaker 1 (11:07):
Well, so you have witnesses who encountered Sickles before the shooting,
and you have witnesses, including the Attorney General of the
United States and a US senator from Pennsylvania, who saw
him right after the killing. And he appeared pretty composed,
and so you couldn't make the argument that Sickles was
just insane. But the argument they made was that he
(11:30):
had it was suffering under temporary insanity. So, you know,
he puts on a trench coat to conceal three firearms
and walks across Lafayette Square and I've paced it out.
It's a few minute walk. It's you know, Lafayette Square
in front of the White House is pretty big.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
It's plenty of time to realize that you're about to.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
Make a big mistake. Well, I don't know if he
ever saw it as a mistake, but he certainly was
cognizant of what he was doing. But his defense argued
to the jury that during the time that he's shot Key,
and maybe not a minute before, maybe not a minute
after this all transpired, but certainly during that time he
(12:11):
was laboring under a mental distress that excused his conduct
as a matter.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
Of law, So this becomes something that is known as
the unwritten law. And you know, I was reading your book.
There's a whole chapter on this in your book, which
I recommend everybody go by immediately. It's Star Spangled Scandal
by our great guest today, Chris de Rose. But it
wasn't always like this, right, It wasn't always like you
(12:40):
create a you commit a crime of passion, and you're
gonna be, you know, found temporarily insane and you get off.
What were the societal changes in the mid nineteenth century
that made this okay, that made jury say, you know,
I don't think we should hold this man responsible for
(13:02):
his actions.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
Yes, So I think one of them actually is the
rise of mass media. So if we think about this
celebrity obsessed, scandal obsessed, breaking news obsessed culture that we
live in today. It all has its roots in this
event from eighteen fifty nine. So in the beginning of
American history, you really had two kinds of newspapers. You
(13:25):
had political newspapers that parties would subsidize and try to
get out to as many people as possible to promote
their ideas and their candidates. And then you had sort
of what you think of as like the shipping news,
you know, commercial business intelligence, big broadsheets with lots of
information about which ship docked here, and how much did
(13:46):
they sell their cotton for and what cargo did they buy,
important things like that that people had to pay a
premium to buy. As printing presses got more efficient, you
could now print newspapers that you could sell a profit
to the average person, and so you news coverage changed.
It became more sensational to sort of fulfill this demand
(14:09):
of the average person for news about crime and fires
and animal stories and the kind of things you see
written about talked about today in the news. So more
more popular subjects and so you know, scored it called
the penny press, where the average person now had access
to daily newspapers, perhaps less edifying information than may have
(14:33):
preceded it, but so you have these you have these newspapers,
and then the invention of the telegraph and the scaling
of the telegraph, so now you know, I write about
in the book about how it took two weeks to
find out in the state capitol of Missouri that William
Henry Harrison had died, you know, And and when when
when the telegraph has introduced, people wondered what was the
(14:55):
use in finding out information right away when you could
wait a few days and find out about it through
the mail. Because newspapers were being exchanged throughout the country.
You know, it was free to post newspapers, and so
newspapers would exchange copies of their editions with each other
and then print each other's news all across the country.
But that would take some time. So with the scaling
(15:16):
of the telegraph, you had almost instantaneous information all across
the country. And so Sickles really lit the match with
this incredible story, right, the prominent congressman, the beautiful wife,
the handsome son of American royalty, and this horrific crime
that happened in front of the white House. I mean,
this is the oj case of the nineteenth century, but
(15:38):
in DC and with political people. But so people were
looking for a turn of the screw coverage from this trial,
everything they could find out about the people involved. And really,
if you looked prior to that, you think about like
the murder of Helen Jewett, for instance, in New York,
that was probably the most covered crime prior to that,
(15:58):
think about a few paragraphs in newspaper. And in this case,
many newspapers are printing verbatim coverage of that day's proceedings
in trial. So this is really this is the most
covered event in human history to this point, and it's
a story that Americans are experiencing almost as one for
the first time in American history. And so I think
(16:18):
this really creates this impression on people that you know, what,
what Sickles did was right, the jury was right to
acquit them. We should stop punishing people for this. And
then it's off to the races as far as the
unwritten law goes, and it gets to.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
The point where where you have governors giving pardons for
these crimes in the cases when men are convicted. Talk
about a few of those, because there's one interesting one
I recall from South Carolina.
