David Colbreth Broderick was an American forty-niner and politician. He is remembered as a prominent anti-slavery politician in the years prior to the Civil War.
Background
David Colbreth Broderick was born on February 4, 1820 in Washington, D. C. He was of Irish stock, and his father, a stone-mason for a time employed on the national Capitol, was doubtless an immigrant. Of the mother, whose maiden name was Copway, little is recorded except that she was idolized by her son.
Before he was fourteen the family moved to New York. About 1837 the father died, and the boy began his struggle for a living for himself, his mother, and his younger brother.
By the time he was twenty he was a member of an engine company (of which later he became foreman) and was active in ward politics as an adherent of Tammany Hall. His mother dying and his brother being accidentally killed, he was left without kin.
Education
Broderick had little of formal education.
Career
Broderick started his career with owning a saloon, which seems to have netted a good profit, and he became politically prominent.
He was a member of the city charter convention of 1846, over which he several times presided, and in the same year he was the unsuccessful Tammany nominee for Congress in the 5th district.
In the spring of 1849 he determined to go to California. Closing his saloon, emptying his casks in the street, and vowing that he would never again "sell or drink liquor, smoke a cigar or play a card, " he took passage by way of Panama, and in June arrived in San Francisco. Here he found old friends ready to back him alike in business and politics. He formed a partnership with an assayer for the coining of gold "slugs" of four-dollar and eight-dollar values in metal, which passed readily, because of the scarcity of coin, for five dollars and ten dollars.
The business, though highly profitable, was sold some months later, and Broderick turned his attention to the still more profitable enterprise of trading in shore-front lots. From the time he landed he was in politics. In August he was chosen a delegate to the constitutional convention, and in January of the following year was elected to fill a vacancy in the Senate.
On the succession of Lieutenant-Governor McDougal to the governorship, in January 1851, Broderick was elected president of the Senate. Though his private life was exemplary, in politics he was unscrupulous. An adept in Tammany methods, he soon became a political boss; and it is said of him that from 1851 (when he was reelected to the Senate) to 1854 he was "the Democratic party of California. " He now determined upon a seat in the United States Senate, and set about to compass the defeat of William M. Gwin, whose term would expire on March 4, 1855. The attempt served for the time only to divide the party and to deadlock the legislature, but on January 10, 1857, he won the election by 79 votes out of 111.
At the same time, through a bargain made with his rival, Gwin, he brought about the latter's reelection and obtained the promise of a monopoly of the Federal patronage for the state. President Buchanan refused to recognize the bargain, and Gwin, in spite of his promise, continued to distribute the patronage. Broderick turned on both men with bitter resentment.
Both he and his friends felt that he was now regarded as a menace and that means would be taken to get rid of him. A remark made by him on June 27, 1859, concerning Chief Justice David S. Terry, one of the leaders of the pro-slavery element, brought a challenge from Terry, who resigned his judgeship, and Broderick accepted. They met on the early morning of September 13. The pistol furnished Broderick was so "light on the trigger" that it was prematurely discharged by the act of raising his arm. Terry's bullet struck Broderick in the breast, and he fell mortally wounded.
Conveyed to a near-by farmhouse, he lingered for three days. On his deathbed he said: "They have killed me because I was opposed to the extension of slavery and a corrupt administration. " The dead body was conveyed to the city, where on September 18 funeral services were held at which Colonel Edward D. Baker delivered an eloquent and impressive eulogy.
On February 13, 1860, memorial services were held by both houses of Congress. Broderick was buried at the foot of Lone Mountain.
Politics
Broderick became active in politics as a young man, joining the Democratic Party. In 1846, he was the Democratic candidate for U. S. Representative from New York's 5th congressional district, but lost the election to the Whig candidate, who gained 42% of the vote to Broderick's 38%.
Democratic Party of California was divided between pro-slavery and "Free Soil" factions. Broderick led the Free Soilers. One of his closest friends was David S. Terry, formerly the Chief Justice of the California State Supreme Court.
Views
Broderick had become a student and a man of thought, an advocate of many measures of broad social significance. By whatever circumstances he had been led to a hatred of the slave power and a heightened devotion to the Union, the change was one which in a measure transformed him. Though martyrdom invested him with a glamour beyond his meed, he had given substantial promise of a great and useful career.
He vehemently attacked the administration, both for its policy in Kansas and for its alleged venality, and he carried the war into his own state, where pro-slavery feeling was for the time dominant and aggressive. His attitude brought him into national prominence, but made him a marked man at home.
Quotations:
"I have hitherto spoken of him as an honest man—as the only honest man on the bench of a miserable, corrupt Supreme Court—but now I find I was mistaken. I take it all back. He is just as bad as the others. "
He expressed the widely held belief that Broderick was killed because of his anti-slavery stance:
"His death was a political necessity, poorly veiled beneath the guise of a private quarrel. . . What was his public crime? The answer is in his own words; "I die because I was opposed to a corrupt administration and the extension of slavery. "
Personality
The struggles that he experienced in his youth had molded his character; he was "stubborn, positive, unrelenting and unforgiving, " self-centered also, and determined upon his advancement to the utmost of his powers. He was also described as Industrious, ambitious, belligerent, of strong physique and able to give a good account of himself in a street brawl, he literally fought his way to the front.
Quotes from others about the person
He is pictured by Lynch as a large man, robust, and of great strength, with steel-blue eyes, a large mouth filled with strong white teeth, a ruddy brown beard, and a plentiful shock of "slightly dark" hair. His face, says Lynch, was not attractive.
His character has been variously portrayed; Bancroft says that it has been "distorted into something abnormal by both his enemies and his friends. "
In the words of his biographer Jeremiah Lynch:
"In San Francisco he became the dictator of the municipality. His political lessons and observations in New York were priceless. He introduced a modification of the same organization in San Francisco with which Tammany has controlled New York for lo! these many years. It was briefly this. At a forthcoming election a number of offices were to be filled; those of sheriff, district attorney, alderman, and places in the legislature. Several of these positions were very lucrative, notably that of the sheriff, tax-collector, and assessor. The incumbents received no specified salaries, but were entitled to all or a certain proportion of the fees. These fees occasionally exceeded $50, 000 per annum. Broderick would say to the most popular or the most desirable aspirant: 'This office is worth $50, 000 a year. Keep half and give me the other half, which I require to keep up our organization in the state. Without intelligent, systematic discipline, neither you nor I can win, and our opponents will conquer, unless I have money enough to pay the men whom I may find necessary. If you agree to that arrangement, I will have you nominated when the convention assembles, and then we will all pull together until after the election. ' Possibly this candidate dissented, but then someone else consented, and as the town was hugely Democratic, his selections were usually victorious. "