SENATOR DAVID C. BRODERICK.

 

            I HESITATE about giving my impressions of Senator Broderick, for fear that I cannot join him with the age he lived in and picture the memory of him as it ought to be seen by men living now.

            He lived a laborious life all through his boyhood and early youth and a life mostly devoid of the help of schools. He became a fire chief in New York City as naturally as the foremost savage of his tribe ever gravitated to the chieftainship. The fire department of New York City in his days had some very sturdy men as members, whom no one could control who was not as resolute as the best of them and a natural master of men.

            But none disputed Broderick's perfect fitness for the place, and he held it until he was ready to sail for California. That he had been nursing higher hopes was plain from a remark he made on the eve of sailing. 'When will you come back, chief?" asked one of his fire company. 'When I am elected United States senator from California," was his reply. After looking around a few days in California he decided that a man would be helpless there without money. And he wanted to begin his work quickly. He never drank, but he opened a saloon. At the same time he began dealing in real estate, and made a little fortune in two years. Meanwhile he had become acquainted with all the leading men of San Francisco and many in the state outside. In that time and all the rest of his life he devoted all his leisure to study. After his work closed for the day he devoted half his nights to the study of the sciences, he devoured all the English classics, and they were not merely skimmed over, but studied line by line until it became a habit with him to analyze all he read.

            He began to mix in politics and began to lead. He was a massive commanding man, but his voice was gentle, save when aroused ; and there was a special magnetism about him. It was said of him, "Do not let Broderick shake your hand,

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look in your eyes and talk to you for a quarter of an hour, or he will hoodoo you, and you will be his slave for life."

            Perhaps his ruling trait was his absolute sincerity. A statement of fact by him was never doubted, a promise from him was to be counted upon implicitly for all time. His influence rapidly widened; he began to be a distinct factor in the politics of California. But he was not nearly perfect. He could rule men, but he had never learned to quite rule himself. From the first he had devoted friends and a good many enemies, and if he heard that some one had denounced or betrayed him, he had not the philosophy to pass it by as a mere incident, but at once became furious in his anathemas. And yet he was always generous and ready to fix up a difference and was often imposed upon by a feigned apology.

            He steadily grew in power and began to make public addresses. He was never a winsome public speaker. He simply talked cold facts in a way to convince men. He could excoriate an opponent, but his words were wielded as a cleaver is wielded ; and to hear him after a man like Col. Baker or Ned Marshall or McDougal or any of plenty more who talked in those days, was a disappointment. His success lay in personal contact with men, in his words, his voice and smile and the magnetism of his mere presence.

            When at last the Democratic party was rent asunder in the state, and Broderick was elected United States senator by the Free Soil wing of the party, then he became in a sense a marked man. So strong was he that he was not only elected, but he dictated who else should be elected, and the man who was elected pledged Broderick that he should dictate the patronage in California. But when the two senators reached Washington, his colleague forgot some of his promises, and the men who controlled the President and the Senate at that time had no use for a Senator whom they declared had deserted and divided the Democratic party in the Golden State. Of course Broderick was savage in his denunciation of all this and of the men who had betrayed him and the real Democracy in California. The shadow of the coming war was growing darker and darker in the east, and it was easy to see what a

14 AS I REMEMBER THEM.

power Broderick would be should a crisis be precipitated. The man whom Broderick had especially antagonized was Senator Gwin who had been a senator from the birth of the state ; who was a superior man and one whom all the southern states indorsed and stood by.

            But he was an old man, and his friends would not permit him to challenge Broderick; they were afraid of results. But Judge David S. Terry, who had been a warm friend of Broderick's, went off with the "Chivalry" wing when the party divided, and one night made a speech in Sacramento in which he animadverted severely on the course of Senator Broderick. Next morning, while at breakfast in the public dining room of a San Francisco hotel, Broderick came upon a copy of the speech, read it, and in his impetuous way said he had thought that there was one honest man on the supreme bench of the state, but he would have to give it up.

            It was a mere momentary ebullition of impatience, and nothing would ever have come of it had not a lawyer named Purley been at the same table and, overhearing the remark, hotly declared that Judge Terry was a special friend of his and he would not permit any such remark to be made about Judge Terry in his hearing.

