Transplanted Texan Fights Duel With U.S. Senator

California Democrats allowed David Smith Terry, chief justice of the state supreme court, to address their convention on July 18, 1859 after he promised to behave himself.

Nothing was more important to the transplanted Texan than his good name, and he never backed down from a fight.  While other 13 year old boys stayed home with their mothers, he risked his life for Lone Star independence.  When Texans fought a second war with Mexico, the young lieutenant won the respect of fellow Rangers twice his age.

Bitten by the gold buy in 1849, David Terry joined the army of fortune hunters that invaded California.  He soon realized, however, that prospecting was a losing proposition and returned to practicing law.

As a Know-Nothing candidate in 1855, Terry was elected to the highest court of the 31st state.  In two short years, he was promoted to the post of chief justice.

With his term due to expire at the end of 1859 and the Know-Nothings no longer an influential force, Judge Terry tried to get back in the Democrats’ good graces.  But his old allies held a grudge and refused to reward the defector with a reelection nomination.

Given the opportunity to address the state convention, Terry turned what was supposed to be a swan song into in a double-barreled blast at Sen. David C. Broderick, leader of the party’s anti-slavery faction.  The Tammany Hall product was a Douglas Democrat, the Texan slyly conceded, but his hero was black abolitionist Frederick Douglas not presidential candidate Stephen A. Douglas.

A few days later over breakfast with a good friend of his accuser, Broderick responded to the charge.  Calling Judge Terry “a miserable wretch,” the senator snarled, “I have spoken of him as the only honest man on the bench in a corrupt supreme court, but now I find I was mistaken.  He is just as bad as the others.”

Broderick had impugned his integrity, and Terry would not stand for it.  Believing a jurist should not break the law by dueling, he waited until the fall elections to submit his resignation and to seek satisfaction as a private citizen.

Terry wanted to be fair, which meant allowing Broderick to retract his rash remark.  But Broderick was not about to apologize, and preparations proceeded for the one-on-one combat.

Hoping to avert senseless bloodshed, a mutual acquaintance knocked on the senator’s door the night before the duel.  A cocky crony refused entrance to the peacemaker explaining, “It’s no use.  You are too late.  The fight has got to come, and this is the best time for it.  Broderick never had a better chance.  He can hit the size of a ten-cent piece at this distance every time.”

The overconfidence in the senator’s camp went all the way to the top.  “Don’t you fear,” Broderick assured a worried supporter.  “I can shoot twice to Terry’s once.”

In sharp contrast to the devil-may-care attitude of his adversary, Judge Terry kept

to himself preferring to let his pistol do the talking.  His reply to the “good luck” encouragement of a friend revealed grim determination mixed with compassion.  “I will hit him, but I do not want to kill him.”

The combatants waited for an hour and a half on the morning of Sept. 13, 1859 for their seconds to work out the details.  Terry lost the coin toss and had to face the rising sun.

Six San Francisco newspapers covered the confrontation, the most famous in California history.  Their eyewitness accounts told the riveting story.

“Mr. Broderick lost all presence of mind and trembled,” reported the Eco del Pacific.  “Meanwhile, his antagonist remained as immovable as a statue.”  That was how the correspondent for The Phare saw it too.  “Judge Terry was as cold as a marble statue.  Not a muscle of his body moved.  Broderick was less collected.  His cheeks were flushed.”

The Alta described the fateful exchange.  “Mr. Broderick partly raised his arm, when his pistol went off prematurely.  Mr. Terry raised his weapon deliberately, covered the breast of his opponent and fired.”

Sen. Broderick collapsed with a mortal wound.  He lingered at death’s door for three days before finally passing through.

Overnight the slain senator became the martyr of the northern cause.  Suitable last words were put in his mouth:  “They have killed me because I was opposed to a corrupt administration and the extension of slavery.”

Since saints do not lose their nerve and fire wildly into the ground, a diabolical plot had to be invented.  Broderick was handed a pistol with an unusually sensitive trigger fiendishly designed to go off at the slightest touch.  The senator’s two seconds, who examined the weapon, disputed the ridiculous claim in sworn testimony.

In spite of the inquest verdict and his murder trial acquittal, David Smith Terry still stands accused of killing Sen. David Broderick in something less than a fair fight.  As recently as 1997, a cable-television documentary on dueling presented the hair-trigger fantasy as fact.

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