Ten of Swords. Art by James Pascoe, from the California Tarot.
Defeat, ruin, rock bottom, stabbed in the back. Nowhere to go but up. Sudden misfortune. Treachery.
David C. Broderick was an abolitionist, State Senator and US Senator. His friend, David Terry, was pro-slavery. An argument led to what would become the last duel in California. Terry sabotaged Broderick’s pistol, then shot him dead. Broderick’s last words were, "I die because I was opposed to a corrupt administration and the extension of slavery." His death became martyrdom in the cause against slavery. In The Fight for Slavery in California, James McPherson speculates that the shot that killed Broderick on 9/13/1859 might have been the first shot in the Civil War, and the shots that eventually killed Terry at a railroad station in 1889, the last.
