LINCOLN ROOM UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LIBRARY MEMORIAL the Class of 1901 founded by HARLAN HOYT HORNER and HENRIETTA CALHOUN HORNER BOOKS BY EDGCUMB PINCHON Dan Sickles: Hero of Gettysburg and "Yankee King of Spain" The Mexican People: Their Struggle for Freedom (with L. G. De Lara) Viva Villa! Until I Find— Zapata the Unconquerable Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2012 with funding from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign http://archive.org/details/dansicklesheroofOOpinc 1 .'-";-- ■ « From The Rebellion Record, 18b5. GENERAL DANIEL E. SICKLES DMS S3(&&LIi HERO OF GETTYSBURG AND "YANKEE KING OF SPAIN" -*—•» By EDGCUMB P1NCHON DOUBLEDAY, DORAN AND COMPANY, INC. Garden City, New York *945 COPYRIGHT, 1945 BY EDGCUMB PINCHON ALL RIGHTS RESERVED PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES AT THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y. FIRST EDITION B To DANIEL EDGAR SICKLES who shares my view that his grandsire belongs to history— and so to history } s probing, impartial light. What is this Man, thy darling kissed and cuffed, Thou lustingly engender* st, To sweat, and make his brag, and rot, Crowned with all honour and all shamefulnessP —Francis Thompson My thanks to Claribel Castle who, with quick insight for the problem, sensitive criticism for the page, played no small part in bringing this book to birth. Contents Part One MANHATTAN OVERTURE CHAPTER PAGE I Instead of a Foreword i II America Emergent 4 III In Search of an Education . . . '. 10 IV Tammany Nights 15 V Teresa 24 Part Two A KNICKERBOCKER AT THE COURT OF ST. JAMES'S VI Dan Sickles Comes to Town 30 VII "The Little Amedican" . 49 VIII Iceberg in the Sun 55 Part Three MASQUE OF DEATH IX Fighting Escalade 58 X Swampoodle Palmyra 67 XI Dragon Couchant Gripping a Key ..... 7 f xi xii Contents CHAPTER PAGE XII Washington Hostess 77 XIII Tarantella 81 XIV Mad Honeymoon 88 XV "Whom the Gods Would Destroy — " .... 91 XVI "I Have Killed Him!" 97 XVII Tragic Interlude 114 XVIII "Gentlemen of the Jury " 120 XIX "The Fearful Story of My Heart" 133 Part Four "ARMS AND THE MAN" XX Chasm Agape 138 XXI "The Union Is Imperishable!" 142 XXII Armies in Haste .146 XXIII Muddle and Massacre 166 XXIV Defeat Grotesque 171 XXV Improvisation at Gettysburg 187 Part Five HIGH TRUST AND INTRIGUE XXVI General on Crutches 203 XXVII Mysterious Mission 209 XXVIII Struggling with Chaos 215 XXIX "The Yankee King of Spain" 226 XXX Le Mariage de Convenance 244 XXXI "An Everlasting Stain" . - 252 XXXII Holiday 257 Part Six LONG SUNDOWN XXXIII "Tenting Tonight" 263 XXXIV Taps-Muted 270 Bibliography 273 Index , . 277 Illustrations General Daniel E. Sickles Frontispiece Facing Page View of the House, Hired by Key, for His Meetings with Mrs. Sickles 94 Philip Barton Key 95 Facsimile of the Anonymous Letter Informing Hon. Daniel E. Sickles of the Infidelity of His Wife 10 1 Facsimile of Part of Teresa Sickles's Confession 106 Hon. Daniel E. Sickles Shooting Philip Barton Key, in President's Square, Washington no Teresa Sickles .111 General Sickles at the Age of Ninety . 270 General Sickles with His Staff at Gettysburg, in 1909 . 271 W&M SfflSOSIbS: PART ONE: MANHATTAN OVERTURE CHAPTER I Instead of a Foreword m > ♦ Wh 'hen he first opened his eyes in a modest New York home October 20, 18 19, the skyscape beyond the Battery was fretted with the spars of hundreds of tall sailing ships. President Monroe was in the White House, Queen Victoria-to-be still in the nursery. . . . When, May 3, 1914, those eyes— keen, gray, recalcitrant— closed for the last time, a stupendous one-hundred-year cycle almost had run its course. Woodrow Wilson was busying himself with the New Freedom at home, the Familyhood of Nations abroad. George V and Wilhelm Hohenzollern were exchanging cousinly notes. British dreadnaughts nosed unobtrusively toward Scapa Flow, German cruisers clotted at Kiel. . . . Ninety-four years of America's turgid adolescence! And some fifty of them spent in the thick of national affairs. . . . Down the roaring decades that blent a score of polyglot peoples to a new breed, thrust Mexico across the Rio Grande and Colorado, Canada beyond the Columbia, the West out to mid-Pacific, his was a stormy, dramatic figure in Congress, on the battlefield, at the courts of Madrid and St. James's, in the palacios nacionales of Colom- bia, Panama, Peru. ... And yet, on the crowded shelf of American biography, his niche stands vacant. The fact is curious, and needs some explanation. While, in odd paragraphs scattered through hundreds of old 2 Dan Sickles volumes and newspaper files, his official record stands fairly com- plete, these sources give almost no glimpse of the man himself. And, in this instance, the personal archives— letters, diaries, the intimate memorabilia— so essential to the biographer's task, were almost en- tirely lacking. Some of this material had been lost; part of it had been left in forgotten caches here and abroad; the great bulk of it had been stolen— and, for a long time, was thought destroyed. Also, unfortunately, there could be small recourse to personal recollec- tions. He outlived all the friends of his prime. His family, for the last thirty-five years of his life, had held no contact with him. But, during the past two years, elaborate and persistent research has succeeded in retrieving a great many missing documents. Some of the most important of these— recaptured amid wartime complica- tions in France and Spain, dispatched by boat and impounded by the British at Bermuda— were dictated from memory pending their release. And so, at last, amid delays and difficulties— the present portrait: an attempt to paint "the man himself" in something of his complex human actuality, in something of the crimson and the black, the dun and the gold of his dauntless, brilliant, beclouded career. Ambition drove him, patriotism inspired him, a tremendous vital- ity supported him; courage, eloquence, intellectual vigor, executive capacity lent their aid; ill chance thwarted him; undisciplined pas- sions betrayed him; self-assurance, decisiveness, impetuosity gave a dramatic flair to his actions. But, first and last, the central fact of him abides in something profoundly characteristic of his era and his breed— his deep-rooted indomitability. . . . Success, tragedy, crime, battle and mutilation, obloquy, neglect —he knew them all. But nothing could defeat him— not even himself! A study in the contradictions of human personality, the dissonant tonalities of fate! With a genius for friendship, few men made more bitter enemies. His amours, fleeting as fierce, were innumerable, and recall— at other levels— the erotic record of a Liszt, a Goethe, a Pancho Villa. But he failed to create a single lasting, or significant, relationship. A brilliant pleader at the bar, a politician and acknowledged leader of Tammany in his twenties, a diplomat in the early thirties, lover of the arts and conversant with the major languages of Europe, his education was heterodox, broken, self -chosen. Instead of a Foreword 3 Notorious as he was for his affairs with women, he yet, in a mad moment, shot to death the son of Francis Scott Key who had engaged the affections of his young wife; and, in the most sensational trial in the history of American jurisprudence, was pronounced "not guilty." But immediately thereafter, to the astonished scandal of all Washington society, he reinstated his beloved "Terry" in her former position; and in a challenging letter to the press— "I am not aware of any code of morals which makes it infamous to forgive"— de- fended his action against the gossips. At the outbreak of the Civil War he raised and equipped the Ex- celsior Brigade; and, with no more than an amateur's knowledge of military matters, rapidly rose to the rank of major general, came close to salvaging— and but for the gross neglect of his pleas for ammunition almost certainly would have salvaged— the disgraceful Union defeat at Chancellors ville; and, at Gettysburg, left to his own devices and boldly advancing his troops to a dangerous salient, won fame and blame, and lost a leg. His political enemies were acrid; an inimical press missed few opportunities to belittle and deride him. But Lincoln dispatched him as his secret emissary to the Latin-American republics. Grant sent him as minister to Spain in the midst of the Cuban turmoil. Both men prized him dearly, as did Buchanan, Pierce, Stanton. Longstreet, his immediate opponent at Gettysburg, frankly adored him. . . . Adolphe Thiers made him "Grand Croix de la Legion d'Honneur"; Bismarck gave him his