California Senator David Broderick dies of a wound received in a duel three days earlier over slavery in the state

David S. Terry, recently defeated for re-election as Chief Justice of California, had fought a duel with fellow Democrat David C. Broderick just outside San Francisco three days before. Terry had argued with the sitting U.S. Senator, who had opposed him in the election due to Terry's views on extending slavery to California.  Shot through the right lung, Broderick died of his injuries. Just over forty years later, Terry also died by gunfire, when he attacked U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Field at a California railway station over a court case and was killed by Field's U.S. Marshal bodyguard. (By John Osborne)
Source Citation
Jeremiah Lynch, A Senator of the Fifties: David C. Broderick of California (San Francisco: A.M. Robertson, 1911), 220-223.
How to Cite This Page: "California Senator David Broderick dies of a wound received in a duel three days earlier over slavery in the state," House Divided: The Civil War Research Engine at Dickinson College, https://hd.housedivided.dickinson.edu/node/22695.