“Key, you scoundrel, you have dishonored my house—you must die!” shouted United States Congressman Daniel Sickles on February 27, 1859, as he shot Philip Barton Key, U.S. attorney and son of the author of the “Star-Spangled Banner,” with three different pistols in broad daylight in direct view of the White House. A few days earlier, an anonymous letter had detailed to Sickles exactly how and where his much younger wife Teresa was meeting with the widower and womanizer Philip Barton Key. The letter said the affair had been going on for a year.
As Key lay dying on the ground, Sickles delivered himself to the attorney general’s office, where he confessed. It quickly turned into a sensational trial, followed minutely by the media of the day. President James Buchanan would send a letter of support to the prisoner, and the many members of the House and Senate who visited him found Sickles not behind bars but instead holding forth in the head jailer’s quarters, his dog by his side. The congressman spoke with abandon to journalists, who reprinted his courtroom testimony and personal commentary word-for-word. Teresa visited often, as did her clergyman, who implored Sickles to return her wedding ring. He eventually acquiesced—his twenty-two-year-old wife could have the ring, but not his forgiveness. Eventually, Sickles was acquitted. The court found he had gone temporarily insane.
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