confidence, Queen Isabella her couch. Europe knew him as the "Yankee King of Spain." In old age, virile, crusty, benignant, he still remained a menace to his enemies and the secret terror of society matrons with venture- some daughters. Beloved more than any other by the men of the Grand Army, he served them to the end. An American, then— "one of the turbulent breed," spanning a century of America's coming of age, and summing up in himself —after a dynamic fashion of his own— the major motivations of his time, here General Dan Sickles rides by. Author's Note: In his last days Dan Sickles gave the year 182$ as the date of his birth. Whether in vanity or as a result of jailing memory •, he thus lopped six years from his actual age. The date here given, however, is sustained by the family archives, and is indubitably correct. Dan Sickles CHAPTER II America Emergent -♦—• Xhe hustling thirties . . . America-to-be emerging. The Louisi- ana Purchase had stretched her borders from Mississippi to the Rockies, from Canada to the Gulf. By mule-drawn barge along the new Erie Canal, by cart and coach over the still newer Cumberland Road, by great rafts—equipped with cabins and bearing entire families with stock and tools— drifting adown the Ohio, native Amer- ica streamed westward. On to the Promised Land! At the same time, as though to fill the void thus left, great hordes of eager, sturdy peasants— Irish, English, German, Italian, Dutch, Scandinavian, even the Greek, Turk, Arab, Armenian— came swarm- ing through the port of New York. Behold the Provmsed Land! What if to many of these newcomers the Promised Land soon lost its dream-painted tints? For the most part they held on to their faith and went to work with a will. . . . Were there not jobs to be had at the factories— even if at the pittance dictated by greed and the glut of hands? Was there not "political freedom"— or, at least, the vote, and a chance to swap it now and again for a pot of beer? And out West— if one could dodge the red scalper and the white speculator— was not good govern- ment land to be had for a dollar an acre? Best of all: there were no class distinctions, no arrogant lords and ladies, only the Rich and the Poor; no monarch— even if certain Wall Street gentlemen were said to have holdings larger than a dozen European duchies. But what if the picture were not so bright as it had been painted? One thing was sure: opportunity was open to all; the prizes beyond be- lief. Wasn't Andrew Jackson born in a shanty? See him now— in the White House! And look at John Jacob Astor— yesterday a penniless shagpate unable to sign his name— with his palaces and America Emergent 5 coaches, his twenty million dollars, still peddling the Indians cheap rotgut for priceless pelts, and thumbing his nose at the government! That shows what can be done! All one has to do is to be smart, get busy, go West. . . . Such was the arising spirit of the time— breeding like a contagion. With every ship that belched bundle-clutching humanity at the Battery, New York real estate boomed, stocks rose, western land prices stiffened. Soon even the stay-at-homes caught the excitement spread by this explosion of repressed peoples loosed on the wharves. They, too, waked, looked about, fell to. In the thirties, in truth, the young Republic, hitherto a bit con- fused as to its destiny— what with the British invasion, humiliating struggles with the Seminoles, open treason in New England, incip- ient rebellion in the South, bitter feuding between shipmasters and millowners— suddenly began to achieve selfhood, began to sense its own vast potentialities and to realize that its strength, and the future of the democratic tradition, lay no longer with the Seaboard but with the new states being builded by "the men of the western waters." Instinctively it turned its back squarely upon Europe and set its face toward the Rockies. At the same time a great wave of hope swept the country. Scarcely a man, native or foreign born, but felt its impetus, gained a new sense of his own possibilities, or failed to quicken his pace under the exciting illusion that El Dorado lurked just around the corner. . . . The Decade of Dream! And the birth of the American spirit of optimism! No ephemeral phenomenon, that spirit, but a force destined to endure, find cosmic voice in an Emerson, a Walt Whit- man, and, in one hundred years, forge, amid froth and folly and fire, a civilization mechanistic, speed-mad, drab, corrupt, but, ma- terially, the most powerful and enterprising known to man. And with optimism came the spirit of venture. These shores, from the first, were peopled by those who had "taken" a chance"— usu- ally a tremendous chance. Now the new day, the ever expanding frontier, called for fresh gambles with fortune. And there emerged, especially in the "western waters," the American saluted by Kipling nearly a century later, who— . . . greets th' embarrassed Gods, nor fears To shake the iron hand of Fate Or match ivith Destiny for beers. 6 Dan Sickles But optimism and readiness to bet on the board must be backed by action. If one is to forge ahead of the other fellow, one must get busy. And get busy every man did. "Even the carts proceed at a gallop," said one foreign critic of the time. Said another, "One has the sense that everyone of this people is afraid of being late some- where." The spirit of hustle! Optimism, take a chance, hustle— all good things in a raw people at grips with a raw empire. But in a competitive economy based on the right of the individual to appropriate the public resources, these inevitably gave rise to something less admirable: the spirit of "each for himself and devil take the hindmost! " And westward lay a vast territory for the looting. Ahead of the settler sped the speculator. Terms of purchase pre-empted crops for years to come. The Free West became an ever receding mirage; and, usually, with the first furrow the adventurous farmer plowed, he sealed himself and all his family serfs for life to the new but invisible lords of mortgage bank and grain pit. Still the optimistic flame could not be quenched. If there were those who wondered why a democracy on paper was not also a democracy on earth, they were few and unheard. An odd success, a stroke of luck here and there served to keep the illusion alive; and, as an ironic corollary to frontier conditions, the man who profited most by the scheme of things— the gentleman who never hitched a trace nor turned a sod— soon came to be looked upon as a new kind of titular deity to be envied, respected, copied. Naturally, if insidi- ously, there arose, as a permanent American attitude, the conviction that money is the man, and the making of money— no matter how brutal or shabby the means— the greatest of all private and civic virtues. The Calf donned a Puritan collar! At the same time the unprecedented growth of population tended to throw the political machinery in reverse— especially in the larger cities. Doubtless a system of simple geographical representation was suitable enough in the days of the town meeting, when folk, gath- ered in small communities, knew their neighbors— and the candidate. But as villages became towns, towns cities, when in the flux and flow of a swarming, new population, the town meeting disappeared, no man knew his neighbor any more, nor, often enough, so much as the names of his representatives until he read them on his ballot paper, the system revealed itself as a pathetic anachronism. More America Emergent 7 and more the business of selecting and seating candidates fell into the hands of small groups of gentlemen anxious to relieve the public of the burden. Adepts these! Rome knew them— in her putrescence. Of all types: the smooth shyster with a social veneer, the raw plug- ugly, the educated schemer, the brawny Irish saloonkeeper, the flash brothelmaster, they had one thing in common: they, as Boss Tweed, with gentle pride, used to say of his associates, "saw their opportunities and took 'em." Largely recruited from the under- world, imbued with its cynical realism, a bit short on grammar but long on human psychology, they operated instinctively on the theory that the average citizen works for nothing but his pocket and his glory all the time. Their technique was to make each supporter, no matter how humble, feel that, in one way or another, he was "in on the game." And theory and technique worked amazingly. Giving three hundred and sixty-five days a year to a matter which occupied the average voter a few hours at most, men such as these found it easy enough to select their own candidates, play boodling benefactor to masses