SPEECH OF HON. D. C. BRODERICK, OF CALIFORNIA, AGAINST THE ADMISSION OF KANSAS, UNDER THE LECOMPTON CONSTITUTION. DELIVERED IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES, MARCH 22, 1858. Washington: Printed by Lemuel Towers, 1858. 21x14 cm, pp. [1-3] 4-16, self wrappers, now bound in modern quarter leather and marbled boards. First edition. David Colbreth Broderick (1820-1859), California Forty-niner, attorney, politician, acting second Lieutenant Governor of California (1851-1852), member of the California Senate (1850-1852), "'was stubborn, positive, unrelenting and unforgiving,' self centered also, and determined upon his advancement to the utmost of his powers ... and in politics he was unscrupulous" (DAB). "From the middle of 1851 to his death, in 1859, Broderick was, for all practical purposes, in absolute control of San Francisco's political machinery. ... And not even his most adoring worshippers have been able entirely to conceal the plain fact that in the final analysis he must, more than any one man, shoulder responsibility for the municipal corruption which was the basic cause of the second uprising of a tormented and enraged citizenry" (Herbert Asbury, THE BARBARY COAST [1933], chapter 4). Broderick was elected to the United States Senate in 1857. "At what time he first developed sentiments hostile to the slave power and to political corruption cannot be said. But he now vehemently attacked the [Buchanan] administration, both for its policy in Kansas and for its alleged venality, and he carried the war into his own state, where pro-slavery feeling was for the time dominant and aggressive. His attitude brought him into national prominence, but it made him a marked man" (DAB). Broderick was shot and mortally wounded in a duel by a former friend, the former Chief Justice of the California State Supreme Court David S. Terry, one of the leaders of the pro-slavery element. On his death bed Broderick said "I die because I was opposed to a corrupt administration and the extension of slavery." A very good copy. (#167620).
Price: $250.00
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