Imagine Teresa Sickles, the wife of U.S. congressman Daniel Sickles, gazing out her window overlooking Lafayette Square in D.C. day after day for a year, anxiously awaiting the shake of a handkerchief that would signal another meeting with her lover.
At a young age, Teresa had been saddled with a much older husband who was not only a philanderer but someone who used his high-profile position to mask his degenerate behavior.
When Philip Barton Key, the well-regarded district attorney, widower father, and son of the author of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” began showing a romantic interest, it must have been a sweet relief from her life as Mrs. Daniel Sickles.