Our flugal horn player, Jack Bannon, in my Salt River Brass Band, posted on Facebook:
The son (Phillip Barton Key II) of the man who penned the lyrics to our national anthem (Francis Scott Key) served as the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia. He was shot and killed by Daniel Sickles (U.S. representative from NY) in Lafayette Square across from the White House because Keys was having a long-term affair with Sickles’ wife. It was the first successful use of the “temporary insanity” defense. The “trial of the century” back then and only put on the back burner by the civil war.
I could not but reply:
There’s much more to the backstory. Dan Sickles was a protégé of Lorenzo Da Ponte, Mozart’s librettist; the offending wife was Da Ponte’s granddaughter, whom Sickles met while boarding with, and being tutored by, Da Ponte, at the time Professor of Italian at what became Columbia. The affair with Key was payback for decades of Sickles’ philandering (he was rumored to have been keeping three New York City houses of ill repute afloat, almost single handed.)
Da Ponte grew up in Venice, where he invested much energy in philandering along side the storied Casanova; it reached such an exalted level that the Church in Venice expressed outrage (quite an achievement, that) and had Da Ponte exiled. Thence to Vienna, as librettist for the Italian Opera, where he wrote three of Mozart’s finest, including Don Giovanni, inspired by his drinking buddy Casanova. He shortly outraged Vienna as well, was banished, and spent some years writing for London’s theaters. Finished his career in New York, where he introduced opera to America, and became he first professor of Italian at Columbia.
And passed his Casanova gene, as it were, along to a young Dan Sickles.
Sickles, in turn, started a political career with Tammany Hall, was the point man for assembling the land which became Central Park, went to London with James Buchanan as the detail man for Buchanan’s embassy, engineered Buchanan’s nomination for the Presidency in 1856, as well as his own election to Congress. Had to resign his seat due to the murder scandal, but raised a regiment at the outset of the Civil War and emerged as Third Corps commander at Gettysburg. There, in violation of orders, he pushed his corps, on the army’s left flank, close to a mile in front of the rest of the line, uncovering Little Round Top and nearly losing the battle for the Union. Only reason he wasn’t cashiered was his loss of a leg in the battle (he needn’t have lost the leg; his corps surgeon said it could be saved, but Sickles insisted, and “dined out” on his war wound the rest of his life.)
Some years later, Sickles headed the commission that commissioned the bronze statuary on many Civil War battlefields; he seems to have embezzled some $20,000 to $30,000 from the fund, but skated again. He ended his career as our ambassador to Spain, where he seduced the Queen Mother.
All in all, a full life.
One more twist to the Da Ponte/Casanova connection: It seems likely that Casanova penned a bit of the libretto he had inspired. The Opera company was on the road, performing a Mozart opera, and anxious to rehearse for the impending premier of Don Giovanni, which Mozart was struggling to complete. This would be the occasion when the opera cast locked Mozart in his hotel room until he finished. Da Palma could not complete the libretto until Mozart finished the music; we therefore know when Da Ponte wrote. We also know that Da Ponte was not in town that week. But Casanova happened to be on hand. And the original of the libretto has a bit that seems to be in Casanova’s handwriting.
An even further twist: Key (the anthem writer) preceded his son as District Attorney for Washington DC, during the first Jackson administration. Jackson needed an attorney general; he asked Key (senior) for a recommendation. Key recommended an in-law and fellow Maryland plantation and slave owner, one Roger Taney, who Jackson appointed, mostly because of his “solid” views on slavery. In his second term, Jackson appointed his attorney general, Taney, to become Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Years later (just a bit after Sickles offed Key Jr.), Taney wrote the infamous Dred Scott decision.
And finally, the fellow who wrote “‘Twas the night Before Christmas” was the son of the fifth president of Columbia University. He happened to run into Da Palma in a New York bookstore, was impressed, and introduced Da Palma to his father. Which was Da Ponte’s foot in the door to the Columbia job.
We used his artfully posed program cover photo for an occasional season poster and on our CDs; KONC Radio used one as the front cover of their monthly magazine profiling the Band. Similarly, when we performed for the Verde Valley Fine Arts Association, the local paper used Karl’s work for the front cover of their “What’s Happening” supplement.