USA > California > California; an intimate history > Part 17
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But he no longer purposed to be Gwin's successor in that United States Senate of his unswerving ambition. Two years of Gwin's term were gone. Weller's term would expire in March, 1857. His successor would have a full term in the Senate.
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Nor would Broderick permit the legislature to act ac- cording to precedent and elect Gwin's successor first. He intended to enjoy this advantage himself, and then indicate his confrère at his leisure, or when the moment was ripe. He found that he lacked two of a majority, and for these he must recruit in the ranks of the con- testing men-Gwin, Weller, and Milton S. Latham. He entered into a deal with Latham promising him Gwin's place if he would secure the needed number of votes. The Democrats went into caucus, decided to waive prece- dent, and elect Broderick for the long term. On January 9th Broderick was elected, receiving seventy-nine votes against seventeen cast for the Know-nothing candidate and fourteen for the Republican. He had achieved his ambition, and would leave California in February to take his seat in the Senate of the United States.
He was determined upon a colleague whom he could rule. Latham was not of a malleable disposition. For the first and only time in his career Broderick broke his word. He exalted the great national issue-slavery- above an election promise. Knowing Gwin's consuming ambition, he determined to use it for his own ends. Gwin cared more, he believed, for his position as a United States Senator and his social life in Washington than he did for abstract principles or even for federal patronage. Then occurred one of the most memorable, not to say melo-dramatic incidents in California history.
The caucus, after ineffectual balloting over Gwin's suc- cessor, adjourned until Monday. Sacramento snatched a few hours' sleep. Then they were on the streets again, men of all parties, excited, as usual, betting, arguing; street- corners blocked, saloons packed with men keeping up their
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courage and mere physical stamina. On Sunday the ex- citement was at fever-heat: Monday and the convening of the legislature seemed insupportably remote.
Gwin was staying at the Orleans Hotel. At midnight he enveloped himself in a long black cloak, pulled a black slouch-hat far down over his face, and stole out of the back door of his hotel. Sacramento was poorly lighted. He found little difficulty in avoiding the groups "swap- ping" stories of political trickeries, wound his tortuous way through dark and narrow alleys (full of refuse and cats), and reached the rear entrance of Broderick's head- quarters in the Magnolia Hotel. A henchman of the great chief was waiting for the Old Roman, and escorted him up-stairs. By this time Broderick's manners could be almost as good as Gwin's, when he chose, although never as suave. He greeted his visitor with the kindly courtesy of a monarch about to sign the death-warrant, bade him be seated, and waved his minions from the room. The two were not long coming to terms. Gwin con- sented to give up the patronage of the Pacific coast, and Broderick assured him that he, and not Latham, should accompany him to Washington. Gwin then wrote the document afterward to be known as the "scarlet letter," and stole back as he had come.
He was elected. Once more Sacramento and San Francisco seethed with stories of political rottenness and shameful compacts. Broderick's double triumph and the haughty "Chiv's " abasement were shouted from the housetops. But nothing could be proved at that time. Gwin, upon his return to San Francisco, gave a banquet, and many of the invited declined. On the other hand, Broderick was received with a tremendous ovation. In
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matters of bribery and corruption you must give, not receive.
The two men went as far as New York together ami- cably enough. Gwin hastened to Washington to whisper into the presidential ear and rally his social forces in the Senate. Broderick remained in his old city for several days, receiving another ovation from his former political associates, who were jubilant over their old leader's rapid fulfilment of his notorious ambition.
In Washington, where he was born, he was received like a conquering hero. He was picturesque; he came to them from the most romantic state in the Union. Only six years before had he gone to it a poor boy, and in less than a year he had dominated it; he had been born on the soil of his ultimate goal. No one questioned that he was a man of extraordinary abilities, of genius. Gwin was coldly received. The particulars of his deal with the enemy were unknown, but rumors had preceded him. Broderick was the hero of the hour, and Gwin took his seat among averted faces.