Speaker 1 (16:46):
Yes, well, if it even got that far. There's been
some research into just how many thousands of cases where
the unwritten law spared someone what would otherwise be the
legal ramifications of murder, And many cases were just never charged.
If the cases were charged, often you would find the
(17:06):
grand jury would refuse to indict. If the grand jury indicted,
the judge may well dismiss the case. And if the
judge didn't dismiss the case, the jury would likely acquit.
And in the rare instances where you could get somebody
to verdict on an unwritten law case and the jury
found them guilty, the judge would often hand down a
(17:27):
nominal fine or a minor slap on the wrist. However,
in the unusual cases during the era of the unwritten law,
where you could get someone all the way to verdict
and the judge handed down a meaningful sentence, the governor
would be expected to use their executive clemency to let
(17:47):
the person go. And there was one instance in Kentucky
that was remarkable. A man catches his wife in bed
with another man. He shoots the man, kills him, and
the governor announces preemptively that if they're any criminal proceedings,
I'm going to pardon him, so don't even bother. And
what was really unusual about that is that the victim
was the governor's son. But even a governor would be
(18:11):
expected to pardon the killer of his own son in
order to vindicate the public expectation in public support for
the unwritten law. Now in South Carolina, I think this
is the most incredible. You know, we as historians, Bob,
we tell stories to illustrate phenomenon, and I think this
is the best example. So in South Carolina, the bosom
(18:32):
of the Confederacy after reconstruction, a black man catches a
white man in bed with his wife and kills him,
and the governor pardons him. So the unwritten law was
stronger and more widely supported than racism and unequal treatment
(18:52):
of the law in post reconstruction South Carolina shortly after
the Civil War.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
This is American History Hotline. I'm your host, Bob Crawford.
Speaker 1 (19:07):
Today.
Speaker 2 (19:07):
My guest is Chris Drose, author of Star Spangled Scandal, Sex, Murder,
and the Trial That Changed America. We're talking about well,
sex and murder. Remember to send us your burning hot
sexy questions about American history, record yourself using the voice
memo app on your phone and email it to Americanhistory
(19:31):
Hotline at gmail dot com. That's Americanhistory Hotline at gmail
dot com.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
Now back to the show.
Speaker 2 (19:40):
So, Chris, the unwritten Law, and this is the part
that I kind of find most fascinating about this is
that it's never codified.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
Never codified. In fact, the American Bar Association speculated that
maybe it should be codified because it was undermining actual laws,
laws that have been passed by legislatures, in common law,
that had been handed down by judges. Because probably the
most closely adhered to law in the country at this
point in American history was a law that nobody ever
(20:09):
wrote down.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
So, Chris, you've spent a lot of time studying this
case and all the consequences of it, from temporary insanity
to the unwritten law. What does this tell you about
human nature? Like, did you have what thoughts did this
kind of bring to mind or ponderings for yourself personally?
Because you're a lawyer as well, right, you trained in law.
Speaker 1 (20:33):
So yeah, and as a former attorney is both the
prosecutor and former criminal defense lawyer, you understand that, like
the civilization is a thin veneer, and that when people
experience something traumatic like this, there is a natural human
impulse for revenge, and there is an understanding among people
(20:56):
why you did what you did, and an understanding that
you're probably not to menace to society. You're just a
threat to people who would violate your home, you know,
in words that were used at the time. And so
I think I think that's what we learn about human nature, right,
that that all of everything we see that appears to
be a bulwark against anarchy and against people just reacting
(21:18):
and acting on their natural impulses. I don't know, I
said civilization is a thin veneer.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
So this is a cultural moment, right the period which
was about one hundred years, if not a little more.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
It goes into the nineteen fifties, so plenty of your listeners.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
So how does it change, how does it change back?
How do people How does it get to the point
where someone says, no, this guy should could, should be
should be.
