Philip Barton Key II

For other people with the same name, see Philip Key (disambiguation).

Philip Barton Key (April 5, 1818 – February 27, 1859)[1] was a United States Attorney for the District of Columbia.[2] He is most famous for having been shot and killed by the man whom he cuckolded, Daniel Sickles. Sickles defended himself by adopting a defense of temporary insanity, the first time the defense had been used in the United States.[2][3]

Biography

Born in Georgetown in Washington, D.C., Key was the son of Francis Scott Key[4][5] and the great-nephew of Philip Barton Key. He was also a nephew of Chief Justice Roger B. Taney.[4][5] He married Ellen Swan, the daughter of a Baltimore attorney, on November 18, 1845.[1] Allegedly the handsomest man in Washington[6] and by 1859 a widower with four children, Key was known to be flirtatious with many women.[7][8]

In 1859, Congressman Daniel Sickles shot and killed Phillip Barton Key, for having conducted a public affair with his wife Teresa Bagioli Sickles.[9] Some time in the spring of 1858, Teresa Sickles began an affair with Key.[2] Sickles had accused his much-younger wife several times during their five-year marriage of adultery, but she had repeatedly denied it to his satisfaction.[4] But then Sickles received an anonymous note on February 26, 1859, informing him of his wife's liaison with Key.[2][4] He confronted his wife, who confessed to the affair.[2] Sickles then made his wife write out her confession on paper.[10] Sickles saw Key sitting on a bench outside the Sickles home on February 27, 1859, signalling to Teresa, and confronted him.[2][4][10] Sickles rushed outside into Lafayette Square, cried "Key, you scoundrel, you have dishonored my home; you must die",[11] and with a pistol repeatedly shot the unarmed Key.[2][4] Key was taken into the nearby Benjamin Ogle Tayloe House, where he died some time later.[12]

Sickles was acquitted on the basis of temporary insanity, a crime of passion, in one of the most controversial trials of the 19th century.[13] Sickles' attorney, Edwin Stanton, later became the Secretary of War. Years later, while attending the theater in New York City, Sickles was aware of the presence of Key's son James Key in the audience, and both men kept watching each other throughout the performance. But nothing happened.[14]

At the time of his death, Key was the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia. He is buried in Oak Hill Cemetery in Washington and is also memorialized in a cenotaph in his son-in-law's family plot in Westminster Hall and Burying Ground in Baltimore, Maryland.

Sources

  1. ^ a b Richardson, Hester Dorsey. Side-Lights on Maryland History: With Sketches of Early Maryland Families. Baltimore, Md.: Williams and Wilkins company, 1913.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g Gallagher, Gary W. Three Days at Gettysburg: Essays on Confederate and Union Leadership. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1999. ISBN 0873386299
  3. ^ Spiegel, Allen D. Murder and Madness: Military Matters and Managed Medicine: Memorable Milestones and Moments. Charleston, S.C.: Heritage Books, 2007. ISBN 0788440799; Wylie, Paul R. The Irish General: Thomas Francis Meagher. Stillwater, Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press, 2007. ISBN 0806138475
  4. ^ a b c d e f Walther, Eric H. The Shattering of the Union: America in the 1850s. New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004. ISBN 0842027998
  5. ^ a b Flower, Frank Abial. Edwin McMasters Stanton: The Autocrat of Rebellion, Emancipation, and Reconstruction. New York: W.W. Wilson, 1905.
  6. ^ Taylor, John M. William Henry Seward: Lincoln's Right Hand. New York: Brassey's, 1996. ISBN 1574881191
  7. ^ Goode, James M. Capital Losses: A Cultural History of Washington's Destroyed Buildings. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1981. ISBN 0874744792
  8. ^ Before he married Ellen Swan, Key had been engaged to Virginia Timberlake, a daughter of Peggy Eaton, the center of Petticoat affair that bedeviled the cabinet of President Andrew Jackson. One of Key's great-granddaughters was the 1960s style icon Pauline de Rothschild.
  9. ^ Tagg, Larry. The Generals of Gettysburg. Campbell, Calif.: Savas Publishing, 1998. ISBN 1882810309. p. 62.
  10. ^ a b Hartog, Hendrik. Man and Wife in America: A History. Reprint ed. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002. ISBN 0674008111
  11. ^ Flower, Edwin McMasters Stanton: The Autocrat of Rebellion, Emancipation, and Reconstruction, 1905, p. 73.
  12. ^ Smith, Hal H. "Historic Washington Homes. Records of the Columbia Historical Society, Washington. 1908.
  13. ^ Twain, Mark (2010). The Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume One. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. pp. 566. ISBN 9780520267190. 
  14. ^ Brandt, Nat. The Congressman Who Got Away With Murder. Syracuse, N.Y.: University of Syracuse Press, 1991. ISBN 0815602510. p. 213.

External links