But Broderick was not born to a bed of roses. His troubles at the capital of the nation began immediately. Whether or not Gwin had any intention of keeping his midnight pledges to Broderick in return for the toga, no one but Gwin himself ever knew; but it is a mat- ter of history that he had Buchanan's ear, and that the new President took a profound dislike to the indepen- dent young Senator from California, treated him with in- sulting coldness, even during his first visit to the White House, and commanded him to put into writing all his requests for federal patronage. This was unprecedented, and Broderick left the Executive's presence enraged, and
16
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inspired with his first doubts of Gwin's good faith. Of course, he had made the usual campaign promises, and it was doubtful if he could keep any of them. As a matter of fact, merely to save appearances, he received a few crumbs, in themselves an insult. The whole loaves, as before, went to Gwin.
Broderick became the President's bitterest enemy in Congress, although he observed the etiquette of the Senate and made no attempt to speak during his first session. He maintained a semblance of friendliness with Gwin, and told no one of the secret compact. Not yet was he wholly convinced of his colleague's treachery, nor was he in the habit of betraying confidences.
He went to California before the session was finished to look after his political interests; his enemies were active, as usual. But he was in his seat when the Thirty-fifth Congress opened in December, and the lid flew off the volcano shortly afterward.
The question agitating the country was the internal condition of Kansas and its momentous relationship to the balance of power between the North and the South. Kansas became a territory in 1854. Stephen A. Douglas, Senator from Illinois, had injected a clause into the ter- ritorial act providing that the question of slavery in the new territory should be determined by a vote of its citizens. There was an immediate rush into Kansas of emigrants from slave and free states, and the result was a condition bordering upon civil war. United States troops were called in to preserve the peace. Ultimately two legislatures were chosen. The one representing anti- slavery was dispersed by the United States marshal in January, 1857. The proslavery legislature then con-
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vened and provided for a constitutional convention, which met in September of the same year at Lecompton and framed a proslavery constitution. The antislavery party refused to vote for delegates, maintaining that the legislature which called the convention was an illegal body. Nor would they go to the polls when the con- stitutional question was submitted to the people. On December 25th, therefore, that famous firebrand known as the Lecompton Constitution was elected by a large majority. But there had been, meanwhile, another elec- tion and another legislature. This body submitted the Lecompton Constitution to the popular vote in January, 1858, and it was rejected by a vast majority.
But when Kansas made her application for statehood to the Congress of 1857-58 it was with the Lecompton or proslavery constitution in her hand. Buchanan, who was a Northern man with proslavery sympathies, fa- vored the constitution which would make Kansas a slave state, and urged Congress to ratify it. The result was an immediate split in the Democratic party, Douglas at the head of one faction, Buchanan of the other. The Senate passed the bill with the Lecompton Constitution, but the House rejected it and demanded a substitute bill, which the Senate rejected. Ultimately a new bill was adopted by both Houses which provided that the Lecompton Constitution should be submitted to the peo- ple of Kansas for a third time. This was done, and once more it was overwhelmingly defeated. That settled the question as far as Kansas was concerned, but the Demo- cratic party was now divided into two factions, calling themselves Lecomptons and anti-Lecomptons. The last drifted slowly toward the new Republican party.
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Broderick, always opposed to slavery, gave all his sup- port to Douglas. Gwin, naturally, came out for the President.
It was during the session of 1857-58 that Broderick distinguished himself and forced the most indifferent and hostile to admit his great abilities and recognize him as one of the inevitable forces in national affairs. He never became a polished speaker, but he possessed a pointed vocabulary and a power of invective that must have made the President writhe many times, unless, to be sure, Presidents are case-hardened long before they reach the 4th of March. Broderick controlled the minority, and dictated the filibustering tactics calculated most to annoy the Executive as well as the proslavery party. By this time he had done far more than win admiration for his gifts; he enjoyed the complete confidence of his own faction. His poise, courage, stable equilibrium, and power of quick clear thinking lifted him in Washington as in New York and California to the leadership of men. And as a notable figure in that greatest of all arenas he soon attracted the attention of the American people as a whole. His brilliant arraignments of the President, the public scalpel he applied to that unfortunate official's weak spots, delighted the enemies of the government and focused upon him the attention of men of all shades of political opinion. He became known as one of the strongest and most useful-or most dangerous-anti- slavery men in public life. Had he been permitted to live there is little doubt that he would have become a candi- date for the presidency after Lincoln's death; and his party by that time was the only one worth considering in the country: the anti-Lecomptons were then calling themselves Republicans.