Speaker 1 (21:45):
Penalized for this right? So I think it all revolves
around our perception of women and women's rights. If you
look at the news coverage around the Sickles trial, you know,
Teresa Sickles and her virtue was almost seen as Daniel
Sickles's property in a way, right, he is the man
(22:06):
of the family, she is his wife, bart and Key
had taken something from him. And it's really interesting to
see how Teresa Sickles really got it coming and going,
because she both gets blamed for the affair and ostracized
from society, but also Key is treated as someone who
seduced her, this poor innocent woman who had no agency
(22:26):
in the situation. So she was treated at once as
having no agency, but also as being to blame and
you know, paid for with the price of her place
in society. You know, her friends never called on her
again and she never went out in society following this
incident for the rest of her life. So I think,
as you know, with World War Two, more women were
(22:49):
entering the workforce with so many men under arms, women
entering the workforce and new roles and new responsibilities, having
their own money, having a measure of independence, they didn't
enjoy attaining new status in society. And so I think
as we enter the nineteen fifties, we're really starting to say,
you know what a woman's honor or a daughter's honor.
(23:09):
It's really not a man's to vindicate anymore. Women can
make their own decisions and be responsible for those decisions,
and it's really not so. I think that changing perception
of women in their role in society that leads to
both the beginning and end of the Unwritten Law.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
Wow, Chris, that is crazy. Like we think that we
live in crazy times now, and we do live in
crazy times. But I think through your book and through
talking about the Unwritten Law, we've all times are crazy.
Speaker 1 (23:38):
Do you think as a historian? I never I don't
share the panic that some people do at various points
in history. We are very lucky to have been born
and to live in America and at this time in
history in America, and things were always crazy, and their
every generation has had significant problems, and some far greater
than ours.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
In the chaos, there is optimism. Chris de Rose, thank
you so much.
Speaker 1 (24:04):
A pleasure.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
You've been listening to American History Hotline a production of
iHeart Podcasts and Scratch Track Productions. The show's executive producer
is James Morrison. Our executive producers from iHeart are Jordan
Runtall and Jason English. Original music composed by me, Bob Crawford.
Speaker 1 (24:29):
Please keep in touch.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
Our email is Americanhistory Hotline at gmail dot com. If
you like the show, please tell your friends and leave
us a review in Apple Podcasts.
Speaker 1 (24:41):
I'm your host, Bob Crawford.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
Feel free to hit me up on social media to
ask a history question or to let me know what
you think of the show. You can find me at
Bob Crawford Base. Thanks so much for listening, See you
next week.
I mean, this is the oj case of the nineteenth century,
but in DC and with political people, this is the
most covered event in human history to this point, and
it's a story that Americans are experiencing almost as one
for the first time in American history. And so I
think this really creates this impression on people that, you know,
what what Sickles did was right. The jury was right
(00:22):
to acquit them. We should stop punishing people for this,
and then it's off to the races as far as
the unwritten law goes.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
You've reached American History Hotline. You asked the questions, We
get the answers. Leave a message. Hey, they're American History Hotliners.
Bob Crawford here, thrilled to be joining you again for
another episode of American History Hotline, the show where you
(00:52):
asked the questions. I'm just your humble, obedient servant trying
to get you some answers. The best way to get
us a question is to record a video or a
voice memo on your phone and email it to American
History Hotline at gmail dot com. That's American History Hotline
at gmail dot com. Look, many of you have direct
(01:13):
messaged me on Instagram with questions. That's great. I always
reply to you, though, go back record yourself asking you
that question and post it to American History Hotline at
gmail dot com. Okay, today's question is a spicy one.
Here to help me answer it. It's author of the
(01:33):
book Star Spangled Scandal, Sex Murder and the Trial that
Changed America. He's also an old dad like me.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
I am Chris Rosan. I am an old dad like Bob.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
Okay, Chris. Here's the question we got from a listener.
It's from Jason in Chicago. I heard it used to
be legal to kill a man for sleeping with your wife,
and it wasn't that long ago either. Is that true?
Speaker 1 (01:57):
That is substantially true. So in starting about the mid
nineteenth century and going until the nineteen fifties, it was,
to varying degrees, almost impossible to hold someone legally accountable
for the murder of someone who had dishonored their household
in the words of time.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
So we need to let our listeners know why you
are the expert to answer this question because you wrote
a book called Star Spangled Scandal and it's about a
murder from eighteen fifty nine committed by a Congressman Dan
Sickles tell us a little bit about the Sickles story,
(02:39):
and then we'll get into how this plays with something
called the Unwritten Law.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
Sure, so, Daniel Sickles is on top of the world.
He's been elected to Congress from New York City. His
beautiful wife is quickly rising in the ranks in Washington society.