of ignorant immigrants, forge naturalization papers for those that lacked them, vote the same man a dozen times, stuff or steal ballot boxes, organize gangs to terrorize opponents from the polls. And once in control and up to their elbows in the treasury, they found it easy enough to suborn newspapers, bribe off enemies, win the open or tacit support of the various financial groups seek- ing legislative favors or a blind eye to taxes. . . . The Founding Fathers could not be expected to foresee that a system based on the odd opposites of economic privilege and town- meeting politics would work out this way. But the logic of events outwits the logic of reason. And the Great Experiment was not fifty years old before its actual result was to crowd municipal councils and legislative halls, not with the intended "chosen best," but, despite splendid exceptions here and there, with the ultimate "unchosen worst," the offal of a social system gone awry. The rise of "machine politics" as the product of geographical representation plus economic privilege and public indifference put legislation on the market, thieves at the public till. It also, even for the honest and aspiring, early and often made itself the sole entrance to political life; and a man had to swim through slime to get to a place where he could bring his own ideas to bear. In New York City the machine- rooted, ironically enough, in America's first organization of de- 8 Dan Sickles fence against aristocratic Federalist tendencies-early had developed into that tenacious political octopus: Tammany Hall— originally a fraternal organization pretending Indian origin, affecting Indian ceremonial dress, and ludicrously organized into "wigwams" super- intended by "sachems." And whatever the Founding Fathers foresaw or did not foresee —and Washington had moments of tragically true prevision— the realistic fact remains that Tammany Hall, born with the Republic, proved to be the archetype and Founding Father of the henceforth actual— as opposed to the intended— administration of American pub- lic affairs, municipal, state, national. And thus in the thirties, amid the drums of hope and hustle, Babel at the Battery, steamboats churning Mississippi mud, settlers and speculators racing to the Rockies, while Tammany Hall set its feet on New York City and with one hand reached for Albany and with the other reached for the Capitol, it happened that the Amer- ican Dream quietly was folded up and put away in the national garret— to be taken out henceforth, like grandmother's wedding gown, only for Charades. In its place appeared new twin deities in the American Pantheon: the Political Boss, and that "rugged individ- ualist," the Unrepentant Thief. The American Tragedy— possibly. But it turned out well enough for George Garrett Sickles, sturdy, rigid Knickerbocker, sixth of his American line, proud of his ancestor, Zacharia Van Sicklen, one of the pioneers of New Amsterdam (later New York City) and founder of New Rochelle, proud of deep family roots across the seas, proud also of the fact that he was the first patent attorney in these States. Somewhere in the thirties, growing dissatisfied with much work, modest fees, he plunged into the current gamble in New York real estate. He couldn't miss. Real estate— that marvelous sponge that sops up the community wealth as fast as it is made— was overcharged. He made his bets, took his profits, proved himself an up-and-coming American of his time and place; and, in a few years, amassed such millions as needed a suite of offices at 74 Nassau Street to take care of them. And it was here that his only son, Daniel Edgar —both pride and problem— received his first initiation into law and business. Little is recorded of Daniel's childhood. It is not until the spring of '36 that he comes fairly to view. Then a few months short of six- America Emergent 9 teen, he was standing on the stoop of the Glens Falls Academy for Young Gentlemen, viewing the street and the future with a brood- ing, angry, meditative eye. A sinewy, good-looking lad, gray-eyed, with a mop of honey- colored hair, dressed substantially in homespun coat, knickerbockers, wool hose and stout brogans, he looked what he was— a sturdy young Dutch American bent on adventure. Under his ribs pulsed the song of his day: "Believe: take a chance: every man for himself! " He had been marooned in this dull private school upstate because recently typhus had raged in filthy New York; and, also, he had been rather something to handle— even for a Knickerbocker paterfamilias. But the sense of his time stirred in his blood. Behind the heavy door he had banged on himself, a wizened dominie hugged his haunches, endeavored to resume his dignity and quell the timorous riot of a score of happily scandalized boys. In an unlucky moment the headmaster had undertaken to whip the in- subordinate Dan— and had been soundly whipped instead. On the stoop Dan, still breathing a little hard, looked up and down the empty village street. Suddenly decision snapped. Resolutely he turned north— toward his favorite haunt: the print shop of Stephen Adams, editor of the Glens Falls Messenger. Had he not already learned for fun to set type, write up news? Very well, he would get old Adams to take him on as apprentice, give him room and board for a while. Someday he would be the owner, editor, master printer of a great American newspaper. Devil take Glens Falls Academy! He was not surprised that he felt so calm— or that suddenly every- thing looked so different! No more than a chick that breaks its shell did he find any need to explain to himself how it happened that in one vicious tussle he had crossed a line, opened a door on himself, passed from schoolboy to man. He only knew that it was so, that school was done, that he was outward bound on his own. Possible objections? In two strides he had forgotten them. Decision —action! Reflection burned to an intuitive flash. So it was to be with him— in Congress, at Chancellorsville, Gettys- burg, in London, Paris, Madrid, and on the bloodstained curb of Washington's Lafayette Square. io Dan Sickles CHAPTER III In Search of an Education JLf the Messenger was easily seduced, not so George Garrett Sickles. He promptly ordered his son to return to school or come home. Dan did neither, but stuck to his typesetting stick. Finding letters of no avail, the bearded, strong-jawed father tucked his wife under his arm and descended on Glens Falls. It was Knickerbocker to Knickerbocker. Stalemate! In the upshot, Dan's status as an inde- pendent wage earner with a lust for printer's ink was recognized de facto if not de jure. But what gave the meeting a cast of fatality was the presence of a new friend the parents had contacted en route and brought along with them— a young professor of New York University. A fascinating fellow, this Charles Da Ponte— and a member of a fasci- nating family. His father, the uncannily brilliant Jewish scholar and poetaster, Emmanuel Conegliano, self-styled Lorenzo Da Ponte— apparently after the scintillant Venetian Jesuit— was a master of Hebrew, Latin, Greek, and of most of the languages of Europe. Formerly Court Poet to the Emperor Joseph of Hapsburg, com- rade of Casanova in erotic adventure, librettist to Mozart, and the intimate of all the great and scandalous in the dying, decadently iridescent years of Europe's eighteenth-century culture, he had fled to the New World refuge— for reasons. And, for the past thirty years, a proud, pathetic sponger, dazzling, insinuating, grandiose, he had reigned as a kind of seedy social lion over New York's naive intellectual circles. Young Da Ponte, black-eyed, magnetic, speaking with animal ease the half-dozen languages he had acquired from the cradle, and al- ready, at thirty, America's first professor of the philosophy of his- tory, captured Dan's imagination at a stroke. And with that spon- In Search of an Education n taneous outgoing which henceforth was to mark him whenever his eye lit with recognition on man or mistress, Dan grappled him. Da Ponte returned the grip. Raw, rebellious schoolboy and sensitive, sophisticated scholar became classic friends. But it was a year or so before they could get together again. . . . The Panic of '37— caused by President Jackson's transference of government funds from the privately owned and badly mis- managed Bank of the United States to the regional state banks- brought about a slump in New York real estate; and the elder Sickles was glad, for a while, that his son could prove self-supporting. In fact, during this interlude— when paper fortunes vanished as magically as they had been