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Mr. Jeremiah Lynch gives a number of extracts from the first of Broderick's speeches which attracted wide atten- tion. It was also his first long speech. The body of it was devoted to a scathing attack on the President for urging another slave state upon Congress. Then he ana- lyzed the slavery enactments of Congress from the Mis- souri Compromise of 1820, quoting the eminent champions on either side, down to the Lecompton agitation.
How foolish [he concluded] for the South to hope to contend with success in such an encounter! Slavery is old, decrepit, consumptive. Freedom is young, strong, vigorous. The one is naturally stationary and loves ease. The other is migrating and enterprising. . . . They say that Cotton is King. No sir, Gold is King! [He was the first of the great moderns to put this painful fact into concrete form and fling it into the public teeth.] I represent a state where labor is honorable; where the judge has left his bench, the lawyer and doctor their offices, and the clergyman his pulpit, for the purpose of delving into the earth; where there is no station so high and no position so great that its occupant is not proud to boast that he labored with his hands. [This, it must be remembered, was flung into the face of an aristocratic oli- garchy.] There is no state in the Union, no place on earth, where labor is so honored and so well rewarded; no time and no place since the Almighty doomed the sons of Adam to toil, where the curse, if it be a curse, rests so lightly as now upon the people of California.
Some haughty slave-owner in a choleric moment had applied the disagreeable term "mud-sills" to the laboring- class of the North. It may be imagined that the growl of the proletariat was deep and loud, and that the anti- slavery leaders dyed red this rag of speech and waved it aloft.
I suppose the Senator from South Carolina [continued Broderick, alluding to the unhappy inventor of the classic] did not intend to be personal in his remarks to any of his peers on the floor. If I had thought so I would have noticed it at that time. I am, sir, with one exception the youngest in years of the Senators upon this floor. It is not long since I served an apprenticeship of five years at one of the
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most laborious trades pursued by man, a trade that from its nature devotes its follower to thought, but debars him from conversation. I would not have alluded to this if it were not for the remarks of the Senator from South Carolina, and that thousands who know that I am the son of an artisan and have been a mechanic would feel disap- pointed in me if I did not reply to him. I am not proud of this. I am sorry it is true. I would that I could have enjoyed the pleasures of life in my boyhood days, but they were denied me. I say this with pain. I have not the admiration for the men of that class whence I sprang that might be expected; they submit too tamely to oppression, and are too prone to neglect their rights and duties as citizens. But, sir, the class of society to whose toil I was born, under our form of government, will control the destinies of the nation. [Once more it may be pointed out that this speech was made in 1858, not in 1914]. If I were inclined to forget my connection with them, or to deny that I sprang from them, this chamber would not be the place in which I could do either. While I hold a seat here I have but to look at the beautiful capitals adorning the pilasters that support the roof to be reminded of my father's talent and handiwork.
I left the scenes of my youth for the West because I was tired of the jealousies and struggles of men of my class, who could not under- stand why one of their fellows should seek to elevate his position above the common level. I made my new abode among strangers where labor is honored. I had left without regrets. There remained no tie of blood to bind me to any being in existence. If I fell in the struggle for reputation and fortune there was no relative on earth to mourn my fall.
Then, after a brief but pungent account of his political career in California, he once more paid his respects to the President.
I hope, sir, that in mercy to the boasted intelligence of this age the historian, when writing of these times, will ascribe this attempt of the Executive to force this constitution on an unwilling people, to the fading intellect, the petulant passion, and the trembling dotage of an old man on the verge of the grave.
