Biographical Notes
David Broderick
In 1851 Broderick was involved in a fight with a southern sympathizer that left Broderick unconscious on a San Francisco bar room floor bleeding from a wound caused by his opponent hitting him over the head with an inkstand. Later that same year he so insulted a former governor of Virginia that he was challenged to a duel. When the two men and their seconds arrived at the field of honor Broderick tried to give his gold watch to one of his party to hold for him. The second laughingly told Broderick to put it back in his pocket and, if shot, die like a gentleman. Broderick was indeed shot but the bullet hit the watch. Broiderick was cut from the glass case of the watch but the bullet was deflected. His own shots missed their mark.
A second Constitutional Convention was held in California in 1852. Southern sympathizers saw the convention as an opportunity to divide the state in two. Their hope was that the southern state that emerged would favor slavery. Broderick was adamantly opposed to slavery and succeeded in getting a resolution passed that ensured that any decisions made in the convention would be submitted to the general electorate for approval. Because of the strong feeling against slavery in the general populace that effectively killed the effort to divide the state. He was not as successful in the legislature where a strong fugitive slave bill was passed over his opposition. In 1853 internal dissention within the Democratic Party resulted in Broderick being named Chairman of the Democratic Convention, and helped elect John Bigler Governor over the opposition of the pro-South chivalry wing of the party led by Senator William Gwin.
Eventually Gwin and his supporters strengthened their hand and in the fall of 1854 Gwin returned to San Francisco with his family to take control of the local scene himself. The Broderick faction of the party was obviously in the minority but it was able to block the selection of any candidate to fill Gwin's Senate seat. As a result California only sent one senator to Washington in 1855. The weakness of the Whig Party and the paralysis of the Democratic Party permitted the Know Nothing Party to elect a number of candidates in California in 1854. A public murder and the ineffectiveness of the Know Nothing officials then in office in San Francisco and Sacramento stimulated the resurgence of vigilantism in San Francisco in 1856. Because the Broderick wing of the Democratic Party included a number of toughs the Vigilantes forced many of them to leave California. In the election of 1856 the Broderick and Gwin factions of the Democratic Party cooperated against the Know Nothings and both Gwin and Broderick were elected Senators.
Broderick's senate career did not go well and he turned against the Democratic President James Buchanan. The battle was fought out in the senate over the issue of slavery in Kansas in which Broderick allied himself with Stephen Douglas against the President. By 1859 Broderick's political power had been seriously eroded and he had come to hate Gwin. He publicly insulted members of the Chivalry and openly invited Gwin to challenge him to a duel. Gwin declined to rise to the baiting but David Terry, a member of the State Supreme Court and a prominent member of the Chivalry, did challenge him. They met on September 13, 1859, near Laguna Merced. Broderick's pistol misfired and Terry's did not. Broderick was hit in the lung and badly wounded. He died on September 16, 1859. His funeral procession was the largest seen in the city. An estimated thirty thousand people attended the public gathering in Portsmith Square. Rumors circulated to the effect that the Chivalry had tampered with the pistols and thus murdered Broderick. A monument was erected above his grave in San Francisco's Lone Mountain Cemetery.
