This is an IHeart podcast.

And we return to our American stories.

And up next the story of a truly unique general in American history, Dan Sickles.

Here to tell the story is Gettysburg National Military Ranger Matt Atkinson.

Take it away.

So what we're going to talk about tonight is Dan Sickles.

And old Dan Sickles, if you don't know anything

about Dan Sickles you're in for a heck of a ride he just he just defies

description it's truly you know it's out of a straight out of a movie or something

so Uncle Dan is born on October 19, 1819 in New York City.

He attended New York University and studied law under none other than the future Union General Benjamin F. Butler.

His early years were marked already with graft.

He was accused of stealing money from another man. he embezzled money meant for a political

pamphlet, and he was accused of mortgage fraud. The connections made though through Butler

opened a new world to Dan Sickles, and that new world was politics. He quickly moved up the graft-plagued

Tammany Hall political machine which he literally had to fight in at different points

with knife and gun and so forth and he became the corporation council to the city at age 28, despite all those things in his background.

He later rode that political machine to be a New York State Senator from 1856 to 1857,

and he served in Congress from 1857 to 1861.

Needless to say what little I've told you so far ought to give you an indication of what type

person he is. Dan Sickles is impulsive. He is amoral. He does not wait on the whims of society whether he should be

doing something or not. And he definitely does not pay attention to laws. As a lawyer once famously

...