Trial of the Hon. Daniel E. Sickles for Shooting Philip Barton Key, Esq., (U.S. District Attorney, of Washington, D.C.) February 27, 1859. Preceded by an Introduction Giving Sketches of the Previous Career of Many of the Principal Personages Engaged in the Washington Tragedy.

octavo, 106, [2] pp., at head of t.p. "De Witt's "Special Report.", in double columns, lacking wrappers, and portraits, removed from bound pamphlet volume, else good.

"A murder in one's past is generally considered an impediment to a career, and one might think that this would be particularly so if the victim were the district attorney. Sickles, a congressman from New York who shot and killed the son of the author of our national anthem, may have had his advanced by it. Proof of cuckoldry is almost uniformly considered ample justification for homicide, and Sickles was acquitted for shooting his wife's lover on the streets of Washington. Thereafter he became a general in the Civil War, lost a leg at Gettysburg, and went on to be ambassador to Spain." – McDade, Annals of Murder 871