NONFICTION - Nov. 17, 1991

THE CONGRESSMAN WHO GOT AWAY WITH MURDER by Nat Brandt (Syracuse University Press: $24.95; 296 pp.). When New York lawyer Daniel Sickles campaigned for Congress in 1859, he was a Tammany Hall boss characterized as “swollen and windy, and puffed out with fetid gas.” Four years later he was a national hero, a Union commander who lost a leg at the battle of Gettysburg, and who was credited by many for the North’s victory. Sickles’ political and military escapades alone assured him a place in history, but it was an event during his congressional years that made him notorious--his killing of Dist. Atty. Philip Barton Key in full public view just a few steps from the White House. Key was having an affair with Sickles’ young wife, which Nat Brandt describes in detail, but law and history buffs will be most intrigued by his account of the congressman’s confinement and trial. Sickles was acquitted following a plea of temporary insanity--the first successful use of that defense.