![]() On February 27, 1859, Sickles looked out the window and saw Key waving his handkerchief. The Congressman forced his wife to write a long and detailed letter of confession. When confronted, Theresa Sickles confessed everything, including Key’s habit of standing across Lafayette Square and waving a handkerchief at the Sickles home to signal Theresa to meet him. Sickles turned romantic, and in early 1859 Daniel Sickles received an anonymous letter informing him of his wife’s infidelity. Key was called the “handsomest man in Washington,” and Sickles often asked his friend to escort his wife to social events the Congressman could not attend. (Sickles was thirty-three when they married.) Philip Barton Key II, a friend of Congressman Sickles, was the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia and the son of Francis Scott Key, author of the poem that eventually became the national anthem. He was a well-known ladies man and serial adulterer whose wife, Theresa Bagioli Sickles, was just fifteen years old – and pregnant – when he married her in 1852. In 1859, Daniel Edgar Sickles was a Democrat representing New York’s Third Congressional District in the U.S. This case gave us not only juicy headlines, but the first-ever American use of the temporary insanity defense. Congressman, and his victim the son of The Star-Spangled Banner’s author. This was not just a sex scandal, but also a murder case. This one had it all: an aggrieved husband, a remorseful wife, and a handsome lover. One such scandal, however, holds a more prominent place than most in American legal history. ![]() Political sex scandals are as old as politics and so commonplace that even in the internet age we can barely keep up with developments in the latest salacious story. ![]()
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