Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

To: Borges

We have all enjoyed his fences, ever since.


13 posted on 07/30/2025 9:07:11 AM PDT by ConservativeMind (Trump: Befuddling Democrats, Republicans, and the Media for the benefit of the US and all mankind.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies ]


To: ConservativeMind
"We have all enjoyed his fences, ever since."

There is a fence at Gettysburg that is pretty significant from a historical-trivia standpoint.

Prior to the Civil War, Daniel Sickles had been serving in the US House as a representative from NY. While in DC, he found out that Daniel Barton Key, son of Francis Scott Key, had been diddling his wife. Sickles tracked Key down in Lafayette Park across from the White House, and shot and killed Key. Sickles would be acquitted in the first successful use of a temporary insanity defense in the U.S.A.

When war broke out, Sickle, who had held a commission in the NY militia, but never had any formal military training, was promoted to Brigadier General, and despite his lack of military experience acquitted himself quite well, certainly when compared to other "political generals," in the course of the war. Ultimately, Sickles lost his right leg to a cannon ball at Gettysburg.

Years after the war, Sickles played a prominent role in the preservation of Civil War battlefields and the establishment of the Gettysburg National Military Park. In order to separate the bounds of the park and the national cemetery from the existing Gettysburg town cemetery. Sickles, through political maneuver, was able to secure the iron fence from Lafayette Park in DC, where he had killed Barton Key, and had moved it to Gettysburg where the fence stands to this day.

38 posted on 07/30/2025 10:00:18 AM PDT by Joe 6-pack
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 13 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson