Quote The Raven and Dan Sickles, ‘Nevermore!’

By Bob Ford Special to

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Edgar Allen Poe was a brilliant, troubled writer who called Baltimore, Maryland, home. He is credited with introducing the modern detective story genre to American readers. His forte was mystery and the macabre.

Baltimore is one of this country’s original harbor cities. It’s where in 1814 Francis Scott Key was a U.S. emissary meeting under a white flag with the enemy, but later held captive on his own ship and witnessed an incredible 25-hour bombardment of Ft. McHenry by the British Navy. Seeing the Stars and Stripes still flying the next morning over the Fort gave Key the inspiration to write the poem that later became our nation’s national anthem.

Tangent:

Union Major Gen. Daniel L. Sickles is one of my least favorite Civil War generals or for that matter person in U.S. history.

Born into a wealthy, politically connected family he had influential “friends” throughout his life.

During the war, having received a political commission, Gen. Sickles found himself commanding 3rd Corps at the Battle of Gettysburg. He and his 10,400 men were at the southern end of the famous Union fish hook defensive line. Seeing a little higher ground — the Peach Orchard — a couple hundred yards out he decides, without orders, to move his troops. Big mistake, Sickles stuck out like a sore thumb. After hours of ground assaults and artillery fire the 3rd Corps was decimated, with a 40% casualty rate.

The general lost his leg in the fight and exited the field on a stretcher smoking a cigar. He had his crushed, amputated appendage eerily preserved where it’s still on display at the National Museum of Health and Education. Sickles was known for routinely visiting his leg, often bringing guests including Mark Twain.

The man was an egotistical womanizer, wherever he traveled he left unpaid bills, broken romances and political scandals. He was reprimanded early in his political career for bringing a prostitute onto the floor of the New York State senate.

He received his military commission from fellow womanizer Major Gen. Joseph Hooker. Now you know where “ladies of the evening,” got their nickname.

Before the war, at 32-year-old Sickles got Teressa Bagioli, a friend’s 15-year-old daughter pregnant. Despite having neither family’s support, they married. Sickles didn’t miss a beat, she stayed at home in Washington D.C. where they threw occasional lavish galas but he continued on his carousing ways, this was the mid-1850’s.

Years later Teressa, tired of Sickle’s antics, had a very public affair with a man more her own age, who happened to be the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia. At some point, then Congressman Sickles found out and was mortified. Sickles stalked the attorney, finding him in Lafayette Park just across the street from the White House. Without hesitation in broad daylight, he shoots his wife’s lover in the groin. The unarmed attorney, now in agony, begged for his life but without conscience Sickles walked up and unloaded a fatal blast at his chest. The dead man’s name was … wait for it, Francis Scott Key’s oldest son Phillip.

Sickles turns himself in and confesses to the murder. In what turns out to be a stroke of genius. He uses for the first time in U.S. legal history the defense of Temporary Insanity … and it worked, he’s acquitted!

Then he shocks the Washington D.C. Victorian establishment by forgiving his wife. People weren’t so upset with that 1st degree murder thing, as they were with Sickles forgiving his wife, a “fallen woman.” Unfortunately Teressa would die a short time later of Tuberculosis.

Dan Sickles wasn’t through after the debacle on the battlefield, years later somehow, he received the Congressional Medal of Honor for his actions at Gettysburg, nice to have friends.

He then accepts an appointment to serve as the U.S. Minister to Spain only to turn on his charm again and have an affair with the deposed Queen Isebella II, all while on crutches.

Sickles would go back to Gettysburg for reunions frequently to defend his move and raise money for the 3rd Corps monument. One hundred and fifteen thousand dollars was raised but when time came to commission the work, $28,000 was missing, gee where do you think that went? Dan Sickles is the only Union Corps commander at Gettysburg that does not have a statue. Of that our man Dan said, “this whole battlefield is my memorial.”

When Art Modell got permission from the NFL to move his Cleveland Football team to Baltimore they needed a new nickname. The old Baltimore Colts team left in 1984, tearfully in the middle of the night heading to Indianapolis. The team would not relinquish the Colts name back to Baltimore because I guess there are too many horses running around Indiana. Whereas, of course, the Preakness is run annually in Baltimore.

The team conducted a fan call-in contest where 33,000 votes were cast for honoring their favorite son Edgar Allen Poe’s poem “The Raven.” It’s now one of my favorite mascot names, the Baltimore Ravens sit right behind the Burlington Sock Puppets, Carolina Disco Turkeys and the Lansing Lug Nuts.

Congratulations Baltimore, nice season but not quite good enough. We won’t be quoting The Raven this year, anymore.

Usually I don’t like this but since we are where the poem was written, “O’re the land of the free, and the home of the CHIEFS!”