New Sickles Biography
America’s first temporary insanity defense to escape justice.
Are you certain of that? I always thought, based on what I once read, that it was the Sanford White case in New York, circa 1906.
But wait, there’s more! Remember the retrospectives of the disputed election of 1876, when Rutherford Hayes “defeated” Sam Tilden? It was Dan Sickles who set the whole thing in motion. Republicans went to bed on election night defeated. Sickles went into the NYC headquarters for the Republicans at 11:00 pm and found one worker-bee cleaning up. He sat down and examined the election returns carefully. He found that with sufficient vote-counting jugglery in 3 southern states that had Reconstruction Republican governors, they could get Hayes to a 1-vote victory in the Electoral College. So he sent telegrams to all 3 governors, telling them not to concede, then started waking people up. And that’s how the whole mess began.
Posted by KGrupa
10/01/2009 at 01:38 PM
If you REALLY want to get deep into the military nitty-gritty DETAILS of Gettysburg, I highly recommend THE GETTYSBURG CAMPAIGN by Edwin B. Coddington.
As far a Sickles goes...he should have been shot for criminal insubordination...he was fortunate to have strong NYC Tammany Hall ties that the administration was unwilling to alienate in the midst of the 1863 NYC Draft Riots.
Sickles pled temp. insanity for killing his wife’s lover...when they married he was 33, she was 15.
His leg that got shot off is in a medical museum...I saw the picture of it somewhere online. It should be searchible.
He must have jumped parties for the 1876 deal...fully in character for him to dio so.
Posted by RadioActive Chief
10/02/2009 at 04:29 PM
10/01/2009 at 01:15 PM
