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 circumstance 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 assault 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 circumstances, be sufficient provocation to justify the taking of human life; but it must be remembered that there were no ordinary circumstances 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 asserts,[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 assigned to him, he was justified in taking the means necessary to prevent Terry from continuing his assault; 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 passion, 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 passions, 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 assault, declaring that when judges must arm to defend themselves from assault offered in reprisal of their judicial actions society must be considered dissolved, he was rendering to our institutions 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 assault 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 shield, "Obedience to the law the first condition of good citizenship," 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—