Heading: (Sharon, William, U.S. Senator from Nevada)
Author:
Title: Sarah Althea Sharon, plaintiff, vs. William Sharon, defendant. Opening argument for defendant by Oliver P. Evans. Stenographically reported by Clement Bennett and Thomas R. Knox, official reporters
Place Published: San Francisco
Publisher:Francis Valentin & Co.
Date Published: 1884
Description:

261 pp. 22.2x14.5 cm (8¾x5¾"), removed from larger volume with remains of stitching on spine, original front wrapper present and attached, last few leaves loose with edge chipping. First Edition.

Opening argument of the spectacular divorce trial of Nevada Senator William Sharon, who made a fortune off the Comstock lode as a business partner of William Chapman Ralston. Senator Sharon was alleged to have remarried a woman named Sarah Althea Hill, and he sued to have this alleged marriage cancelled. Judgment (in his favor) was rendered after his death, but the consequent legal proceedings, which included a Bowie knife fight in the courtroom of the Circuit Court for the Northern District of California, the physical beating of Justice Stephen Johnson Field of the US Supreme Court (by David S. Terry, a former Chief Judge of the California Supreme Court) and the fatal shooting of Terry by a US Marshal, both in the breakfast room of a California railroad hotel, which culminated in a landmark US Supreme Court decision in the case "In re Neagle (Cunningham v. Neagle)", on the supremacy of federal law over state law. OCLC/WorldCat lists only three copies of these opening arguments of the trial, two at the California State Library, and one at the California State University, Sacramento.

Front wrapper a little darkened with some chips; good condition.