While Mrs. Terry was being removed from the court-room Terry was held down by several strong men.  He was thus, by force alone, prevented from drawing his knife on the marshal.  While thus held he gave vent to coarse and denunciatory language against the officers.  When Mrs. Terry was removed from the court-room he was allowed to rise.  He at once made a swift rush for the door leading to the corridor on which was the marshal’s office.  As he was about leaving the room or immediately after stepping out of it, he succeeded in drawing his knife.  As he crossed the threshold he brandished the knife above his head, saying, “I am going to my wife.”  There was a terrified cry from the bystanders:  “He has got a knife.”  His arms were then seized by a deputy marshal and others present, to prevent him from using it, and a desperate struggle ensued.  Four persons held on to the arms and body of Terry, and one presented a pistol to his head, threatening at the same time to shoot him if he did not give up the knife.  To these threats Terry paid no attention, but held on to the knife, actually passing it during the struggle from one hand to the other.  David Neagle then seized the handle of the knife and commenced drawing it through Terry’s hand, when Terry relinquished it.

The whole scene was one of the wildest alarm and confusion.  To use the language of one of the witnesses, “Terry’s conduct throughout this affair was most violent.  He acted like a demon, and all the time while in the corridor he used loud and violent language, which could be plainly heard in the court-room, and, in fact, throughout the building,” applying to the officers vile epithets, and threatening to cut their hearts out if they did not let him go to his wife.  The knife which Terry drew, and which he afterwards designated as “a small sheath knife,” was, including the handle, nine and a quarter inches long, the blade being five inches, having a sharp point, and is commonly called a bowie-knife.  He himself afterwards represented that he drew this knife, not “because he wanted to hurt anybody, but because he wanted to force his way into the marshal’s office.”

The presiding justice had read only a small portion of the opinion of the court when he was interrupted by the boisterous and violent proceedings described.  On their conclusion, by the arrest of the Terrys, he proceeded with the reading of the opinion, which occupied nearly a whole hour.  The justices, without adjourning the court, then retired to the adjoining chambers of the presiding justice for deliberation.  They there considered of the action which should be taken against the Terrys for their disorderly and contemptuous conduct.  After determining what that should be they returned to the court-room and announced it.  For their conduct and resistance to the execution of the order of the court both were adjudged guilty of contempt and ordered, as a punishment, to be imprisoned in the county jail, Terry for six months and his wife for thirty days.  When Terry heard of the order, and the commitment was read to him, he said, “Judge Field” (applying to him a coarse and vituperative epithet) “thinks when I get out, when I get released from jail, that he will be in Washington, but I will meet him when he comes back next year, and it will not be a very pleasant meeting for him.”