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DAN SICKLES: Hero of Gettysburg & Yankee King of Spain by Edgcumb Pinchon

DAN SICKLES: Hero of Gettysburg & Yankee King of Spain

By

Pub Date: June 7th, 1945
Publisher: Doubleday, Doran

Here's -- in biographical form -- the other side of a picture portrayed fictionally in Constance Robertson's Salute to the Hero (F & R -- 1942). Pinchon shows Sickles as representative of America's coming of age and the concentration of the dynamic major motivations of his day. Quite a story -- quite a man -- and plenty of drams, scandal, excitement. A good, blueblood Knickerbocker Dutch American was Dan. His early career in law -- and the ladies -- was successful. Scandal had its beginnings when he went to London as Ambassador Buchanan's First Secretary. His wife, Terry, acted as Buchanan's hostess, rumor played havoc, Sickles' impetuosity and ladykilling added fuel. And on the return to Washington, Terry's affair with Barton Key became national gossip when Sickles killed Key, was acquitted, and took Terry back again. He lost a leg in the Civil War; he resumed his diplomatic career, first on secret mission to Cub, then as minister to Spain. There Queen Isabella became his mistress -- and when she went into exile it was with Sickles, to Pariz, where they lived high, wide and handsome. Her return to Spain, when her son became king, sent Sickles back to the U.S. where he was active politically, and provided the gossips with more ammunition when he was charged with swindling the Grand Army veterans, whom he had organized. He lived to be 94, still a threat to the ladies, a terror to his family, a notorious figure in New York...Exclamatory account, passionate, sensational stuff, revealing a storm center of drama, vitality and undisciplined passion, dominated by ambition and patriotism.