made— Dan, now a good journeyman printer, came from Glens Falls to New York, and, taking a job with Mr. Turney of Fulton Street, set about contributing to the depleted family exchequer. But in due time the panic passed— as panics will. New York real estate boomed once more— higher than ever. And Sickles, senior, realizing on the market, wisely invested much of his profits in the broad and productive acres of a farming estate at Livingston, New Jersey. To him now— a trifle sobered by his recent experience— the life of a gentleman farmer seemed the better part of valor. He also deemed it a good life for his son; and he set about training him to take over the care of the estate. But Dan had other ideas. Since he first had met young Da Ponte, he had lusted for a college education. Lacking the necessary scholastic equipment, he begged his father to be allowed a spell of precollege preparation in the Da Ponte household. The response was not encouraging; and so, after an honest trial of hogs and apples, Dan, in characteristic fashion, suddenly packed his traps and left home to fend for himself. Then, like a wise man well whipped, George Sickles relented. Once more Dan won his way. A week later he was installed with his dream and his idol in the Da Ponte household. An island in time, the Da Ponte home was— and for many years, by grace of benignant friends, had been— the center of the last phos- phorescence of eighteenth-century culture transplanted to a youthful, blatant New York. The great rambling, half-decrepit house, once the baroque pride of a shipowner, had become both the rookery of the Da Ponte clan and the Artist enheim of New York's intelligentsia. And presiding over it, with the aid of seven languages, a gourmet's knowledge of cookery, and a flair for discipline, the signora Da 12 Dan Sickles Ponte, that energetic Italian madonna, managed, on an easily ex- hausted budget, to prove herself an inexhaustible hostess to her husband's eager and ravenous guests. The household was large and included, besides the exotic, irre- sponsible sire and his competent spouse, two unmarried sons, Joseph and Lorenzo, and Charles, the youngest, with his wife, and the clamorous Durant, their two-year-old. Also there was an adopted daughter— now a mother— and her husband. Of course, Lorenzo Da Ponte, barely able to secure his own existence, would adopt a daughter! Not celebrated for conventional rectitude, it is possible that he may have had certain paternal yearnings in the matter. Any- how, very lovely and seductive, Maria early had attracted the atten- tions of that constant guest at the Da Ponte table, the maestro of the Montressor Opera Company, Signor Bagioli. The upshot had been a marriage and a new boarder— for opera was no road to wealth— also a baby. And when Dan entered the scene, that baby— a little chuck- ling imp— already had become the hub of the Da Ponte cosmos. Her name was Teresa. Always easily engaged by puppies, kittens, birds, butterflies— any- thing little, anything lovely— Dan now had his first experience with a human fledgling. And he was her captive on sight. She seemed to know it, always put on an act whenever he came awkwardly diddle- daddling over her crib. At the same time he found himself in a dumfounding atmosphere where people talked endlessly and volubly in five or six languages— about what, he could only guess; where they greeted each other in French, discussed philosophy in German, criticized the wine in Italian, scolded the servants in English, and quarreled about Medi- terranean politics in Spanish. . . . He felt an outcast, stupidly deficient. But what these people could do he could do. . . . Already he was dreaming of a diplomatic career— as a step to the White House! Someday a command of languages might prove important. He would see what there was to all this! And the Da Ponte family found him forever eager and question- ing. He was young enough, plastic enough, quickly to catch sounds, intonations, phrases. Charles had laid it upon the household that they were to help his student and never give him a word of English. The pupil proved apt. He toiled at his grammars and waded boldly into In Search of an Education 13 conversations. A couple of years of this, and he could take tolerable care of himself at table in French, Italian, Spanish— and, at least, swear convincingly in German. At last he felt ready for New York University. And here, under the special tutelage of maestro Charles, he worked well for a few semesters. Then the elder Da Ponte, well on in his eighties, gathered himself for his last literary effort, wrote an exquisite ode to his own demise, "Parti de la Vita," and within twenty-four hours folded himself to sleep. Three months later Charles, stricken with pneumonia, fol- lowed him. And Dan was left to struggle with his first experience of devastating loss. . . . He tried to behave with correct Knicker- bocker phlegm, but once the coffin of his beloved Charles was lowered, he broke down in such grief as scandalized the decent crowd of mourners. . . . And when he got back to the stricken, shabby old house, there was Teresa— now four years old— puzzled and lonely, wanting to play. He couldn't stand it and fled from her in tears. Student days were done. Nothing could make him go back to college. But he could not forsake the Da Ponte home. After a while he was in and out again, practicing his languages, romping with Teresa. For a few months he lent a serious presence to his father's law and real estate practice. Then, sensing his future career, he apprenticed himself to the ranking law firm of B. F. Butler— Attorney General under President Van Buren. He studied hard, passed his examinations with credit, and was called to the bar. He was only twenty-four; and in his first case— involving a question of contested patents- argued before a board of commissioners at Washington, won high praise from Daniel Webster. Thus ended Dan's youthful educational ambit. On the surface there seems nothing very remarkable about it. Actually it stands unique. Characteristically, it was self-chosen throughout— and with an un- canny sense of the training his future career would require. At the age when, as the newest and oldest pedagogies agree, most boys would be benefited by exchanging the schoolroom for the workshop and contact with the world for a while, he forsook desk and bench for the printer's case and a craft that went far to form the orderly prose and trenchant speech of his later life. That step 14 Dan Sickles did more for him: it gave him a knowledge of the working world and an understanding of the common man that served him well to the end. And when he was ready to benefit by it, he chose— what the better type of university regards as its essential value— the informal private tutoring that comes of personal intimacy between student and teacher. And in his case the teacher was brilliant, and the contact a deep mutual attachment that implanted its influence for life. Dan entered the Da Ponte home an awkward, self-assertive lad: he left it with urbane manners, an awakened love of music, painting, liter- ature, and— special gift of a master of the philosophy of history— a dispassionate approach to problems and a sense of historic perspec- tive, that, in later years, distinguished even his minor political speeches. Thereafter college and law studies were simply means to a clearly grasped end: the White House. When he entered the courtroom for the first time, he brought with him, as aides to his ambition, a trained mind, ease of manner, cultured sense, and a practical knowl- edge of life. He had given himself precisely the education he needed. It may be doubted if any vocational authority, endeavoring to guide him, could have done better— or as well. Meanwhile, in New York forty thousand desperate unemployed enviously eyed the pigs fattening in the filthy gutters. The narrow sidewalks compelled them either to walk ankle-deep in mud or humbly to brush against a stream of immaculate tight pants and frock coats escorting velveted crinolines. Arkansas and Michigan were admitted as states. Texas had revolted against Mexico— and the tragedy of the Alamo quivered on the air. Colt invented his handy little tool for clinching arguments. The gentle Audubon issued his classic on American bird life. Longfellow was making neat verses. Congress passed its famous Gag Resolution tabling all further dis- cussion of slavery. A genial Englishman, with half a million dollars to spare, founded the Smithsonian Institution— "for the diffusion of knowledge." And the first three thousand miles of American railroad had been