Trial of David S. Terry by the Committee of Vigilance, San Francisco.
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Title: Trial of David S. Terry by the Committee of Vigi...)
Title: Trial of David S. Terry by the Committee of Vigilance, San Francisco.
Author: David Smith Terry
Publisher: Gale, Sabin Americana
Description:
Based on Joseph Sabin's famed bibliography, Bibliotheca Americana, Sabin Americana, 1500--1926 contains a collection of books, pamphlets, serials and other works about the Americas, from the time of their discovery to the early 1900s. Sabin Americana is rich in original accounts of discovery and exploration, pioneering and westward expansion, the U.S. Civil War and other military actions, Native Americans, slavery and abolition, religious history and more.
Sabin Americana offers an up-close perspective on life in the western hemisphere, encompassing the arrival of the Europeans on the shores of North America in the late 15th century to the first decades of the 20th century. Covering a span of over 400 years in North, Central and South America as well as the Caribbean, this collection highlights the society, politics, religious beliefs, culture, contemporary opinions and momentous events of the time. It provides access to documents from an assortment of genres, sermons, political tracts, newspapers, books, pamphlets, maps, legislation, literature and more.
Now for the first time, these high-quality digital scans of original works are available via print-on-demand, making them readily accessible to libraries, students, independent scholars, and readers of all ages.
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The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to insure edition identification:
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SourceLibrary: Huntington Library
DocumentID: SABCP00068900
CollectionID: CTRG10141680-B
PublicationDate: 18560101
SourceBibCitation: Selected Americana from Sabin's Dictionary of books relating to America
Notes:
Collation: 75 p. ; 23 cm
David Smith Terry was a soldier, California jurist and Democratic politician.
Background
Terry was born in Todd County, Kentucky, 1823. His great-grandfather, Capt. Nathaniel Terry (d. 1780), of Halifax County, Va. , was a man of considerable prominence. His grandfathers, Nathaniel Terry and David Smith, had been officers in the Revolutionary War, and the latter served under Andrew Jackson in the War of 1812. While he was still a boy, his parents, Joseph R. and Sarah (Smith) Terry, removed to Mississippi, where they separated. Subsequently, Mrs. Terry and her sons settled in Texas.
Career
Although only thirteen years of age, Terry served as a volunteer in the war for Texan independence but did not participate in any actual fighting. In the Mexican War he served as a lieutenant in a company of Texas Rangers and participated in the battle of Monterey.
In December 1849, Terry became a resident of Stockton, Cal. , where he engaged actively in the practice of law. In 1855 he accepted the nomination of the Know-Nothing party for the office of associate justice of the California supreme court and was elected to that place when the new party, in an astonishing political upset, swept the state.
In 1856 he rashly went to San Francisco to aid in organizing resistance to the Vigilantes, who were in extra-legal control there. When Sterling A. Hopkins, one of the agents of the Vigilance Committee, while endeavoring to arrest illegally one Reuben Maloney, also sought to disarm Terry, a scuffle ensued in which Terry seriously wounded Hopkins in the neck with a bowie knife. Terry was immediately taken into custody by the Vigilance Committee, but, when Hopkins recovered, was released after undergoing an imprisonment of several weeks.
Resuming his place on the supreme court, he became chief justice in the October term 1857. In 1859 he affiliated himself with the Gwin or Southern branch of the Democratic party in California but, because of his Know-Nothing record, its convention refused him a renomination to the supreme court. He made, however, before the state convention of the faction, a vigorous speech in which he assailed Senator David Broderick, the leader of the other Democratic faction, as a follower of the negro, Frederick Douglass, rather than one of Stephen A. Douglas. Incensed by this attack, Broderick denounced Terry, as a "miserable wretch" and as a dishonest man and judge. When Broderick refused to retract these intemperate and unjustified statements, Terry challenged him to a duel which Broderick accepted, the seconds naming pistols, with which Broderick was an expert shot, as the weapons. The duel was fought on September 13, 1859, and resulted in Broderick's receiving a fatal wound after having fired prematurely. To allay unwarranted rumors as to the conduct of the duel, Congressman Joseph C. McKibben, Broderick's second and political follower, testified that there was "no perceptible difference in the weapons".
Before this tragic affair, Terry filed his resignation as chief justice, and he afterward went through the formality of a trial for murder, being speedily acquitted. In 1863 he joined the Confederate forces and was wounded at Chickamauga and later commanded a regiment and a brigade in Texas. Upon the collapse of the Confederacy, he was for a time in Mexico, but in 1869 returned to California and resumed the practice of the law at Stockton. In 1878 he was elected to the California constitutional convention.
In 1884 Terry became involved, as one of the attorneys for the plaintiff, Sarah Althea Hill, in the notorious William Sharon divorce case. After lengthy proceedings, judgment was rendered for her in the trial court. The supreme court of California at first approved the decree of the lower court, but later changed its position. In the meantime, the federal court had decreed the documents, on which the plaintiff relied, to be fraudulent and had ordered their surrender and cancellation. Sharon died and the heirs had to revive the suit to have the decree carried out. When Justice Stephen J. Field, acting as circuit justice, announced the decision of himself and Judges Sawyer and Sabin, a violent court room scene was precipitated by Mrs. Terry, which resulted in the imprisonment of both herself and her husband for contempt of court. After his release from this imprisonment, Terry threatened physical harm to Field. Because of this, the Attorney General of the United States had David Neagle assigned to Field as his bodyguard.
On August 14, 1889, while Field and Neagle were having breakfast at the railroad eating house at Lathrop, Cal. , Terry approached Field and struck him twice and was thereupon shot and killed by Neagle, who was immediately arrested and imprisoned on a charge of murder. From such imprisonment and charge he was freed by the federal courts, the Supreme Court of the United States holding that he was justified in his act, which was performed as a federal officer.
Terry was buried at Stockton and both its bar and the bar of Fresno adopted resolutions laudatory of his character. While he was a man of rash judgment and violent impulses, his honesty was as unquestionable as his courage and his ability as a judge, lawyer, and political leader was not inconsiderable. Much of a derogatory nature that has been written of his career will not bear critical scrutiny. For the duel with Broderick, he cannot, according to the standards of the day, justly be blamed; and for his final offense he paid tragic penalty.
Achievements
He is remembered as the fourth Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of California, and an author of the Constitution of 1879.
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Title: Trial of David S. Terry by the Committee of Vigi...)
Connections
In 1852 he married Cornelia Runnels, a niece of Governor Runnels of Mississippi. On January 7, 1886, Terry, whose first wife had died December 24, 1884, married his client.
