and Glorieta, New Mexico (only one in Santa Fe was erected). He also arrived to reform the legal system. Among the cases with the greatest impact was his decision that Pueblo Indians were U. S. citizens, could testify in his courts, especially in land disputes, and were equals in the eyes of the court, a decision eventually upheld by the U. S. Supreme Court. In February, 1867, he attacked the system of peonage in New Mexico, in anticipation of the Federal law against debt peonage—involuntary servitude—signed by President Johnson March 2, 1867. His entire career was that of a reformer, and what he found in New Mexico he thought was akin to the slavery he had fought in the Civil War to defeat. Many New Mexicans sought his removal, because of these destabilizing decisions, but also for his efforts to correct court room antics, especially after a decision against an old padron for selling liquor to Indians. A local jury would not convict; he removed them and held a new trial; after Slough sentenced the padron to a year in prison, the territorial governor pardoned him, which sent Slough into a tirade. Sharp-tongued with a fiery temper, he was appointed to fight corruption, but observers thought he was too heavy-handed about it. In 1867 William Logan Rynerson, a member of the Territorial Legislative Council, took part in a campaign to denigrate the judge, and authored a resolution in the legislature to have the judge removed, leading Slough to slander Rynerson publicly. On December 15, 1867, Rynerson drew a gun on the judge in Santa Fe and said, "Take it back." Slough exclaimed, "Shoot and be damned!" and Rynerson fired. Mortally wounded, Slough drew a derringer but was unable to fire. He died two days later. In a mockery of a trial, Rynerson was found not guilty (by reason of self-defense), an example of the growing power of what became known as the Republican-controlled Santa Fe Ring. Outcries for a nonpartisan investigation were ignored over the protests of friends in New Mexico, Denver, and Cincinnati. The historian Richard Henry Brown says that the murder of Slough "helped affirm the position of New Mexico as 'apparently the only place where assassination became an integral part of the political system.'" See also List of assassinated American politicians List of American Civil War generals (Union) References External links 1829 births 1867 deaths 1867 murders