She puts on the most sought after parties and prominent
(03:08):
members of both political parties will be in attendance. The
ambassadors from other country is business leaders, and people think
while sky's the limit for Daniel Sickles, he was a
protege of then President James Buchanan. He had served as
Buchanan's aide when Buchanan was Minister to the Court of
(03:30):
Saint James. So what we would note today is the
ambassador to the United Kingdom. And so as far as
Daniel Sickles knows, he's on top of the world and
the sky's the limit, and someday he's going to be
living across the street from his Lafayette Square mansion in
the White House. Then one day, after a party, he
(03:51):
pulls out a letter that had been handed to him
earlier that day by a messenger, and he reads it,
and the letter tells him it's a pseudonymous lets it's
signed RPG, and it tells him in great specificity that
his wife, Teresa Sickles, is meeting Philip Barton Key, the
(04:11):
US Attorney for the District of Columbia, so the chief
federal prosecutor for our nation's capital and American Royalty, the
son of Francis Scott Key, the author of our national anthem.
And the letter explains that barton Key, as he has known,
is meeting meeting Teresa Sickles in a house on Fifteenth Street,
(04:34):
and that, as the letter writer says, he has as
much the use of your wife as you do. And
so Sickles would ordinarily have ignored something like that, except
for the details which made it both hard to ignore
and easy to substantiate. And so Sickles goes into the
(04:55):
map room of the House of Representatives and he finds
what I'll describe as his henchmen, a guy that he
had brought with from Tammany Hall in New York, got
him a job in d C. And kind of his
eyes and ears in the Capitol, he says, he tells
him what happened, shows him the letter, and they are
able to verify the truth of the letter, and Sickles
(05:19):
confronts his wife, who admits her guilt, who signs a confession.
And then Sickles is beside himself, what do I do?
What do I do about my marriage? What do I
do about my wife and my daughter and my political career?
What do I do about Key? And so, while Sickles
is sort of talking this through with his henchman and
a guy named Butterworth who was a friend of his
(05:40):
from New York who was visiting DC, they're sitting in
the parlor of the Sickles house on Lafayette Square, and
they watch Barton Key enter Lafayette Square and start waving
his handkerchief at the house, which was the signal for
Sickles's wife to go meet him at their rendezvous house.
And so so, while Sickles is trying to figure out
(06:02):
what to do and bursting with anger and rage and frustration,
he sees this guy out there in Lafayette Square on
a Sunday, unseasonably warm Sunday in eighteen fifty nine. He
heads out there in a trench coat with at least
three firearms, and he sends mister Key to his fate.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
So he murders He murders him in broad daylight.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
In broad daylight. There are plenty of witnesses, everyone from
treasury clerks to Cyrus McCormick, the inventor of the mechanical reaper.
Is that I witness. He testifies at the trial, And
interestingly enough, there is a young man who was an
aide to James Buchanan. He runs into the White House
(06:47):
to tell James Buchanan what had happened, and the president actually,
this is one instance we know for sure in American
history where a president committed the crime of obstruction of justice.
So this young age says, Daniel Sickles is murdered Barton
Key in front of the White House. And of course,
as we mentioned, Sickles is Buchanan's close friend, he's his
(07:08):
former aide. He's kind of a protege. He tells his aid.
He goes, well, you know, as a material witness, you
might be held in jail until the trial, which of
course was not true. And he says, here, I'm going
to give you some money. I'm going to give you
a souvenir of your time here in the White House.
And he hands him a shaving razor that he had
bought while he was ambassador in the United Kingdom, and
(07:32):
he says, here's the shaving razor, which I just assume
it is not a great souvenir. It was either a
better gift at the time than it seems today, or
it was just what he had around him, hands him
that in some money and says, you'd better get back
to North Carolina. And so that story made it into
the North Carolina newspapers later in that young man's life,
and I actually was able to get in touch with
his grandson and track down the razor. So the family.
