American Scoundrel

Cover Type: Softcover
Book Condition: Good
Jacket Condition: None Issued
Publisher: Vintage/Random Huse
Publisher Place: Milsns Point, Sydney
Publisher Year: 2003
Edition: Reprint

Description: 397 pages. Book is in general good condition. There is some light reading wear present, but still a presentable copy. 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

Publishers 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.

ISBN: 9781740512190