During this session of Congress Broderick secured the passage of several measures important to California, energetically advocating an overland railroad; and if he
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could not secure the federal plums for his friends, he at least managed to extract much of their flavor.
Gwin was seldom in his seat, Broderick as seldom absent. The junior Senator introduced a bill to decrease the salaries of California officials, paid out of the treasury, stating and proving that the cost of living in the new state which had been responsible for their high salaries in the beginning was now altogether normal. The bill passed, and there was gnashing of teeth in the Virginia Poor- house and elsewhere. Broderick's enemies became bit- terer than ever, but he lost few of his friends in Cali- fornia in spite of his inability to keep his election promises. When the legislature of California instructed her two Senators in Washington to vote for the Lecompton con- stitution Broderick put himself on record without delay.
The resolutions introduced by my colleague [he said] will have no influence upon my action here now nor in the future. I am satisfied that four-fifths of the people in California repudiate the Lecompton fraud.
When he returned to California he found that his anti- slavery principles, avowed in the Senate of the United States, had cost him his Southern following in the Demo- cratic party, and that even his Northern friends were inclined to think him premature in his belief that war between the two factions was inevitable. And this was only three years before the war!
During this interval between sessions Broderick left politics alone, made money in real estate, and qualified at the bar. Nevertheless, a disturbing incident happened. He had confided to W. I. Ferguson, the intermediary who arranged the midnight interview between himself and Gwin, that compromising sheet soon to be known as the
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"scarlet letter." Few people knew of its existence. Ferguson was what used to be known as a young man of brilliant parts. He was making a career for himself and had attracted attention by a speech in the antagonistic legislature of 1858 in favor of Douglas and Broderick, scoring the President. Soon after, while in San Francisco, a Buchanan Democrat involved him in a political dispute -no difficult matter in those days-and challenged him to a duel. Ferguson understood; he was to be killed as a warning to Broderick and because the enemy was determined to obtain possession of the letter. His antag- onist was a practised duelist. He was a novice. He confided the letter to another friend of Broderick's and went out to be shot. Four balls ended his career.
The Southern element that controlled the President was opposed to an overland railroad, as it would terminate on free soil. If the road must be built, then they de- manded that it lie below the parallel 36° 30', that line being the accepted division between slavery and freedom in the Western states and territories. Moreover, it must stop at California's state line; if the Californians wished to extend it to San Francisco they could build the extra five hundred miles themselves. But far better no railroad at all.
Broderick was the first to advocate the forty-first par- allel, and he was one of the most energetic advocates of building a railroad at once to connect the two oceans. When he returned to Washington for the last time he traveled overland by the new stage route. It was a jour- ney of forty-seven days to St. Joseph, and at every city and hamlet Broderick not only learned that the demand for a railroad was practically unanimous, but that the
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country relied upon him to carry this great project through. He was thus enabled to speak in the Senate with first- hand knowledge. As a direct result he was dropped from the Committee on Public Lands, and his enemies were more definitely arrayed against him than before; they also had increased in numbers.
He was opposed in every newspaper, insulted at every turn, baited, derided, made to feel that he stood alone with his back to the wall. Not for nothing might a young Senator from a far Western state dare to oppose slavery, advocate free labor, denounce corrupt Indian agents, jobbery by postmasters and revenue collectors, demand a reform and retrenchment in public affairs, and propose a transcontinental railway in the teeth of feudal lords who knew the value of slow communication and painful costly travel.
In California the federal and state officials combined to drag him down. He was a dangerous man, therefore a marked man. Besides, too much success through per- sonal effort always goes against the grain. More and more were the enemies' ranks recruited. In Washington even Douglas was afraid to stand by him openly, fearing for his own political fortunes. Probably no man of high ability has ever stood so completely alone in the United States Senate. He knew the fearful odds against him, that a combination was forming to force him out of polit- ical life, by men that had perfect faith in the continued power of the Southern faction-if not too severely threat- ened by such men as Broderick-but who hated him with a hatred born of fear not only personal, but of the rising Republican party, to which Broderick in all but name now belonged. It is possible that he forecast his death
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even before there was a definite plot to kill him. Living, he would have fought on without quailing, and, as events shaped, would have seen his principles win and no doubt have achieved his highest ambitions. He brushed several attempts to challenge him contemptuously aside, but he knew that sooner or later he must fight to the death.