(07:56):
The family donated that razor to the to Wheatland, to
the jam Buchanan Homestead and Museum. And so I actually
helped find that raizor, find the family and got that
where people can go view it as a tangible proof
of how the President helped a witness get out of town.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
That's amazing, Chris. So so here, I'm sure Sickles is arrested, right, Sickles.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
Actually goes and turns himself in, And of course Sickles
is the guy always does things with style. Where do
you turn yourself in after you've murdered the US Attorney
you go to the home of the Attorney General in
Franklin Square. And so he went and turned himself in
at the home of the US Attorney General. And he
was held in a notorious prison called the Blue jug
(08:40):
in Washington, d c. And when he complained about his accommodations,
the jailor said, this is the These are the finest
accommodations you members of Congress have afforded us.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
And so what happens at the trial? How how does
that go? How does the trial go? Because this plays
into our you know, the undergirding of what is the
unwritten law.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
Absolutely so one interesting aspect of this trial, among many,
is that Sickles is represented by the first legal dream
team in American history. And it kind of happens by accident,
you know, news of his arrest gets out. His friends
in New York start sending lawyers, people in DC start
finding lawyers for him. So he has this extensive legal
team drawn of friends of his who were the most
(09:23):
prominent lawyers in New York City. Edwin Stanton, who is
on the verge of eternal fame about to join Buchanan's
cabinet as Attorney General, and of course in short order
Abraham Lincoln's cabinet as our Civil War Secretary of War.
But before that, he's Daniel Sickles's lawyers. I'm prominent member
of Sickles's defense team. And so you have these incredible
(09:47):
lawyers lined up to represent Sickles. You have a new
US attorney who had to be appointed by James Buchanan
before the trial could commence. At first, you know, there's
a lot of popular feeling in the country that maybe
Sickles did what was necessary or what was right. As
time passed, everyone seemed to agree that the further they
(10:08):
could prolong the trial, the likelier it was that Sickles
would hang. And so the defense makes a series of arguments,
kind of a half hearted self defense argument. Well, none
of you people saw whether Key had a gun in
his hand. Maybe Key had a gun, Maybe Key threatened him.
You know, you don't really know, you know, maybe they
did this sort of half I'm not sure that they
believed it, but they were trying to just kick up
(10:30):
dust every way they could. They argued that the affair
itself was provocation for the murder, and that the murder
was justified on those grounds alone, which was kind of
a remarkable argument to make in a court of law,
as the US attorney pointed out, because the most you'd
really seen before that was if you caught a man
(10:51):
in bed with your wife. There might be mitigating circumstances
you might get away with manslaughter, you know, some kind
of heat of the moment defense, but it was never
seen as a complete defense that would lead to an acquittal.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
So how did temporary insanity play into this?
Speaker 1 (11:07):
Well, so you have witnesses who encountered Sickles before the shooting,
and you have witnesses, including the Attorney General of the
United States and a US senator from Pennsylvania, who saw
him right after the killing. And he appeared pretty composed,
and so you couldn't make the argument that Sickles was
just insane. But the argument they made was that he
(11:30):
had it was suffering under temporary insanity. So, you know,
he puts on a trench coat to conceal three firearms
and walks across Lafayette Square and I've paced it out.
It's a few minute walk. It's you know, Lafayette Square
in front of the White House is pretty big.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
It's plenty of time to realize that you're about to.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
Make a big mistake. Well, I don't know if he
ever saw it as a mistake, but he certainly was
cognizant of what he was doing. But his defense argued
to the jury that during the time that he's shot Key,
and maybe not a minute before, maybe not a minute
after this all transpired, but certainly during that time he
(12:11):
was laboring under a mental distress that excused his conduct
as a matter.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
Of law, So this becomes something that is known as
the unwritten law. And you know, I was reading your book.
There's a whole chapter on this in your book, which
I recommend everybody go by immediately. It's Star Spangled Scandal
by our great guest today, Chris de Rose. But it
wasn't always like this, right, It wasn't always like you
(12:40):
create a you commit a crime of passion, and you're
gonna be, you know, found temporarily insane and you get off.
What were the societal changes in the mid nineteenth century
that made this okay, that made jury say, you know,
I don't think we should hold this man responsible for
(13:02):
his actions.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
Yes, So I think one of them actually is the
rise of mass media. So if we think about this
celebrity obsessed, scandal obsessed, breaking news obsessed culture that we
live in today. It all has its roots in this
event from eighteen fifty nine. So in the beginning of
American history, you really had two kinds of newspapers. You
(13:25):
had political newspapers that parties would subsidize and try to
get out to as many people as possible to promote
their ideas and their candidates. And then you had sort
of what you think of as like the shipping news,
you know, commercial business intelligence, big broadsheets with lots of
information about which ship docked here, and how much did
(13:46):
they sell their cotton for and what cargo did they buy,
important things like that that people had to pay a
premium to buy. As printing presses got more efficient, you
could now print newspapers that you could sell a profit
to the average person, and so you news coverage changed.