built. French-Canadians revolted against British rule; a group of American enthusiasts tried to join them. The British inter- posed. And the steamer Carolina went over Niagara in flames. Across the seas Queen Victoria, amid more than the usual palpita- Tammany Nights 15 tions, was perched on a throne long grown sordid, shabby, ridicu- lous. Promptly demanding a bedroom of her own, she met her ministers with a promise to "be good." Dickens in his Pickwick Papers was splashing the British face with laughter and tears and driving imprisonment for debt into limbo. Thackeray, with suavest irony, was taking the grand bourgeoisie apart. Macaulay was stun- ning Parliament with his spontaneous perfection of phrase. Words- worth was in his lovely springtime— never to make summer. Tenny- son was tuning up. Browning had taken to visiting the Barretts of Wimpole Street. Wheatstone and Cooke perfected the magnetic- needle telegraph. Ericsson's new screw steamer made ten miles an hour. The English Chartist movement— demanding universal suffrage -nbled through riot and massacre. John Talbot first printed photo- graphs on paper. On the Continent, in these last days of the thirties, a rising ferment of anti-monarchist agitation mingled with a fresh efflorescence of the arts. Louis Philippe again narrowly escaped assassination. And George Sand, Alfred de Musset, Gautier, Heine, and Victor Hugo; Meyerbeer and his jealous rival, Rossini; Berlioz, Bellini, Chopin, and the mighty Liszt were creating a new Maytime in music and letters. The nineteenth century was well on its way. And so was Dan Sickles. The Tammany Tiger had its eye on him. He had his eye on the Tiger. The question was who would swallow whom. CHAPTER IV Tammany Nights A he fantastic forties! The American populace, groggily re- cuperating from a couple of panics, decided that it was time for a bold assertion of the rights of man. The presidential election was 1 6 Dan Sickles due. Van Buren proposed to succeed himself. But if we may believe Congressman Ogle, of Pennsylvania, he was not at all the right man to defend the rights of man, but was, in fact, an effete aristocrat spending his days lolling on "arabesqued divans" in the "Blue Ellipti- cal Saloon" of the executive mansion, spraying himself with Parisian perfumes, sipping exotic wines, and gloating over the fabulous fur- nishings with which he had surrounded himself at the public expense. In a very remarkable speech Mr. Ogle recited the list of these fur- nishings to a wondering— and occasionally wandering— House. It took him two hours! But his effort keynoted a campaign. Overnight the "Blue Elliptical Saloon" became metamorphosed into a Red Rag. And rallying all the available political odds and ends —abolitionists, anti-renters, conservatives, Websterites, and so forth— the Whigs prepared for a mighty popular charge upon it. For can- didate they selected General William Henry Harrison who— so it was said— had dealt chastisement to the redskins on the field of Tip- pecanoe. Unwisely the Democratic press, perverting to a sneer what was originally only a pleasant Whig estimate of the candidate, pro- ceeded to damn him as a man who would be content with "a log cabin and a barrel of cider." That was enough! Insurgent America leaped to the challenge. It mattered not that General Harrison lived handsomely on a two-thousand-acre estate. In the facile fancy of a people bent on a picnic he suddenly became the desire of their hearts— an honest, fighting farmer reeking not of Parisian perfumes but of good, ripe manure; a man who loved his humble log cabin and drowned his sorrows not in exotic French wines but in good, hard American cider. It was a picture of the Plain Man to rouse every red-blooded and cider-loving American to battle. Soon, in hamlet and city, parades appeared in the streets, shouting the mellifluous war cry, "Tippecanoe and Tyler too!" And the cabins were no hollow subterfuges, but realistically equipped with chimney, coonskin on door, and cider barrel by the steps. And as realistically equipped with gentlemen attending to the cider. Democracy was on the march— and a very delightful march it was! The only platform was the one that bore the barrel. The only issue— "Log Cabin versus Blue Elliptical Saloon!" And this gaily simple method of choosing the Chief Executive amply proved its efficacy. On a sparkling sea of Tammany Nights 17 cider Mr. Van Buren was floated out of the White House and Gen- eral Harrison was floated in. And when the young democracy finally sobered up (for devotion to hard cider had become a political passion hard to quell), it found itself with hardly time left to get dressed for the millennium. As far back as 1832 a Mr. William Miller, with the aid of the Bible and an astrological chart, had proven conclusively that the world would come to the end it always had richly deserved, precisely on July 23, 1843; and, since that time, he and his preacher cohorts had been ad- monishing careless Americans to prepare. With the passing years the movement had gained enormous proportions. The great tents of Millerite camp meetings mushroomed wherever city lot or village green offered pegging ground. And, as the time drew near, scores of thousands of crazed folk began casting away their worldly goods, turning their cattle loose, closing their shops, and giving themselves over to "watch-night" services that, often enough, lasted the clock around. "Ascension Robes" were in great demand; and the more wily haberdashers blossomed out with a great variety of cuts and styles. Muslin, however, was the favorite material— since it gave the wearer, according to one advertiser, "a pious and purified appearance," cal- culated, one may suppose, to deceive even Gabriel. Another adver- tiser, plastering his window with the sign, "Buy an Ascension Robe now— while the stock lasts— and be ready to meet the King of Kings!" did a rushing business up to the last hour. The Hour came— and passed. A hardened old world insisted upon another round or two yet. Mr. Miller, undaunted, announced a new date— but not before some thousands of simple souls who had gone to the hills and the mountains "to watch for the Coming" had suffered severely from ex- posure, exhaustion, destitution, while no few had slain themselves or gone mad. And so, in the forties, were educed, in a rather spectacular way, two permanent idiosyncrasies of the national character: a passion for hokum, and a tendency to hysteria. And with them appeared a third: the lusty enjoyment of lofty speech. Sanctimonious grandiloquence, of course, was a characteristic of the age— here and abroad. But here it reached Olympian levels beyond the powers of even a British Chadband. The rising bourgeoisie, schooled but uncultured, got a little tight, in fact, on their first taste of the wine of words, and wishing to impress the world with their new-found superiority, fell, 1 8 Dan Sickles drunkardwise, upon a virtuous verbosity, amusing and amazing. And —in an epoch politically sordid, intellectually crass, sexually coarse- press, platform, pulpit, the courts, Congress, disported themselves with a tombstone diction suggesting nothing so much as robes and wings, alabaster ringers pointing to the skies; and upon the slightest provocation the air pullulated with "domestic altars," "chaste bosoms," "sainted mothers," "virtuous females," "sublime heroes," "deathless deeds," and "elegant repasts." But out West where sod must be turned— often gun on back— and babes were thrust into the world with none to aid, there was laconic stoicism, screaming silence aplenty. Meanwhile America more than ever was on the move. The Cum- berland—longest and most direct highway in the world— was thronged from dawn to dusk with carts, coaches, cattle beneath a haze of dust. The seventeen rail and steamboat routes out of Buffalo were blocked with the migrant mass bound West. Overnight the Indian village of Chicago had become a braggart, shanty metropolis with nothing to sell but itself— and selling it big. In Oregon, British and American settlers squabbled over boundary lines; and the cry "Fifty-four forty or fight!" made chesty shouting. In California— long since softened up for conquest by the infiltration of the Yankee mortgage shark- Fremont, with a merely token display of powder and shot, knocked the Eagle off his Cactus perch and trussed him up in the Stars and Stripes. And just in time! Only a few months later a ranch hand, John Marshall, cleaning the race of Sutter's flour mill, found a hand- ful of gold in the tailings. After all the cheat and despair— El Dorado at last! In schooner keeled or wheeled, by fevered