XVII
THE BRODERICK-TERRY DUEL
IN 1859, after the adjournment of Congress, Gwin and Broderick hastened to California, the junior Senator to rally the state to the anti-Lecompton standard, the older and more subtle man to win it to the support of Lecomptonism and the administration.
There were tremendous Lecompton and anti-Lecomp- ton meetings all over the state, and Broderick took the stump for the first time. Horace Greeley, visiting Cali- fornia during this agitation, advised the anti-Lecomp- tonites to join forces with the new Republican party and against proslavery Democracy. Broderick called him- self a Democrat until the day of his death; but, although he did not live to see the fusion accomplished, he must stand in the history of California as the first great Re- publican of the state.
It was a season of uncommon political excitement, not only because men were involved. The slavery question, pro and anti, was reaching its acute stage even in Cali- fornia. But the sensation of the campaign was Brod- erick's long - reserved opinion of Gwin. He denounced him with a cold fury of invective never surpassed by him- self. At Shasta he read aloud from the platform the "scarlet letter," and gave it to the press. Here it is:
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SACRAMENTO CITY, January II, 1857.
HON. D. C. BRODERICK.
DEAR SIR,-I am likely to be the victim of unparalleled treachery of those who have been placed in power by my aid and exertion.
The most potential portion of the federal patronage is in the hands of those who, by every principle that should govern men of honor, should be my supporters instead of my enemies, and it is being used for my destruction. My participation in the distribution in this patronage has been the source of numberless slanders upon me that have fostered a prejudice in the public mind against me and have created enmities that have been destructive to my happiness for years. It has entailed untold evils upon me, and while in the Senate I will not recommend a single individual to appointment to office in the state. Provided I am elected, you shall have the exclusive control of this patronage, so far as I am concerned; and in its distribution I shall only ask that it may be used with magnanimity, and not for the advantage of those who have been our mutual enemies and unwearied in their efforts to destroy us.
This determination is unalterable; and in making this declaration I do not expect you to support me for that reason, or in any way to be governed by it; but, as I have been betrayed by those who should have been my friends, I am in a measure powerless and depend upon your magnanimity.
Very respectfully, your obedient servant,
WM. M. GWIN.
In spite of verbiage and pretense there was no mistak- ing the real character of this letter. Moreover, it was equally obvious that Gwin had not kept his part of the shameful bargain. He took to the stump himself and denounced the letter as a "cowardly lie." But if any one doubted its authorship or that Ferguson had been killed to get possession of it, uncertainty vanished after hearing the two men speak. Gwin had little power of oratory, even of the old-fashioned sort, and he lacked the force in speaking that carries conviction; in this case he lacked the righteous indignation. Broderick, cold, im- placable, rarely indulging in gestures or play of facial
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muscle, and with a ringing sledge-hammer logic, never failed to convince people of his sincerity, however much he might antagonize or even infuriate.
He knew that his death must have been resolved upon, and he expected a challenge from Gwin. But either the stately Southern Senator moved too slowly or it was agreed in council that the honor should be relegated to another.
David S. Terry, who so narrowly escaped leaving Fort Gunnybags by the second-story window, could be trusted to spout fire upon a moment's notice. He was a violent proslavery man and Lecompton Democrat (the Know- nothing party being defunct), and had always been among the most fervent of Broderick's political oppo- nents. At one time the two men must have been personal friends, for when Terry was incarcerated by the Vigilance Committee Broderick supported newspapers in his de- fense. But that was as long ago as 1856. Three whole years had passed. For San Francisco and the fifties that was a generation.
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