After an electrifying 22-day trial, Sickles was acquitted of the murder by reason of temporary insanity–the first time such a defense had been admitted in a U.S. court of law. Sickles’ eight-man defense team was headed by Washington lawyer Edwin McMasters Stanton, soon to become secretary of war under Abraham Lincoln.

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In yet another irony, Sickles’ political career initially was helped by his murder of an unarmed man. The prevailing sentiment of the day was that a wronged husband had every right to revenge himself upon his wife’s despoiler, even if the wife had acquiesced. But public opinion turned against the congressman after he announced, perhaps sincerely, that he had forgiven his wife her transgressions. His star waned, and Sickles returned to New York to escape the whispers of the Washington society he had briefly led. He was still in New York when the coming of the Civil War gave him yet another stage on which to enact his seemingly endless compulsion for controversy and scandal.

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