General Daniel Sickles and the Birth of the Insanity Defense

On this episode of Our American Stories, Civil War general and politician Daniel Sickles was one of the most notorious figures of the 19th century. His life was marked by ambition, scandal, and a murder trial that stunned the nation.

After killing his wife’s lover in Washington, D.C., Sickles became the first American to successfully argue temporary insanity as a legal defense, setting a precedent that still echoes in courtrooms today. Firearms historian and regular contributor to Our American Stories, Ashley Hlebinsky, shares the remarkable story of a man whose personal chaos left a permanent mark on American law.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American
people coming to you from the city where the West begins.
Fort Worth, Texas. One of the great characters of the
Civil War, General Daniel Sickles, left a trail of unpaid bills,
broken romances, and political scandals everywhere he went. Here to

(00:33):
tell the story is Ashley Lebinski. Ashley's the former co
host of Discovery Channel's Master of Arms, and she's the
co founder of the University of Wyoming College of Laws
Firearms Research Center. Here's Ashley.

Speaker 2 (00:49):
The expression sometimes fact is stranger than fiction might well
have been written specifically for Civil War General Daniel Sickles.

Speaker 3 (00:57):
I'm not sure that.

Speaker 2 (00:58):
There is a more peculiar or colorful character in American history.
It's hard to know where to begin with Sickles, as
he has no shortfall of.

Speaker 3 (01:06):
Stories that could be told about him.

Speaker 2 (01:08):
He was born in New York City and throughout his
life would serve as a soldier, politician, and diplomat. He
attended law school and became active in the Democratic Party,
and began his political career in eighteen forty seven. Probably
his least controversial accomplishment is that he acquired the land
for Central Park in eighteen fifty three. In eighteen fifty five,
he won consecutive terms in the New York State Senate

(01:30):
and was a member of the U. S House of
Representatives from eighteen fifty seven.

Speaker 3 (01:34):
To eighteen sixty one.

Speaker 2 (01:36):
That tenure, though, was not without scandal, which might be
a massive understatement. On February twenty seventh, eighteen fifty nine,
Sickles shot and killed Philip Barton Key, who was the
son of Francis Scott Key, who wrote the National Anthem.
He shot Key in broad daylight across from the White House,
and interestingly, Sickles then walked straight to the Attorney General's

(01:59):
house and surrendered himself.

Speaker 3 (02:02):
And he was so popular.

Speaker 2 (02:03):
And so influential in Washington that he was allowed to
receive visitors from the jail, and he was also allowed
to keep his personal weapons on him when he was
in prison, And he had so many visitors that came
through to see him that he actually got to use
the head jailer's.

Speaker 3 (02:18):
Apartment for those visits.

Speaker 2 (02:19):
And the people visiting him were politicians and heads of Washington.
President of Buchanan even sent him a personal note, and
one visitor that was of particular interest to Harper's magazine
was the frequent visits of his wife. And the reason
why this is interesting is that the reason he was
in jail was because he shot the man that she

(02:40):
was having an affair with. And it was that justification
that got him acquitted on temporary insanity, and this was
actually the first time that this defense had successfully been used.
And after he was acquitted, he very publicly forgave to

(03:00):
his wife and they stay together, and the newspapers and
this shows you just how kind of crazy, no pun intended,
how crazy the culture was. Because he kills his wife's lover,
he gets off on temporary and sanity, and then the
newspapers paint him as a hero, claiming that he quote
was saving all the ladies of Washington from this rogue

(03:22):
guy named Keith. Temporary insanity, though you might think, would
have squashed the rest of his career, but it did
not stop him from becoming a major general in the
Civil War. At the Battle of Gettysburg, he makes several
controversial moves. One of the biggest ones that he's known
for is the fact that he disobeys a direct order
and relocates his course to a different position at the

(03:42):
battle that he thought would be more adequate. Now there's
some debate as to whether or not there were any
positives to that, but unfortunately that decision did leave his
men exposed to the Confederacy.

