Historical Tidbit: The Conceited Cuckold

By Noelle
While I’m heavy into some research I’d thought I’d share a few things here and there that I find interesting.



Recently I read an account of General Daniel Edgar Sickles (1819-1914). He served as an assistant ambassador to England, a congressman, a member of the NY State Senate and military governor of South Carolina in 1865 among other things. What makes him so interesting? Well...as the assistant ambassador to England he left his pregnant young wife, Teresa, behind and instead took with him his favorite New York madam. He even had the audacity to introduce his mistress to the Queen during a function at the Palace. He is the only America diplomat to have ever done so.

But two can play at that game. Sometime after that Mr. & Mrs. Sickles were living in Washington DC and during the inauguration of James Buchanan, Teresa Sickles met Philip Barton Key, son of Frances Scott key. They soon began an affair meeting at a house Mr. Key rented for just that purpose. But being well versed in art of sexual assignations Sickles soon discovery his wife’s secret.


On February 27, 1859 he confronted Key on the corner of Pensylvania Ave. and Madison Place. After a short argument Sickles pulled his pistol. After missing twice he hit his target and the unarmed Key laid dying in the street. According to witnesses Sickles then approached him and shot him yet again. After a sensational trail followed by every newspaper and magazine in the country, Congressman Daniel Sickles became the first man in US history to be acquitted by reason of temporary insanity.


Sickles did not leave his wife saying, “I am not aware of any statute or code of morals which makes it infamous to forgive a woman. I can now see in the almost universal denunciation with which she is followed to my threshold the misery and peril from which I have rescued the mother of my daughter. I shall strive to prove to all that an erring wife and mother may be forgiven and redeemed.” But by all accounts the marraige was astranged from that point forward.


Sickles was never completely free of the scandal. While Military Governor of SC he was greatly disliked by President Johnson who called him “a conceited cuckold”. In 1867 the same year as Teresa's death he was removed him from his post.


But there were others that didn’t seem to mind and in 1869 he was appointed minister to Spain and became the lover of Queen Isabella and known as “The Yankee King of Spain.” He remarried while in Spain to the daughter of a Spanish official and died some years later in New York City at the age of 91.


The infamous Daniel Edgar Sickles an example of the adage "only the good die young."


Source: Wicked Charleston by Mark R. Jones.