Linking to Wikipedia is pretty lazy, even by blogger standards, but behold — General Daniel Sickles, U.S.A. During his long and illustrious life, he managed to 1) Gain notoriety for bringing one of his whores, Fanny White, into the halls of the New York State Assembly, 2) Murder the son of Francis Scott Key in front of the White House (Key had been sleeping with his lawful wife), 3) Avoid the rap by executing the first “insanity defense” ever (sort of), 4) Almost lose the Battle of Gettysburg for the Union by advancing his units into an idiotic salient at the Peach Orchard (near the Round Tops) for fame and personal glory, 5) Promptly see his men slaughtered and have one of his legs blown off by a Confederate cannonball, which he had sent to the Army Medical Museum in Washington, D.C. (later the National Museum of Health and Medicine), and 6) Win a Medal of Honor (through shrewd lobbying and palm-greasing on his own behalf).
There’s just so much amazing stuff. Here’s a somewhat old interview NPR did with Thomas Keneally, author of American Scoundrel.
I’m doing some research for a writing project, and it would be a shame if I couldn’t work Sickles in somehow. If not, I’m a better person for knowing more about this truly great American.
Update: A former employee of the National Museum of Health and Medicine contacted me to disabuse me of some factual errors above. I still think Wikipedia does a pretty good job of compressing and presenting the most important and salacious details, but there are plenty of other resources out there as well. In my own defense, I was a lousy English major, not a history major. (But I ended up teaching high school history for a few years. Go figure.)
