THE TERRY-BRODERICK DUEL.

San Francisco:: The Colt Press,, 1939.. Hardcover first edition -. Near fine in decorated pale grey boards with a red cloth spine, paper label on spine (bookplate, light toning to edges of boards and pages, sunning to spine). Some pages still unopened.. First printing. An account of the 1859 duel which resulted in Broderick's death - "An argument about the future of slavery led to a deadly duel near Lake Merced, south of San Francisco. The rivals, David Broderick and David Terry, were two prominent politicians who at one time had been friends. Broderick, a U.S. senator, was a leader of the Free Soil wing of the Democratic Party, which opposed the expansion of slavery. As a legislator, he had blocked laws introduced to ban black people from the state. He had fought unsuccessfully against the California Fugitive Slave Act, which allowed whites who had brought slaves into California before statehood to hold them in bondage. Terry, a California Supreme Court Chief justice, had lobbied for California to enter the Union as a slave state, and was a member of the dominant pro-slavery Chiv wing of the Democratic Party. While he served as a justice, the state Supreme Court ordered fugitive slave Archy Lee returned to his enslaver. When Terry lost his reelection bid because of his pro-slavery views, he blamed Broderick. The two men exchanged insults and Terry challenged Broderick to a duel." (Gold Chains) Illustrated with Woodcuts by Malette Dean. Typography by Jane Grabhorn, Press work by Lawton R. Kennedy. 89 pp. plus colophon.