Speaker 3 (03:53):
And they were overrun.

Speaker 2 (03:54):
While his men were overrun, those Sickles rode his horse
up to get a better view of the fighting, and
while he was mounted on his horse, that's when he
was hit with a twelve.

Speaker 3 (04:02):
Pound cannon ball.

Speaker 2 (04:04):
His horse was completely unharmed, so he was able to
dismount his horse, and he had a tourniquet wrapped around
his wound, which you know, these SIPs of wounds happened
a lot on the battlefield, and there were procedures done
on the battlefield, but if they could move you off site,
they would, and that's what they did with Sickles, And
you get this larger than life image surrounding him being
taken off the battlefield with a tourniquet around his wound

(04:26):
on a stretcher.

Speaker 3 (04:27):
Smoking a cigar. Once he gets off the.

Speaker 2 (04:30):
Battlefield, they take a look at his leg. His lower
leg is too bad to save, so they make the
decision to amputate it. Now, they initially were going to
amputate it below the knee, but then they learned the
damage was too bad, and so they ended up amputating
it above the knee, and the limb.

Speaker 3 (04:43):
Was not discarded.

Speaker 2 (04:45):
A lot of times when you hear about amputations on
the battlefield in the nineteenth century, even in the eighteenth century,
you get this image of just limbs being discarded or
thrown out windows because it was so common. But for
some reason, somebody kept General Sickles leg And around this
same time, the Army Medical Museum, which is now the
National Museum of Health and Medicine, was founded, and they

(05:08):
were looking for artifacts like this. They were acquiring what
they termed quote specimens of morbid anatomy end quote. So Sickles,
of course, thought it would be a great idea to
have his legs set to the museum in a coffin
shaped box. The museum was incredibly stoked about this donation.
They stabilized the broken bones and they used it as

(05:28):
a teaching tool of battlefield trauma, and it's still in
the museum today, and it is thought that Sickles would
visit his leg on the anniversary of losing it every year.
Sickles went on to be the military governor of North
and South Carolina from eighteen sixty five to eighteen sixty seven,
although he was relieved of that position not super popular,

(05:48):
and he retired from the army in eighteen sixty nine.
After that, he served as a minister to Spain from
eighteen sixty nine to eighteen seventy four, and he got
involved in a really odd warmongering scheme over there where
he was passing bad information to Washington. So he's ultimately
relieved of that duty as well. But while he was there,
he developed a reputation as a ladies man in the

(06:11):
Spanish court, and he was rumored to have had an
affair with Queen Isabella the Second.

Speaker 3 (06:15):
After all of that.

Speaker 2 (06:16):
He ended up being able to do another term in
the House between eighteen ninety three and eighteen ninety five,
where he would help to pass a bill to preserve
the Gettysburg Battlefield. His Civil War reputation was checkered because
of a lot of criticisms and falsehoods. There were a
lot of stories making him sound really good, usually coming
from him, and then there were a lot of people
who criticized things that he did. But he was incredibly

(06:39):
instrumental in the preservation of Gettysburg as a National Historic
site and also the establishments of the New York Monuments
at the National Park. But of course he couldn't help
himself throughout all of his life, and so he in
nineteen twelve was pushed out of the New York Monument's
commission for embezzling twenty seven thousand dollars.

Speaker 3 (07:00):
I don't think there's a moment in general.

Speaker 2 (07:02):
Sickles life where he wasn't causing some level of drama.
It went from having a flandering wife to being a
flanderer himself, from murdering someone to getting off for insanity.

Speaker 3 (07:14):
So it seems only fitting.

Speaker 2 (07:16):
That he is preserved forever as a curiosa item in
a national museum in Washington.

Speaker 3 (07:23):
D C.

Speaker 1 (07:25):
The story of one heck of a character, A heck
of a nineteenth century character, General Daniel Sickles. Here on
Our American Stories. This is Lee Jabib, host of our
American Stories. Every day on this show we tell stories
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(07:50):
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