Isthmus, howling Horn, prairie sprouting feathered death, the last, maddest, and most mag- nificent of the great migrations set face toward the sinking sun. At the same time a determined young fellow in the cutaway and top hat, mustache and goatee fashionable in the period, was getting his initiation into politics. And Tammany Hall was an exciting school. Myers gives a picture of one of its energetic discussions: "A row began in the 'bloody Ould Sixth' by the breaking of some ballot boxes. Both parties armed themselves with stones and bludgeons, and the riot became general . . . until the militia hastened upon the scene and restored order." Tammany at that time was going through a change in personnel Tammany Nights 19 and administration. Hitherto it largely had been governed from above by the sachems of the society; but its dependence upon the under- world coupled with the vast increase of immigrant population rapidly tended to transfer the seat of power to the saloon and the sidewalk— the "ward heeler" and his "gangs." Against this type of civic administration, the decent citizenry, scattered about in geographical wads, with only sporadic organiza- tion, and unable to give more than odd moments to political affairs, were virtually helpless. But the "heelers" controlling densely popu- lated wards of ignorant immigrant voters were anything but helpless. And for the rest, the bribe or the bludgeon soon persuaded opposition into silence or collusion. In the forties political morals were, perhaps, no lower than they are today; but political methods were much more frank and crude. A man who proposed office needed a strong stomach. And this young lawyer-dandy and man about town, Dan Sickles, with his air of fashion, honey-colored comb, lean hips and wide shoulders, keen, singularly engaging gray eyes, ready lip and bold port, might be as fastidious as he was assiduous in the matter of wine and women, but when it came to politics his stomach was strong as the best. Tammany he took in stride. It was something you had to go through—if you proposed to be President. And in the decrepitude of the other parties it was obvious to the veriest neophyte that the Tiger guarded the only path to the White House. That was enough for Dan Sickles. That the Tiger had both stripes and claws he knew well enough; but the fact did not deter him. And at this time the stripes were rather clearly marked. Tammany's complete control of the police department naturally immunized the faithful from arrest— no matter what the crime; and in the event that some policeman proved stupid, Tammany's handmade judiciary provided the necessary acquittal. But nothing is perfect in human affairs. Tammany's control of the state and federal authorities was not always complete; and as a result about half the Board of Alder- men then in session were under indictment for various crimes. What became of the indictments history does not seem to record. If occa- sionally the Tiger lost the first round, he seldom lost the second. The claws also were becoming full grown. The gangs were loyal, efficacious, immune. Maiming and murder, the bullet and bludgeon were rampant in New York City, although most of the cases of 20 Dan Sickles assault never reached the stage of official report. Within or without his belly, the Tiger did not like indigestible persons. Dealing with Tammany required toughness and tact. And if young Sickles was tactful, he was as tough as the Tiger. He was an American on his way. If this beast of stripes and claws could be used— very well. If not — ? But Tammany received him well. The Tiger was bland. Sickles responded with blandishments. He stroked the striped hide with a first and last issue of his only newspaper: a cleverly worded pamphlet in support of Polk and Dallas, typeset (with boyish satisfaction) by himself. On the platform he won favor instantly, despite a cool and cultured diction that fell strangely upon ears accustomed to coarse harangues. And for one so young he snowed himself shrewd in coun- cil. The Tiger purred. The Tiger could use him. And he was using the Tiger. Fundamentally Tammany represented the middle class— the element on the make. Needing the support of the working masses, however, it loudly pretended to be their champion. But it was always secretly subservient to High Finance; and its largest loot came from adroit collusion with railroad and banking interests and the new powerful corporations seeking franchises, charters, legislative favors. Conse- quently it needed representatives capable of appealing to each of the three classes. Of the mobster and middle-class type it had plenty; but of men qualified to present a convincing front to the wealthy and educated, it never had been able to secure enough. And for years it had been endeavoring to entice into its parlor a few mem- bers of the fashionable and literary world. Never did Tammany so proudly boast as when it had succeeded in adding to its roster some naive scion of an old family, some political innocent among the writers and artists of the day. And here was a find— a fellow with the dress, manners, speech of a Knickerbocker blueblood. And no fool! The Tiger put him in the New York State Assembly. For the next few years Dan Sickles levied hard on his Dutch vitality. When he was not debating at Albany, his days were spent in court or at his New York office, 74 Nassau Street, working up one or other of the increasingly important cases that came to his desk. His nights, when he was not attending some turbulent Tam- many meeting or convivial powwow, were about equally given to Tammany Nights 21 the pursuit of the feminine and to prolonged bouts of private study in his chosen fields of law, history, political theory; and— the uncanny prevision again!— in drilling with the National Guard and conning Napoleon's Campaigns. Often he saw the stars to bed, yet morning found him at work on time— fresh, vigorous, fastidiously groomed. Sleep he did not seem to need. In law his career was clear sailing. Intellectually he was the athlete. His muscular brains" delighted in the tussle of legal exposition and argument, craved the hardy satisfaction that comes of a premise well taken, a definition precisely drawn, a chain of deduction carried to a crushing conclusion. He approached an important case much in the spirit of a general planning a battle— plotting his strategy of position, his tactics of maneuver, arranging his artillery of fact and infantry of argument, and— against crisis— preparing cavalry forays and feints of humor, pathos, irony, the whole co-ordinated to confuse and out- flank the enemy and sweep him from the field. He loved the game for its own sake; and, so long as it did not cut athwart his political ambi- tions, it mattered little to him what the case might be. As a result newly arising corporations soon began to seek him out. They needed this type of front-line defense. In politics he was even more successful. Speeches from the floor in any legislature, of course, are mostly made for home consumption— and the record! Save on critical occa- sions members— very wisely— seldom even pretend to take each other's wind; and a house in session usually presents the spectacle of some lone individual solemnly addressing rows of empty benches, a crowd of colleagues off in a corner shouting and laughing about something else, a bored Speaker furtively trying to catch up with his corre- spondence, and a few gentlemen slouched in relaxed attitudes behind newspapers. Nevertheless, now and again, the business of conducting public affairs crops a speaker capable of attracting a corporal's guard to hail or heckle him. Dan Sickles, from the first, was one of these. When— with Napoleon's Campaigns, Montesquieu's Esprit des Lois, a battered History of Greece, and bound copies of the Federalist— Sickles arrived at Albany, the Assembly was struggling with a mass of legislation arising out of the recently revised state constitution. No few of the bills pending closely concerned Tammany interests and were of a nature to require adroit shaping in committee. Also, 22 Dan Sickles over and above the routine "fixing" and vote swapping, some of them required unusually skillful defense on the floor. In work of this kind Sickles was in his element. And with one foot on the political ladder, he was not the man to miss a rung. He worked indefatigably, won from his associates a slightly startled respect, and from Governor Marcy the dictum, "As a debater he excels any man of his years in political life." Acute in committee, cogent and crafty on the floor, he soon proved himself, in fact, not only the youngest but the