Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches Part 26

HARTFORD, _August 15, 1889._

MY DEAR JUDGE:

It is a relief to know that Justice, as well as the honored justice of our Supreme Judiciary, has been avenged by the pistol-shot of Neagle. The life of Terry has long since been forfeited to law, to decency, and to morals. He has already exceeded the limit a.s.signed by holy scripture to men of his ilk. "The b.l.o.o.d.y-minded man shall not live out half his days."

The mode of his death was in keeping with his life. Men who break all the laws of nature should not expect to die by the laws of nature.

In all this episode you have simply worn the judicial ermine without spot or stain. You defeated a bold, bad man in his machinations, and the enmity you thereby incurred was a crown of honor. I am glad that you are to be no longer hara.s.sed by the menace of this man's violence, for such a menace is specially trying to a minister of the law. We all know that Judge Field the _man_ would not flinch from a thousand Terrys, but Judge Field the _Justice_ could hardly take in his own hands the protection of his person, where the threatened outrage sprang _entirely_ from his official acts.

I wish, therefore, to congratulate you on your escape alike from the violence of Terry and from the necessity of killing him with your own hands. It was meet that you should have been defended by an executive officer of the court a.s.sailed in your person. For doubtless Terry, and the hag who was on the hunt with him, were minded to murder you.

Convey my cordial felicitations to Mrs. Field, and believe me ever, my dear Mr. Justice,

Your faithful friend, JAMES C. WELLING.

Mr. Justice FIELD.

Letter from Right Rev. B. Wistar Morris, Episcopal Bishop of Oregon:

BISHOPCROFT, PORTLAND, OREGON, _August 22, 1889_.

MY DEAR JUDGE FIELD:

I hope a word of congratulation from your Oregon friends for your escape in the recent tragedy will not be considered an intrusion. Of course we have all been deeply interested in its history, and proud that you were found as you were, without the defenses of a bully.

I will not trespa.s.s further on your time than to subscribe myself,

Very truly your friend, B. WISTAR MORRIS.

Mr. Justice FIELD.

A copy of the following card was enclosed in this letter:

AN UNARMED JUSTICE.

PORTLAND OREGON, _August 19_.

_To the Editor of the Oregonian_:

There is one circ.u.mstance in the history of the Field and Terry tragedy that seems to me is worthy of more emphatic comment than it has yet received. I mean the fact that Judge Field had about his person no weapon of defense whatever, though he knew that this miserable villain was d.o.g.g.i.ng his steps for the purpose of a.s.saulting him, perhaps of taking his life. His brother, Mr. Cyrus W. Field, says:

"It was common talk in the East here, among my brother's friends, that Terry's threats to do him bodily harm were made with the full intent to follow them up. Terry threatened openly to shoot the Justice, and we, who knew him, were convinced he would certainly do it if he ever got a chance.

"I endeavored to dissuade my brother from making the trip West this year, but to no purpose, and he said, 'I have a duty to perform there, and this sort of thing can't frighten me away.

I know Terry will do me harm if he gets a chance, and as I shall be in California some time, he will have chances enough.

Let him take them.'

"When urged to arm himself he made the same reply. He said that when it came to such a pa.s.s in this country that judges find it necessary to go armed, it will be time to close the courts themselves."

This was a manly and n.o.ble reply and must recall to many minds that familiar sentiment: "He is thrice armed who has his quarrel just." With the daily and hourly knowledge that this a.s.sa.s.sin was ever upon his track, this brave judge goes about his duty and scorns to take to himself the defenses of a bully or a brigand; and in doing so, how immeasurably has he placed himself above the vile creature that sought his life, and all others who resort to deeds of violence. "They that take the sword shall perish with the sword," is a saying of wide application, and had it been so in this case; had this brave and self-possessed man been moved from his high purpose by the importunity of friends, and when slain by his enemy, had been found armed in like manner with the murderer himself, what a stain would it have been upon his name and honor? And how would our whole country have been disgraced in the eyes of the civilized world, that her highest ministers of justice must be armed as highwaymen as they go about their daily duties!

Well said this undaunted servant of the state: "Then will it be time to close the courts themselves." May we not hope, Mr.

Editor, that this example of one occupying this high place in our country may have some influence in staying the spirit and deeds of violence now so rife, and that they who are so ready to resort to the rifle and revolver may learn to regard them only as the instruments of the coward or the scoundrel?

B. WISTAK MORRIS.

The citations given below from different journals, published at the time, indicated the general opinion of the country. With rare exceptions it approved of the action of the Government, the conduct of Neagle, and the bearing of Justice Field.

The _Alta California_, a leading paper in California, had, on August 15, 1889, the day following the tragedy, the following article:

THE TERRY TRAGEDY.

The killing of David S. Terry by the United States Marshal David Neagle yesterday was an unfortunate affair, regretted, we believe, by no one more than by Justice Field, in whose defense the fatal shot was fired. There seems, however, to be an almost undivided sentiment that the killing was justifiable. Every circ.u.mstance attending the tragedy points to the irresistible conclusion that there was a premeditated determination on the part of Terry and his wife to provoke Justice Field to an encounter, in which Terry might either find an excuse for killing the man against whom he had threatened vengeance, or in which his wife might use the pistol which she always carries, in the pretended defense of her husband. For some time past it has been feared that a meeting between Terry and Justice Field would result in bloodshed. There is now indisputable proof that Terry had made repeated threats that he would a.s.sault Justice Field the first time he met him off the bench, and that if the Judge resisted he would kill him. Viewed in the light of these threats, Terry's presence on the same train with Justice Field will hardly be regarded as accidental, and his actions in the breakfast-room at Lathrop were directly in line with the intentions he had previously expressed. Neagle's prompt and deadly use of his revolver is to be judged with due reference to the character and known disposition of the man with whom he had to deal and to his previous actions and threats. He was attending Justice Field, against the will of the latter and in spite of his protest, in obedience to an order from the Attorney-General of the United States to Marshal Franks to detail a deputy to protect the person of Justice Field from Terry's threatened violence. A slap in the face may not, under ordinary circ.u.mstances, be sufficient provocation to justify the taking of human life; but it must be remembered that there were no ordinary circ.u.mstances and that Terry was no ordinary man. Terry was a noted pistol-shot; it was known that he invariably carried arms and that he boasted of his ability to use them. If on this occasion he was unarmed, as Mrs. Terry a.s.serts,[1] Neagle had no means of knowing that fact; on the contrary, to his mind every presumption was in favor of the belief that he carried both pistol and knife, in accordance with his usual habit. As a peace officer, even apart from the special duty which had been a.s.signed to him, he was justified in taking the means necessary to prevent Terry from continuing his a.s.sault; but the means necessary in the case of one man may be wholly inadequate with a man bearing the reputation of David S. Terry, a man who only a few months previously had drawn a knife while resisting the lawful authority of another United States officer. It is true that if Terry was unarmed, the deputy marshal might have arrested him without taking his life or seriously endangering his own; but Terry was a man of gigantic stature, and though aged, in possession of a giant's strength; and there is no one who was acquainted with him, or has had opportunity to learn his past history, who does not know that he was a desperate man, willing to take desperate chances and to resort to desperate means when giving way to his impulses of pa.s.sion, and that any person who should at such a moment attempt to stay his hand would do so at the risk of his life. Whether he had a pistol with him at that moment or not, there was every reason to believe that he was armed, and that the blow with his hand was intended only as the precursor to a more deadly blow with a weapon. At such moments little time is allowed for reflection. The officer of the law was called upon to act and to act promptly. He did so, and the life of David S. Terry was the forfeit. He fell, a victim to his own ungovernable pa.s.sions, urged on to his fate by the woman who was at once his wife and his client, and perhaps further incited by sensational newspaper articles which stirred up the memory of his resentment for fancied wrongs, and taunted him with the humiliation of threats unfulfilled.

The close of Judge Terry's life ends a career and an era. He had the misfortune to carry into a ripened state of society the conditions which are tolerable only where social order is not fully established. Restless under authority, and putting violence above law, he lived by the sword and has perished by it.

That example which refused submission to judicial finalities was becoming offensive to California, but the incubus of physical fear was upon many who realized that the survival of frontier ways into non-frontier period was a damage to the State. But, be this as it may, the stubborn spirit that defied the law has fallen by the law.

When Justice Field showed the highest judicial courage in the opening incidents of the tragedy that has now closed, the manhood of California received a distinct impetus. When the Justice, with threats made against his life, returned to the State unarmed, and resentful of protection against a.s.sault, declaring that when judges must arm to defend themselves from a.s.sault offered in reprisal of their judicial actions society must be considered dissolved, he was rendering to our inst.i.tutions the final and highest possible service. The event that followed, the killing of Terry in the act of striking him the second time from behind, while he sat at table in a crowded public dining-room, was the act of the law.

The Federal Department of Justice, by its chief, the Attorney-General of the United States, had ordered its officer, the United States marshal for the northern district of California, to take such means and such measures as might be necessary to protect the persons of the judges against a.s.sault by Judge Terry, in carrying out the threats that he had made. This order was from the executive arm of the Government, and it was carried out to the letter. Judge Terry took the law into his own hands and fell. Nothing can add to the lesson his fate teaches. It is established now that in California no man is above the law; that no man can affect the even poise of justice by fear. Confiding in his own strength as superior to the law, David S. Terry fell wretchedly.

No more need be said. New California inscribes upon her s.h.i.+eld, "Obedience to the law the first condition of good citizens.h.i.+p," and the past is closed.

_The Record-Union_ of Sacramento, one of the leading papers of California, on August 15, 1889, the day following the tragedy, had the following article under the head--

KILLING OF JUDGE TERRY.