It became more sensational to sort of fulfill this demand
(14:09):
of the average person for news about crime and fires
and animal stories and the kind of things you see
written about talked about today in the news. So more
more popular subjects and so you know, scored it called
the penny press, where the average person now had access
to daily newspapers, perhaps less edifying information than may have
(14:33):
preceded it, but so you have these you have these newspapers,
and then the invention of the telegraph and the scaling
of the telegraph, so now you know, I write about
in the book about how it took two weeks to
find out in the state capitol of Missouri that William
Henry Harrison had died, you know, And and when when
when the telegraph has introduced, people wondered what was the
(14:55):
use in finding out information right away when you could
wait a few days and find out about it through
the mail. Because newspapers were being exchanged throughout the country.
You know, it was free to post newspapers, and so
newspapers would exchange copies of their editions with each other
and then print each other's news all across the country.
But that would take some time. So with the scaling
(15:16):
of the telegraph, you had almost instantaneous information all across
the country. And so Sickles really lit the match with
this incredible story, right, the prominent congressman, the beautiful wife,
the handsome son of American royalty, and this horrific crime
that happened in front of the white House. I mean,
this is the oj case of the nineteenth century, but
(15:38):
in DC and with political people. But so people were
looking for a turn of the screw coverage from this trial,
everything they could find out about the people involved. And really,
if you looked prior to that, you think about like
the murder of Helen Jewett, for instance, in New York,
that was probably the most covered crime prior to that,
(15:58):
think about a few paragraphs in newspaper. And in this case,
many newspapers are printing verbatim coverage of that day's proceedings
in trial. So this is really this is the most
covered event in human history to this point, and it's
a story that Americans are experiencing almost as one for
the first time in American history. And so I think
(16:18):
this really creates this impression on people that you know, what,
what Sickles did was right, the jury was right to
acquit them. We should stop punishing people for this. And
then it's off to the races as far as the
unwritten law goes, and it gets to.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
The point where where you have governors giving pardons for
these crimes in the cases when men are convicted. Talk
about a few of those, because there's one interesting one
I recall from South Carolina.
Speaker 1 (16:46):
Yes, well, if it even got that far. There's been
some research into just how many thousands of cases where
the unwritten law spared someone what would otherwise be the
legal ramifications of murder, And many cases were just never charged.
If the cases were charged, often you would find the
(17:06):
grand jury would refuse to indict. If the grand jury indicted,
the judge may well dismiss the case. And if the
judge didn't dismiss the case, the jury would likely acquit.
And in the rare instances where you could get somebody
to verdict on an unwritten law case and the jury
found them guilty, the judge would often hand down a
(17:27):
nominal fine or a minor slap on the wrist. However,
in the unusual cases during the era of the unwritten law,
where you could get someone all the way to verdict
and the judge handed down a meaningful sentence, the governor
would be expected to use their executive clemency to let
(17:47):
the person go. And there was one instance in Kentucky
that was remarkable. A man catches his wife in bed
with another man. He shoots the man, kills him, and
the governor announces preemptively that if they're any criminal proceedings,
I'm going to pardon him, so don't even bother. And
what was really unusual about that is that the victim
was the governor's son. But even a governor would be
(18:11):
expected to pardon the killer of his own son in
order to vindicate the public expectation in public support for
the unwritten law. Now in South Carolina, I think this
is the most incredible. You know, we as historians, Bob,
we tell stories to illustrate phenomenon, and I think this
is the best example. So in South Carolina, the bosom
(18:32):
of the Confederacy after reconstruction, a black man catches a
white man in bed with his wife and kills him,
and the governor pardons him. So the unwritten law was
stronger and more widely supported than racism and unequal treatment
(18:52):
of the law in post reconstruction South Carolina shortly after
the Civil War.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
This is American History Hotline. I'm your host, Bob Crawford.
Speaker 1 (19:07):
Today.
Speaker 2 (19:07):
My guest is Chris Drose, author of Star Spangled Scandal, Sex, Murder,
and the Trial That Changed America. We're talking about well,
sex and murder. Remember to send us your burning hot
sexy questions about American history, record yourself using the voice
memo app on your phone and email it to Americanhistory
(19:31):
Hotline at gmail dot com. That's Americanhistory Hotline at gmail
dot com.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
Now back to the show.
