Sitting senator dies in a duel, Sept. 13, 1859

On this day in 1859, Sen. David Broderick of California became the first and only sitting senator to die in a duel.

Broderick was born in Washington, D.C., in 1820, the son of a stonemason who helped build the Capitol. His family later moved to New York City, where Broderick worked as a stonemason and a saloon keeper.

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A fervent anti-slavery Democrat in search of a political future, Broderick joined the 1849 gold rush to California. He settled in San Francisco, where he quickly made a fortune in real estate.

After being elected to the California state Senate, Broderick sought a seat in the U.S. Senate.

He used his considerable power in the Legislature to stall for nearly two years a vote on the reelection of pro-slavery Sen. William Gwin. In 1857, California’s other Senate seat opened, and Broderick negotiated a deal with Gwin under which Broderick would take that seat’s full six-year term, leaving Gwin the four-year balance of the blocked seat.

California’s 1859 state election contest deepened the antagonism between Gwin’s pro-slavery and Broderick’s anti-slavery factions. A former California chief justice, David Terry, a Gwin ally, said that, in his opinion, Broderick was following the “wrong Douglas."

"Perhaps,” he said, “they do sail under the flag of Douglas, but it is the banner of the black Douglass whose name is Frederick, not Stephen.” After Broderick called Terry a “miserable wretch,” Terry challenged him to a duel.

They met near Lake Merced, south of San Francisco. The weapons were Belgian .58 caliber pistols. Terry was familiar with that model and had practiced before the duel, whereas Broderick did not.

When Broderick’s pistol fired prematurely, Terry fired into Broderick’s right breast. Broderick’s death, three days later, turned him into a martyr and helped speed the spiral toward civil war. Terry and Gwin fled to join the Confederacy. The site of the duel is now a registered California historical landmark.

Not long after the duel, public opinion and legislation both turned against the custom of dueling; most, but not all, states have by now banned the practice. To this day, anyone sworn into any statewide or county office or judgeship in Kentucky must declare under oath that he has not participated in, acted as a second or otherwise assisted in a duel.

In 1889, Terry was fatally shot by a U.S. marshal after assaulting U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Field, who had ruled against Terry and his wife in a divorce case.


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