{"id":162241,"date":"2026-09-03T15:10:53","date_gmt":"2026-09-03T23:10:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2026\/09\/03\/he-quit-the-bench-to-fight-a-duel-and-killed-a-sitting-u-s-senator\/"},"modified":"2026-09-03T15:10:53","modified_gmt":"2026-09-03T23:10:53","slug":"he-quit-the-bench-to-fight-a-duel-and-killed-a-sitting-u-s-senator","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2026\/09\/03\/he-quit-the-bench-to-fight-a-duel-and-killed-a-sitting-u-s-senator\/","title":{"rendered":"He Quit The Bench To Fight A Duel \u2014 And Killed A Sitting U.S. Senator"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>In 1859, which chief justice of California\u2019s Supreme Court resigned his seat, challenged a sitting United States senator to a duel over a political grudge, and shot him dead?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Hint: Three decades later, that same man was himself gunned down \u2014 by a deputy U.S. marshal assigned to guard a Supreme Court justice he had threatened \u2014 in a killing that produced a landmark ruling on the reach of federal power.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><em>See\u00a0the answer on the next page.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The post <a href=\"https:\/\/abovethelaw.com\/2026\/09\/he-quit-the-bench-to-fight-a-duel-and-killed-a-sitting-u-s-senator\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">He Quit The Bench To Fight A Duel \u2014 And Killed A Sitting U.S. Senator<\/a> appeared first on <a href=\"https:\/\/abovethelaw.com\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"post-single__featured-image post-single__featured-image--medium alignright\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/abovethelaw.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/09\/GettyImages-2260148371-300x200.jpg?resize=300%2C200&#038;ssl=1\" class=\"attachment-medium size-medium wp-post-image\" alt=\"\" title=\"\"><\/figure>\n<p><strong>In 1859, which chief justice of California\u2019s Supreme Court resigned his seat, challenged a sitting United States senator to a duel over a political grudge, and shot him dead?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Hint: Three decades later, that same man was himself gunned down \u2014 by a deputy U.S. marshal assigned to guard a Supreme Court justice he had threatened \u2014 in a killing that produced a landmark ruling on the reach of federal power.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><em>See\u00a0the answer on the next page.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>1<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/abovethelaw.com\/2026\/09\/he-quit-the-bench-to-fight-a-duel-and-killed-a-sitting-u-s-senator\/2\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">2<\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/abovethelaw.com\/2026\/09\/he-quit-the-bench-to-fight-a-duel-and-killed-a-sitting-u-s-senator\/2\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Next \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In 1859, which chief justice of California\u2019s Supreme Court resigned his seat, challenged a sitting United States senator to a duel over a political grudge, and shot him dead? Hint: Three decades later, that same man was himself gunned down \u2014 by a deputy U.S. marshal assigned to guard a Supreme Court justice he had [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":162242,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-162241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-above_the_law"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/xira.com\/p\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/GettyImages-2260148371-YXhhge.jpg?fit=2120%2C1414&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162241","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162241"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162241\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/162242"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}