Alva Review-Courier -

Daniel Sickles won a seat in the United States House of Representatives in 1856, representing a district in New York City. He was re-elected in 1858, and served from 1857 to 1861.

Sickles did not seek a third term in Congress in the election of 1860, having just been the subject of one of the most salacious murder trials in the history of the nation’s capital.

On Feb. 27, 1859, Congressman Sickles shot numerous times an unarmed man named Philip Barton Key who died later that day.

Key, who was from a prominent family and was serving as the United States attorney in Washington, was openly having an affair with Teresa Sickles, the congressman’s wife.

At trial, one of Sickles’s attorneys was Edwin M. Stanton, who would soon thereafter be appointed attorney general of the United States by President James Buchanan and would later become secretary of war under President Abraham Lincoln.

Sickles’s lawyers came up with the innovative defense of “temporary insanity,” alleging that the congressman had been momentarily enraged when he saw his victim sitting on a park bench waiting to meet up with Teresa Sickles.

The strategy worked, and Congressman Sickles was acquitted. Interestingly, this murderous affair did not ruin his political career.

Shortly after Sickles’s tenure in Congress ended, the Civil War began. Sickles raised volunteer regiments in his native state and became an officer of one of those units. In March 1863, Lincoln promoted him to the rank of major general.

Sickles’s military career came to an end at the Battle of Gettysburg in July 1863 when a cannonball hit his right leg and surgeons had to amputate it.

After the war, Sickles resumed his political career. President Ulysses S. Grant named Sickles ambassador to Spain in 1869 and he served in that position until 1874.

Then, in 1892 – at the age of 73 – Sickles was elected to a final term in the U.S. House of Representatives. He was sworn in on March 4, 1893 – 32 years after his first stint in Congress had ended.