sturdiest "wheel horse" to the dray of dubious Tammany legislation. Also he was something of a novelty. So suspicious were his op- ponents of his mystifying allusions that once when, in the course of a speech, he happened to refer to France and her republican institu- tions, several of them slid from the hall to consult an atlas and assure themselves that such a country really existed and was not just one of his wily fabrications. His pure English— that sounded almost like a foreign language— his scholarship and culture set him apart in an Assembly most of whose members had difficulty with the arts of writing and spelling. In an atmosphere of vociferous rant, his level, polished speech gleamed like a knife. Man of his time though he was, he was curiously free from the customary hokum and grandiloquence. Hokum— as a play upon emotionalized tribal standards and ideas— he understood. But, while he had a sense of theater, he had no taste for the cheap theatrical; and on the rare occasions that he resorted to hokum, it was an intellectualized brand of his own— more a gesture to the mode than anything else. For the most part his speeches were marked by simple statement, clear presentation, persuasive argument. He liked to levy upon history for his illustrations; and from the files of his card-index mind he could draw, at any moment, some apt parallel in the annals of Greece, Great Britain, or early America in support of his view. As for grandiloquence, he was too tough-minded and intent to bother with it. What he had to say he usually put with shrewd choice and economy of words. Not yet had arisen the great moments that would arouse him to classic eloquence. But as a politician Dan Sickles was completely the realist. He wanted place and power— space for the exercise of the capacities he felt in himself; and he was willing to use his gifts in the service of any man or machine that could help him on his way. For the greed and trickery of little men with little goals he had only contempt; but to get to his own goal he had to deal with them— and did. But Tammany Nights 23 —significantly— he never was charged with complicity in the pecula- tions of his time. Like Lorenzo Shepard, Tammany's most brilliant young orator, he managed to wade the political slime and get ashore with clean hands. As a matter of fact, in these early years he often was hard pressed to pay his way. He had built a fair practice but he was a generous spender. And he could not depend upon his father. The two were not always on the best of terms. And amid the worries of his vast, if fluctuating fortune, George Garrett Sickles had become as careful of cents as his son was careless of dollars. Revealingly, in the fall of his first year of legislative activity, we find Daniel writing his father— a little bleakly— for the loan of fifty dollars, "for a warm overcoat," and not omitting a concrete proposal to repay. A request curtly evaded! A few years later we find the father, embarrassed by a recent slump in the market, humbly writing his son for a quite substantial loan. A request promptly granted! The tremendous zest he brought to his work, Sickles also gave to his pleasures. Colonel Henry G. Stebbins, a gentleman full of martial— and sar- torial—ardor, had organized the Twelfth Regiment of the New York National Guard as a corps d? elite and had designed for its members a uniform copied, with embellishments, from that ultimate of military magnificence— the costume of the Austrian Imperial Guard! If the privates went clad in purple and gold, the officers— plumed, sashed, and sabered— were arrayed in all the splendor of a Chinese cock pheasant. Sickles, a friend of Stebbins, needed no great persuasion to join the corps. He loved soldiering— the whole atmosphere of it: the massed power, blaring brass, throbbing drums, glittering steel, menace of marching feet. And he loved the comradeship of it, the sense of solidarity men don with a uniform, the coarse jollity, all the pride and mischief of the masculine. But if to Sickles this amateur soldiering were a sport, a welcome relief from caucus and court, it was more: an opportunity to learn the rudiments of something that always had fascinated him— the science of war. He studied the military manuals with the industry of a West Pointer and soon was brevetted captain. At the same time he was sufficiently the primordial male to enjoy the sartorial side of the show. He loved to array himself in his plumage, sweat his men through their drill, and then display himself to the girls. And with the girls— in a parlance vogue then as now— he was the 24 Dan Sickles accomplished "wolf." As the son of a sire who in his seventies was to raise a late crop of handsome daughters, he had rather more than his share of the Van Sicklen virility that already had peopled New Rochelle without much other masculine aid! Also he was magnetic, engaging, adroit. Women went to him at a touch. A Knickerbocker of the Knickerbockers, he was much in demand at social affairs uptown. Arid as irresistible with the matron as with the miss, he soon was trailing clouds of scandal that seemed to make him still more the desire of women and the envy of men. Rumor has it that in the course of these amours he fathered no few offspring— some of them afterwards distinguished in the world of fashion, sport, journalism. Of course there were seasons when the social situation grew some- what precarious and fathers and husbands uncomfortably alert; but still there were the ladies of the theater, the opera, the cafes, and certain houses— both smart and discreet. CHAPTER V Teresa -Txnd all the while there was Teresa— a little world apart. Since, as a baby, she first had seduced him, his teasing delight in her, her childish adoration of him, had brightened as she grew. Almost unconsciously she had become to him a pet, private posses- sion, something particularly his own. He often was at the Bagiolis'. They were his last link with the Da Ponte tradition and the influences that had molded his mind; and their gossip of books and music, their warm, haphazard hospitality- were pleasant relief from strenuous bouts of legal battle, political brawl. In the old days Maria— then a child-wife scarcely older than himself— used to help him in his studies. Now she made the house home to him, would coax off his seriousness, whip him up a dish of Teresa 25 her famous spaghetti. And the maestro, inclined to peevishness and parsimony, would brace himself to be genial, bring out a bottle of wine; and there would be talk of the opera— a mutual enthusiasm— the brew pot of European politics, racy reminiscences of old Da Ponte. But even more to him were the moments that he could give to teasing and entrancing Teresa. Always his pockets were full of candy, but she had to plunder him to get it; she was a gamesome sprite, and the ensuing fight would be uproarious. And there would be gifts— gay toys, bits of childish jewelry— mischievously rewrapped a dozen times to drive her frantic with impatience. Sometimes, as she struggled on the floor with knots and seals, she would burst out, black eyes brimming, "Dan, you are the worst friend I have! " Her gaminish spirit released all the nonsense in him. When these two got together the world was fun. It was laughter that did him good. And through the hoydenish years it was the same— with a differ- ence. Teresa was a natural child, healthy, vital, in love with the open, shinning up trees and tearing her clothes. Ever eager for adventure, she would lure Dan to go berrying or bird-nesting with her, take her to the circus, or the Battery Gardens to see the fireworks. Often enough some client or Tammany colleague would be left to cool his heels while Teresa had her day. At twelve she was demanding a pony of her own. If it cost Sickles valuable time, he presently found her a clever, reliable little mare. It was a gift that marked a change. Completely fearless, she took to the saddle like a gypsy. There came canters together along the woodsy banks of the Hudson. Just to ride was nothing— she wanted to race. Flushed and laughing, while he snatched his breath she would gallop ahead of him to leap a gully or a deadfall. Even while he scolded her he knew well enough that her impetuosity echoed his own. A creature of moods, she had a language for each one— English for happiness, Italian for excitement, French for banter, Spanish for rage. To him it was an accomplishment that made her a small em- bodiment of the Da Ponte culture. Drawn into some expedition with her, he would make a stipulation— not without an eye to practice: "Today you must speak only Italian." Teresa on