In the news columns of the _Record-Union_ will be found all the essential details of the circ.u.mstances of the killing of D.S. Terry. It will be evident to the reader that they readily sap the whole case, and that there is no substantial dispute possible concerning the facts. These truths we a.s.sert, without fear of successful contradiction, establish the justifiableness of the act of the United States marshal who fired upon and killed Terry. We think there will be no dispute among sensible men that a federal circuit judge or a justice of the supreme bench, pa.s.sing from one portion of the circuit to another in which either is required to open a court and hear causes, and for the purpose of fully discharging his official duties, is while en route in the discharge of an official function, and constructively his court is open to the extent that an a.s.sault upon him, because of matters pending in his court, or because of judgments he has rendered or is to render, is an a.s.sault upon the court, and his bailiff or marshal detailed to attend the court or to aid in preserving the order and dignity of the court has the same right to protect him from a.s.sault then that he would have, had the judge actually reached his court-room.

But further than this, we hold that in view of the undeniable fact that the Justice had knowledge of the fact that the Terrys, man and wife, had sworn to punish him; that they had indulged in threats against him of the most p.r.o.nounced character; that they had boarded a train on which it is probable they knew he had taken pa.s.sage from one part of his circuit to another in his capacity as a magistrate; in view of the fact that Terry sought the first opportunity to approach and strike him, and that, too, when seated; and in view of the notorious fact that Terry always went armed--the man who shot Terry would have been justified in doing so had he not even been commissioned as an officer of the court. He warned the a.s.sailant to desist, and knowing his custom to go armed, and that he had threatened the Justice, and Terry refusing to restrain his blows, it was Neagle's duty to save life, to strike down the a.s.sailant in the most effectual manner. Men who, having the ability to prevent murder, stand by and see it committed, may well be held to accountability for criminal negligence.

But in this case it is clear that murder was intended on the part of the Terrys. One of them ran for her pistol and brought it, and would have reached the other's side with it in time, had she not been detained by strong men at the door. Neagle saw this woman depart, and coupling it with the advance of Terry, knew, as a matter of course, what it meant. He had been deputed by the chief law officer of the Government--in view of previous a.s.saults by the Terrys and their threats and display of weapons in court--to stand guard over the judges and protect them. He acted, therefore, precisely as it was proper he should do. Had he been less prompt and vigorous, all the world knows that not he but Terry would to-day be in custody, and not Terry but the venerable justice of the Supreme Court of the United States would to-day be in the coffin.

These remarks have grown too extended for any elaboration of the moral of the tragedy that culminated in the killing of David S. Terry yesterday. But we cannot allow the subject to be even temporarily dismissed without calling the thought of the reader to contemplation of the essential truth that society is bound to protect the judges of the courts of the land from violence and the threats of violence; otherwise the decisions of our courts must conform to the violence threatened, and there will be an end of our judicial system, the third and most valuable factor in the scheme of representative government. Society cannot, therefore, punish, but must applaud the man who defends the courts of the people and the judges of those courts from such violence and threats of violence. For it must be apparent to even the dullest intellect that all such violence is an outrage upon the judicial conscience, and therefore involves and puts in peril the liberties of the people.

The New Orleans _Times-Democrat,_ in one of its issues at this period, used the following language:

The judge in America who keeps his official ermine spotless, who faithfully attends to the heavy and responsible duties of his station, deserves that the people should guard the sanct.i.ty of his person with a strength stronger than armor of steel and readier than the stroke of lance or sword. Though the judges be called to pa.s.s on tens of thousands of cases, to sentence to imprisonment or to death thousands of criminals, they should be held by the people safe from the hate and vengeance of those criminals as if they were guarded by an invulnerable s.h.i.+eld.

If Judge Field, of the Supreme Court, one of the nine highest judges under our republican government, in travelling recently over his circuit in California, had been left to the mercy of the violent man who had repeatedly threatened his life, who had proved himself ready with the deadly knife or revolver, it would have been a disgrace to American civilization; it would have been a stigma and stain upon American manhood; it would have shown that the spirit of American liberty, which exalts and pays reverence to our judiciary, had been replaced by a public apathy that marked the beginning of the decline of patriotism.

Judge Field recognized this when, in being advised to arm himself in case his life was endangered, he uttered the n.o.ble words: "No, sir; I do not and will not carry arms, for when it is known that the judges of the court are compelled to arm themselves against a.s.saults offered in consequence of their judicial action it will be time to dissolve the courts, consider the government a failure, and let society lapse into barbarism." That ringing sentence has gone to the remotest corner of the land, and everywhere it has gone it should fire the American heart with a proud resolve to protect forever the sanct.i.ty of our judiciary.

Had not Neagle protected the person of Judge Field from the a.s.sault of a dangerous and violent ruffian, apparently intent on murder, by his prompt and decisive action, shooting the a.s.sailant down to his death, it is certain that other brave men would have rushed quickly to his rescue; but Neagle's marvelous quickness forestalled the need of any other's action. The person of one of the very highest American judges was preserved unharmed, while death palsied the murderous hand that had sworn to take his life.