Next day the principals and the seconds met again at the foot of Lake Merced, about twelve miles from San Francisco. About eighty spectators, friends of the participants, were present. The distance was the usual ten paces. Both pistols had hair triggers, but Broderick's was more delicately set than Terry's, so much so that a jar might discharge it. Broderick's seconds were inexperienced men, and no one realized the importance of this difference.
At the word both raised their weapons. Broderick's was discharged before he had elevated it sufficiently, and his bullet struck the ground about six feet in front of Terry. Terry was surer and shot his antagonist through the lung. Terry, who acted throughout with cold-blooded indifference, watched his antagonist fall and remarked that the wound was not mortal, as he had struck two inches to the right. He then left the field.
When Broderick fell, one of the bystanders, named Davis, shouted out:
"That is murder, by God!"
Drawing his own weapon, he started for Terry, exclaiming: "I am Broderick's friend. I'm not going to see him killed in that way. If you are men you will join me in avenging his death!"
Some cool heads in the multitude restrained him, pointing out that if he attacked Terry there would be a general mêlée, from which few on the ground would escape, and they finally succeeded in getting him away.
Broderick lingered for three days.
"They have killed me," he said, "because I was opposed to slavery and a corrupt administration."
Colonel Edward D. Baker, who was killed at Ball's Bluff in the Civil War, received his friend's last words.