American Scoundrel: The Life of the Notorious Civil War General Dan Sickles

by Thomas Keneally

Hardcover, 2002

Status

Available

Call number

328.73092

Genres

Collection

Your library

Publication

Doubleday (2002), Edition: 1st, 400 pages

Description

Murder, Love and politics in Civil War America. On the last, cold Sunday of February 1859, Daniel Sickles shot his wife's lover in Washington's Lafayette Square, just across from the White House ... this is the story of that killing and its repercussions. Charming and ambitious, Dan Sickles literally got away with murder. His protector was none other than the President himself, the ageing James Buchanan; his political friends quickly gathered round; and Sickles was acquitted. His trial is described with all Thomas Keneally's powers of dash and drama, against a backdrop of double-dealing, intrigue and 'the slavery question'. Enslaved, in her turn, by the hypocrisy of nineteenth-century society, his wife was shunned and thereafter banned from public life. Sickles, meanwhile, was free to accept favours and patronage. He raised a regiment for the Union, and went on to become a general in the army, rising to the rank of brigadier-general and commanding a flank at the Battle of Gettysburg - at which he lost a leg, which he put into the military museum in Washington where he would take friends to visit it. Thomas Keneally brilliantly recreates an extraordinary period, when women were punished for violating codes of society that did not bind men. And the caddish, good-looking Dan Sickles personifies the extremes of the era: as a womaniser, he introduced his favourite madam to Queen Victoria while his wife stayed at home; as minister to Spain, he began an affair with the queen while courting one of her ladies in waiting; and in his later years, he installed his housekeeper as his mistress while his second wife took up residence nearby. The brio with which Thomas Keneally tells the tale is equal to the pace and bravado of Sickles's life. But, more than this, American Scoundrel is the lens through which the reader can view history at a time when America was being torn apart. This book resonates with uncomfortable truths, as relevant now as they were then.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member Bob1438

Slow and disjointed in the beginning, but a fascinating read after that. Why didn't the author include a few photographs?

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LibraryThing member denniswilliams

Mr. Keneally bends over backward to show understanding of Mr. Sickles, who cheated on his wife, and murdered his wife's lover, disobeyed a direct order of his commander, broke into a government building and destroyed public property and embezeled money. Mr. Keneally fails to show what Mr. Sickles

was: a morally deficient person.

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LibraryThing member whirled

Though the book is called American Scoundrel, Thomas Keneally can't quite bring himself to condemn murdering politician and soldier Dan Sickles. As an Australian, I wondered if this was due to our national tendency to revere a 'rogue' (like the infamous bushranger Ned Kelly). The book does lay bare

the stark double standard applied to men and women with regard to sexual mores, especially at a time when women were regarded as mentally enfeebled children who belonged to their husbands as property. Also, for those not overly familiar with the American Civil War, Keneally also covers the Battle of Gettysburg in some detail. And, typical of Keneally, it's well-written and accessible.

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LibraryThing member SquireMike

The first half of this book thoroughly explores Dan Sickles' life and that of his first wife, Teresa. Great care is taken to provide a detailed account of Teresa's affair with Phillip Barton Key, Sickles' killing of Key, and the sensational trial that followed. After that point, the rest of the

book seems rushed and Sickles' life summarized -- including Sickles' Civil War experience, which seems like a denouement to his life. More care is taken to imagine how Teresa might have felt at not accompanying Dan on his various adventures than on the defining episode of his life as a Civil War general: his controversial repositioning of his corps during the Battle of Gettysburg.

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LibraryThing member JBGUSA

A fascinating, well-written story of a person who should be better known. He may have been a bastard; but he was our bastard.

LibraryThing member JBD1

A perfectly serviceable biography of Dan Sickles, with significant attention also given to Sickles' wife Teresa, whose affair with Philip Barton Key precipitated one of the major events recounted here: Sickles' murder of Key just yards from the White House. The affair and ensuing trial make up a

fair portion of Keneally's book; in fact, after that point it seems to lose some steam, and the remainder (including the Civil War and Sickles' later career as a diplomat) lacks luster.

I noticed a few small errors, among them the facts that New York Senator Ira Harris was neither a Democrat nor was he in Lincoln's theater box during the assassination (his daughter Clara was present).

As I said, perfectly adequate, but structured a bit differently, this could have been an even better book.

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LibraryThing member EllenH

Notorious is right. He was a womanizer, politician ( some would say crooked), murderer, a general and later ambassador. If we think politics are rough and full of $$$ this reminds one that it isn't new.

LibraryThing member Schmerguls

5611. American Scoundrel The Life of the Notorious Civil War General Dan Sickles, by Thomas Keneally (read 28 Jan 2019) On 27 Nov 1980 I read W. A. Swanberg's biography of Dan
Sickles and I was so struck by its excellence that I have read every book by Swanberg that I could get my hands on. So when

I was given this biography of Sickles I wondered if I should read it since I remembered so well the excellent biography by Swanberg. I found this book relied a lot on Swanberg's biography but has a lot in it which the earlier biography did not have. In fact, this book tells so much about the trial in 1859 of Sickles for the murder of Francis Scott Key's son that I, who am much interested in trials, thought the account was excessively detailed, though I was annoyed that the judge in the trial was so lenient as to allow spectators to cheer words by the lawyers! (I would have held such cheerers in contempt, as I think many a judge would have.. So that part of the book did not impress me much. But the account of Sickles time in the Civil War is full of interest and all the part of the book from then on is full of interest and good to read. The life of Sickles did not end till 1914 and the years he lived after the war (in which he lost a leg) are interest-filled and excellently done. So my reading of the book I am glad to say was a great good thing.

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