July 18th, 2008

Cool Wikipedia Article: David S. Terry

David S. Terry was a notoriously short-tempered California politician in the 19th century, best known for having killed US Senator David Broderick in an 1859 duel. Both were Democrats, but Terry was a member of the party’s pro-slavery faction, while Broderick was a Free Soil Democrat who didn’t want slavery extended into California.

There’s something so very quintessentially mid-19th century California about the story of Terry and his wife:

Terry became entangled in a mysterious divorce case in the 1880s. A young woman named Sarah Althea Hill claimed that she was the legal wife of silver millionaire William Sharon. Sharon denied that they had ever married, but Hill wanted a divorce and a share of Sharon’s treasure. She lost her case and eventually wound up marrying Terry. The Terrys appealed, and United States Supreme Court justice Stephen J. Field, a former friend of Broderick’s, heard the case in 1888 as the senior justice of the Federal circuit court in California.

Field ruled against Mr. and Mrs. Terry in a final appeal, and jailed them both on contempt of court. The Terrys vowed vengeance.

Read the whole glorious soap opera here.

The Terry-Broderick duel took place just outside San Francisco city limits, near Lake Merced. It’s strange to think of the Westlake Shopping Center as the site of a notorious political duel. I think of it more as the site of a 24-hour Walgreens.

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Thoughts, en passant:

"No one can be a great thinker who does not recognize that as a thinker it is his first duty to follow his intellect to whatever conclusions it may lead. Truth gains more even by the errors of one who, with due study, and preparation, thinks for himself, than by the true opinions of those who only hold them because they do not suffer themselves to think." —John Stuart Mill

"Earnestness is stupidity sent to college." —P.J. O'Rourke

"An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup." —H.L. Mencken

"This was the first thing Mark had been asked to do which he himself, before he did it, clearly knew to be criminal. But the moment of his consent almost escaped his notice; certainly, there as no struggle, no sense of turning a corner. There may have been a time in the world's history when such moments fully revealed their gravity, with witches prophesying on a blasted heath or visible Rubicons to be crossed. But, for him, it all slipped past in a chatter of laughter, of that intimate laughter between fellow professionals, which of all earthly powers is strongest to make men do very bad things before they are yet, individually, very bad men." —C.S. Lewis

"Politicians taking credit from what they’ve done for the economy are like little kids working the controls of video games without putting any money in. There’s all kinds of stuff happening on the screen of the video game and they think that it’s all due to the frantic work of their fingers." —Tom Foreman

"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." —Ed Howdershelt

"Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men’s blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will never die, but long after we are gone will be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistency. Remember that our sons and grandsons are going to do things that would stagger us. Let your watchword be order and your beacon beauty. Think big." —Daniel Burnham

"Careless exaggerations are a million times worse than the Nazis." —Merlin Mann

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