- Date:
- 1863
- Original Format:
- Glass Negative Print
- Item#:
- MES14225
- Photographer:
- Mathew Brady
Daniel E. Sickles (1819-1914)
Daniel Edgar Sickles was a controversial Union major general. He served as a Democratic U.S. representative from New York in 1857-61 and in 1893-95. In 1859, he (a great womanizer and drinker) shot his wife's lover, the son of Francis Scott Key. Sickles was acquitted on the grounds that he was temporarily insane, the first time that plea was ever used. Sickles chaired the New York Monuments Commission from 1886 to 1912, when he was removed in an embezzlement scandal.