![]() “They went all this way to leave the city and they were still in the city,” Dexter-Lee told SFGATE in a phone interview. Of Johnston and Ferguson sailing to the island from San Francisco to duel, Dexter-Lee said, “They went all this way to leave the city and they were still in the city,” Douglas Zimmerman/SFGATE However, the exact spot of their duel, Quarry Point in what is now Fort McDowell on the east side, was still on the San Francisco part of the island.Ĭasey Dexter-Lee, a state park interpreter, stands at Quarry Point on Angel Island. Johnston himself wrote an amendment to the state law adding prison time to the ban as a member of the state Assembly just one year before he would be tried for his own duel.Īs for why Johnston and Ferguson crossed the bay to duel, Angel Island State Park interpreter Casey Dexter-Lee said it was probably because the city was more likely to prosecute such things. ![]() While the deaths of Ferguson and especially Broderick did much to amplify people’s disgust at the practice, hastening its demise, dueling was already illegal in California under its Constitution. David Broderick, D-Calif., Ferguson’s political ally who himself was killed in California’s most infamous duel one year later just outside San Francisco. One fervent advocate of the conspiracy theory was Sen. Others close to Ferguson said he was really a pawn who was set up to be killed because he had access to a letter with incriminating information on a U.S. Or it may have involved their fierce disagreement on slavery, as a 1905 San Francisco Chronicle retrospective said. Initial newspaper reports such as the Sacramento Daily Union's said it involved a perceived insult to a woman Johnston, 32, knew. The passing of time seemed to blur, not clarify, the cause of the barroom argument that led to the duel. ![]() We’re not sure what Ferguson was refusing to apologize to Johnston for, and in fairness, we’re not even sure the two of them knew.
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