Speaker 2 (19:40):
So, Chris, the unwritten Law, and this is the part
that I kind of find most fascinating about this is
that it's never codified.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
Never codified. In fact, the American Bar Association speculated that
maybe it should be codified because it was undermining actual laws,
laws that have been passed by legislatures, in common law,
that had been handed down by judges. Because probably the
most closely adhered to law in the country at this
point in American history was a law that nobody ever
(20:09):
wrote down.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
So, Chris, you've spent a lot of time studying this
case and all the consequences of it, from temporary insanity
to the unwritten law. What does this tell you about
human nature? Like, did you have what thoughts did this
kind of bring to mind or ponderings for yourself personally?
Because you're a lawyer as well, right, you trained in law.
Speaker 1 (20:33):
So yeah, and as a former attorney is both the
prosecutor and former criminal defense lawyer, you understand that, like
the civilization is a thin veneer, and that when people
experience something traumatic like this, there is a natural human
impulse for revenge, and there is an understanding among people
(20:56):
why you did what you did, and an understanding that
you're probably not to menace to society. You're just a
threat to people who would violate your home, you know,
in words that were used at the time. And so
I think I think that's what we learn about human nature, right,
that that all of everything we see that appears to
be a bulwark against anarchy and against people just reacting
(21:18):
and acting on their natural impulses. I don't know, I
said civilization is a thin veneer.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
So this is a cultural moment, right the period which
was about one hundred years, if not a little more.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
It goes into the nineteen fifties, so plenty of your listeners.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
So how does it change, how does it change back?
How do people How does it get to the point
where someone says, no, this guy should could, should be
should be.
Speaker 1 (21:45):
Penalized for this right? So I think it all revolves
around our perception of women and women's rights. If you
look at the news coverage around the Sickles trial, you know,
Teresa Sickles and her virtue was almost seen as Daniel
Sickles's property in a way, right, he is the man
(22:06):
of the family, she is his wife, bart and Key
had taken something from him. And it's really interesting to
see how Teresa Sickles really got it coming and going,
because she both gets blamed for the affair and ostracized
from society, but also Key is treated as someone who
seduced her, this poor innocent woman who had no agency
(22:26):
in the situation. So she was treated at once as
having no agency, but also as being to blame and
you know, paid for with the price of her place
in society. You know, her friends never called on her
again and she never went out in society following this
incident for the rest of her life. So I think,
as you know, with World War Two, more women were
(22:49):
entering the workforce with so many men under arms, women
entering the workforce and new roles and new responsibilities, having
their own money, having a measure of independence, they didn't
enjoy attaining new status in society. And so I think
as we enter the nineteen fifties, we're really starting to say,
you know what a woman's honor or a daughter's honor.
(23:09):
It's really not a man's to vindicate anymore. Women can
make their own decisions and be responsible for those decisions,
and it's really not so. I think that changing perception
of women in their role in society that leads to
both the beginning and end of the Unwritten Law.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
Wow, Chris, that is crazy. Like we think that we
live in crazy times now, and we do live in
crazy times. But I think through your book and through
talking about the Unwritten Law, we've all times are crazy.
Speaker 1 (23:38):
Do you think as a historian? I never I don't
share the panic that some people do at various points
in history. We are very lucky to have been born
and to live in America and at this time in
history in America, and things were always crazy, and their
every generation has had significant problems, and some far greater
than ours.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
In the chaos, there is optimism. Chris de Rose, thank
you so much.
Speaker 1 (24:04):
A pleasure.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
You've been listening to American History Hotline a production of
iHeart Podcasts and Scratch Track Productions. The show's executive producer
is James Morrison. Our executive producers from iHeart are Jordan
Runtall and Jason English. Original music composed by me, Bob Crawford.
Speaker 1 (24:29):
Please keep in touch.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
Our email is Americanhistory Hotline at gmail dot com. If
you like the show, please tell your friends and leave
us a review in Apple Podcasts.
Speaker 1 (24:41):
I'm your host, Bob Crawford.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
Feel free to hit me up on social media to
ask a history question or to let me know what
you think of the show. You can find me at
Bob Crawford Base. Thanks so much for listening, See you
next week.
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