the instant would be one protesting shrug, "Non, non, monsieur— c 'est impossible!" Sickles would be indulgent. "Very well, then. Let's make it French." But Teresa was not to be caught. "No, no, senor. Hoy hablo espanol" 26 Dan Sickles Sickles still was amenable to suggestion. "All right, then— it's Span- ish." Eyes dancing, she would whirl away. "Why Spanish? I don't feel mad today. Let's speak English." Then, demurely, "I want to improve myself! " Fourteen— fifteen. And suddenly, with her early Italian maturity, she was a voluptuous little beauty. And Dan Sickles noted, with a flash of fierce male possessiveness, how men, startled, turned to stare at her as she cantered beside him. A natural coquette, she made it apparent to all the world that she had eyes for none but Dan. And he knew that she was completely absorbed in him, never had had a beau— she was still too young for that. But how long would it be before ... He thrust the thought aside. It still tormented him. Sixteen— and she was a woman: a sprig of vivacious loveliness, the dark eyes— a bronze glow in happiness, black light in excitement— slightly odalisque, a little too large for the slim, clever face; the trim lips, taut breasts, pouting, expectant. The two were at crisis. The tiny spark born between a baby and a boy, flickering between them through years of daffing companion- ship, flashed into flame. Dan, caught in his destiny, suddenly was the mad, romantic lover. Teresa's heart sang. Assemblyman Sickles, Tammany chieftain with presidential aspira- tions, was not a man to make a penniless marriage. And by American standards Teresa still was a child. But with him, as ever, it was "Decision— action! Reflection burned to an intuitive flash." He could not wait a day to be wed. The parents on both sides objected: the old Knickerbocker that she was a "nobody"; Bagioli that she was "much too young." That was enough to make it a runaway match. But within the year the parents had relented; and Teresa had her supreme desire— a church wedding. She had seen herself, veiled and blossomed, walking up the aisle between pews crowded with New York fashion toward a tall, dignified figure at the altar. But when the moment came, she found herself dissolved in music and light, aware of nothing— but her Dan! At the moment Sickles was at grips with a difficult political situa- tion. For several years past, Tammany had been torn asunder between two bitterly opposed factions: the Outs and the Ins. The first, known as the "Barnburners," supposedly were radical, reformist, and anti- slavery. The second, known as the "Hunkers," were standpatters, Teresa ij with southern sympathies, and opposed to new policies that might jeopardize the fat offices they now held. But neither had anything in view but control of the municipal treasury. If Sickles served Tam- many well, it was with the very clear intention that Tammany should serve him better. Shrewdly judging the situation and its possibilities, he steered a skillful course between the two factions and, backed by his achievements at Albany, secured a place on the General Commit- tee. From that vantage ground he watched for his opportunity. As usual he proved himself astute in council and at the Baltimore convention played a prominent part in the nomination of his friend, Franklin Pierce, for the presidency. He was gaining power and pres- tige, but not without cost; for in those days the career of a Tammany committeeman had its inconveniences. In obeisance to the Democratic tradition, it was the custom of the Executive Committee to hold occasional "open meetings" for the endorsement of their private conclusions in the matter of candidates and policies. And it was in these meetings that the two factions gave to the world some of their most vigorous exhibitions of the Great Experiment in practice. Each side brought its gangs— skilled in every art of thuggery. Preliminary sessions were held in the basement of Tammany Hall— at that time a capacious saloon adorned with mighty mirrors, fat nudes, and the portraits of the great and wise in American history, including Aaron Burr and a line of sachems. Here conviction and courage flowed freely from bottles supplied by both parties. The result always was a series of spirited arguments driven home with fists and bludgeons in which the police— poor devils!— in the pay of Tammany today, but not so certain they would be in the pay of Tammany tomorrow, discreetly took no part. Once thoroughly loaded with loyalty, the gangs proceeded up- stairs to the general meeting and threw themselves enthusiastically into the real business of seating or upsetting speakers, endorsing or downing nominations. In one of these affairs Sickles was tossed bodily into the well of the spiral staircase leading to the upper chamber of council and saved himself only by a wild clutch at the banisters. On another occasion, when, in the midst of a speech, he was stormed by a delegation of the prognathous, only a bold front, a hard eye, and a hand to hip saved him from further adventures. A little later, es- corted by a number of the most dignified sachems of Tammany, he 28 Dan Sickles was compelled to make a somewhat acrobatic exit from the platform by means of a window and a convenient fire escape. Sickles took it all like a good campaigner. Nevertheless he was beginning to get a little grim. And when the right moment came— when the "Barnburners" had nominated the popular shyster, Van Schaick, for the mayoralty of New York, and the "Hunkers," hoping to outwit them, had proceeded to nominate him themselves— Sickles gathered about him a small but powerful group of associates, includ- ing the redoubtable "Mike" Walsh, and on the very eve of election— when no reply or counterstroke was possible— issued a broadside repudiating both factions and their candidate! In one pounce he had the Tiger down! Tammany's bought-and-paid-for electorate, be- wildered, ran amuck. The Whigs rolled over them. Overnight four thousand key jobholders lacked a meal ticket. The Tiger raged and wept, made public repentance, proposed reform— and secretly opened negotiations with the rebel "Democratic- Republican General Committee," as the Sickles group styled them- selves. After months of cautious poker, Sickles magnanimously consented to reconciliation and a common platform. His reward was the choicest financial and political plum in Tammany's gift— the office of corporation attorney of New York City. The question as to who should swallow whom had been settled! To Sickles, however, the new office— despite its handsome salary and much more handsome "emoluments"— meant nothing but one more rung on the ladder. And when, a few months later, his friend, James Buchanan, minister to the Court of St. James's, offered him the expensive and ill-paid post of First Secretary of Legation, he accepted on the spot. Within twenty-four hours he was in Washing- ton making the necessary arrangements with President Pierce. But before relinquishing his office, Sickles was instrumental in fostering a growing demand for an adequate park for New York City and was personally responsible for persuading the Council to take the present seven hundred and fifty acres in preference to a much smaller and less conveniently located area— thus earning for himself the title of "Father of Central Park." To quote from his own report to the Council: In place of a much smaller and inferior area which within a generation will be utterly inadequate for a rapidly growing city, this park, which we Teresa 29 have designated Central Park, will be one unsurpassed in convenience of position; one which our citizens can with honest pride favorably com- pare with the most celebrated grounds of the chief cities of Europe. On board, the thresh of the clean harbor breeze seemed good to him . . . Over the prow hovered winged hope . . . And on the dock— eager to join him after the birth of her baby— stood Teresa, all soft excitement, a little close to tears, waving. PART TWO: A KNICKERBOCKER AT THE COURT OF ST. JAMES'S CHAPTER VI Dan Sickles Comes to Town Wh hen dan sickles landed in London, what we like to call the Victorian Age was in full bloom. The well-married Queen and her conscientious Consort were shaming the pertinacity of beavers patching a broken dam in their efforts to strengthen the prestige of the Crown at home and abroad. Spending Spartan hours together daily over piles of state papers and a crushing correspondence, they still found time to supervise the education of a growing crew of not very promising children, open endless bazaars, lay countless cornerstones. Incidentally, they did much more: