On this episode of Our American Stories, Dan Sickles lived the kind of life that sounds almost invented. The New York politician murdered his wife’s lover, Philip Barton Key, just blocks from the White House and then became the first defendant in American history to successfully use a temporary-insanity defense. A few years later, the Civil War gave the disgraced congressman an unlikely second act.

Gettysburg National Military Park Ranger Matt Atkinson tells how Sickles raised a brigade for the Union, rose to major general, lost his right leg at Gettysburg, and donated the amputated limb to the Army Medical Museum.

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