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But almost overnight he became a national disgrace. He had always been a voracious Casanova; for his wife's one sin he had committed scores. Now he calmly restored her to his household. "I am not aware of any statute or code of morals," he wrote in an icy "open letter" to the howling public, "which makes it infamous to forgive a woman." Few knew that, when alone, Daniel and Teresa had nothing to do with each other. But everyone agreed that "The Washington Tragedy" had ended the brilliant Congressman's career at 34.
A Scholarly Sort. Everyone agreed, that is, but Sickles himself. He resumed his seat in the House. When Abraham Lincoln, first Republican President of the Union, strode awkwardly into the House and the other Democrats kept their seats in stony silence, Representative Sickles broke ranks to shake the new President's hand. "Why, Mr. Sickles!" exclaimed Lincoln, laughing and delighted, "from what I have heard of the doings at Tammany Hall, I expected you to be a giant of a man, big and broad-shouldered, tall as I am. But instead I find you are quite a scholarly sort of fellow." So began a friendship that lasted until Lincoln's death.
On the very day of the new President's first call for volunteers, Sickles resigned his seat, enlisted as a private. A few months later he raised, singlehanded, New York's "Excelsior Brigade," and became, by Lincoln's order, its colonel. By war's end he was a major general.
Admiring Author Pinchon believes that but for Sickles, Chancellorsville would have been not a defeat, but a rout. He quotes Stines's History of the Army of the Potomac: "If Sickles had not brought up his command in time to strike Jackson's right and rear, there is no telling where [the] disaster might have ended. . . . His subsequent night attack against Jackson was one of the most brilliant actions in military history." But General Sickles' major achievement was his stand against Longstreet at Gettysburg. It also cost Sickles his right leg from the thigh down. His military career was over.
The Sunday after Gettysburg, Lincoln came to see his friend in a hospital. Sickles told him hollowly: "[The doctors] tell me ... that I had better put my affairs in order." "I am in a prophetic mood today," answered Lincoln, "and I prophesy that you'll live to do many an important service." Eighteen months later he made Sickles his personal envoy, sent him off to Latin America on a mission so confidential that to this day it remains a State Department secret. On his return, President Johnson appointed Sickles to be Military Governor of the Carolinas. In 1869, President Grant named him Minister to Spain.