            But Broderick would not quarrel with him, intimating his belief that Judge Terry hardly needed a champion of Purley's caliber.

            The incident, with elaborations, was reported to Terry, who promptly resigned his judgeship and sent a challenge to Broderick.

            The late summer political campaign was at its height. Broderick was out on the stump and had promised to visit many towns. When the challenge reached him he merely replied that until his engagements were filled, he would not consider any matter of that kind. So soon, however, as the campaign was over, he accepted the challenge. There was much insistence at the time that unfair advantage was taken of Broderick's unfamiliarity with dueling : the right statement would have been that every proper advantage was taken by Terry and his friends. When on the field McKibben merely

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touched Terry's breast as Broderick's second, while Calhoun Benham, Terry's second, roughly went over Broderick's clothing as though suspicious that he had on a suit of armor. Then the pistols used were hair-trigger pistols, something Broderick was altogether unfamiliar with, so when the word was given Broderick had hardly begun to raise his weapon when it went off, the bullet striking the ground only a few feet from his hand. Then Terry took careful aim and fired. The bullet struck Broderick in the right breast, wounded the right lung, passed under the sternum, then followed the ribs over the heart and went out under the left arm.

            True to the savage in his nature, Terry exclaimed, "I shot an inch too far to the right." Broderick stood for an instant, then turned half round and sank to the ground. He lived sixty-two hours. No death in California had ever produced half the sorrow and anger that his did. His friends declared that while it was compassed according to the barbarous forms of the code, nevertheless, it was a premeditated murder; that there had been no more provocation in Broderick's words than there had been in Terry's speech ; that the speech was made merely to provoke Broderick to say something in quick indignation which would supply a lame excuse on which to challenge him, and that Terry, who really had no cause of quarrel with Broderick, was selected, because he was a practiced duelist, and when aroused had no more sensibilities than a grizzly.

            The shot that killed Broderick was in truth the first shot of the great war. After that the line of demarcation between northern and southern men was more closely drawn; northern men grew more and more aggressive; it increased further the division made when Penn Johnson killed the quiet, gentle, generous and blameless Furgeson, in another duel a few months previous. When Broderick was killed, Col. E. D. Baker pronounced the eulogy at his funeral, and Rome was not half so stirred by Antony's speech over Caesar as were the men who listened that day to Col. Baker.

            As he arose and stretched out his arms over the casket in which Broderick's body lay, his opening words were : "Men

16 AS I REMEMBER THEM.

of California, behold your senator." In an instant half that immense assembly were sobbing like grieved children.

            Then he pictured the great soul that had fled, its perfect truthfulness, its devotion to duty, its courage, its scorn of all that was base, untrue and unclean ; its perfect ideal of American manhood and citizenship; its generosity and power; how without any early advantages he had fought and won for himself a place among the highest and so bore himself that they were glad to hail him as their peer, and how at last he had fallen a martyr to those who were gathering to perpetuate the slave power under our holy flag. The effect was indescribable, and when, in closing, he said : "But the last word must be spoken; the imperious mandate of Death must be fulfilled. Thus, O brave heart, we bear thee to thy rest. Thus, surrounded by tens of thousands, we bear thee to the equal grave. As in life no other voice among us so rang in trumpet blasts upon the ears of freemen, so in death its echoes will reverberate amid our mountains and valleys until truth and valor cease to appeal to the human heart. Good friend ! true hero ! hail and farewell!" The response was the sobbing of thousands of strong men.

            Broderick's death was well described by Judge Dwinelle, a few words of which we recall :

            "When one goes forth like Broderick in the maturity of his manhood; in the fulness of his powers, in the ripeness of his intellect; in the perfection of his moral discipline, hoping so much himself, and of whom so much was hoped when such an one lies down forever upon his bloody couch, we are as unreconciled as the husband over the grave of his first love ; as inconsolable as the mother over the corpse of her first-born."

            Men's eyes were blinded then. Fate was setting the stage for the great tragedy, the mighty acts of which were so soon to be called ; there was no music and all the lights were turned low.