Christopher Gadsden and the Origins of a Revolutionary

Christopher Gadsden arrived as a South Carolina delegate to the Second Continental Congress three weeks after fighting at Lexington and Concord lit the tinder for the American Revolution. He succinctly captured the backlash of collective anxiety when he created the iconic flag of a coiled and agitated rattlesnake conspicuously warning Britain of the ramifications with its message, “Don’t Tread on Me.” It was a sentiment Gadsden harbored for years, sounding the alarm to the colonial assembly, the press, and private societies he belonged to, informing his fellow citizens at every opportunity of the many ways the British Parliament constantly infringed on their inherent constitutional entitlements. When seeking collective action, he helped give form and a voice to a group of underrepresented merchants and planters who would become the Sons of Liberty.

His quick temper led one observer to call him a “Harry Hotspur.”[1] Another noted, “Mr. Gadsden was plain, blunt, hot and incorrect, though very sensible.”[2] He was always certain of his decisions and his zeal in defending them would gain and cost him friendships. He viewed most legislation influenced by the English crown “with a jaundiced eye.”[3] He was prone to giving his views on history and government and was heavily influenced by the older anti-authoritarian English Whigs who insisted they were entitled to “their natural rights of life, liberty, and property.”[4]

Christopher Gadsden was born in Charlestown (today, Charleston) to a prominent and well-connected father. He left home at the age of eight and spent the next sixteen years obtaining an education in England, completing a mercantile apprenticeship in Philadelphia, and serving on a British naval ship as a supply officer before starting a business career in South Carolina in 1748. He became an established merchant in wholesale and retail enterprises throughout the colony. He acted as an agent for select plantations, lent money for interest, sold property, and handled the estates of absentee landlords, which gave him considerable wealth.[5]

Gadsden initially eschewed politics while growing his business ventures but felt ready to take his place in the colony’s Commons House of Assembly in the fall of 1757 as the French and Indian War developed in the American colonies. He stocked powder, shot, and guns in his stores for defense. Commensurate with his skills and interests, Gadsden served on committees that dealt with tax, trade, elections, and fortifications. A squabble over the quartering of troops in the city would be his first major foray into the political arena.

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A request for military assistance in preparing South Carolina’s defense of the city was answered with two large military forces being sent simultaneously to Charlestown. Sheltering them was an overwhelming task and the commons fought both the governor and the military over who was fiscally and legally accountable for accommodations. A bruising compromise was reached, though the assembly insisted that any acquiescence to a temporary arrangement was non-precedential. Gadsden agreed with the assertion reaching back to the Magna Carta that the military could not “legally or constitutionally be quartered in private houses without the special consent of the owners.”[6]

He wanted to promote self-reliance for defense of the colony and sought ways to improve its position. Recalling the powerful effects of well-trained cannon from his time in the navy, he organized and became the captain of a volunteer artillery company while introducing an act for legal recognition of the unit. It easily passed the assembly and council, but Gov. William Henry Lyttelton, a royal appointee, maintained that only he had the authority to form such a military unit and refused to sign the legislation. This inaction angered Gadsden, who felt the governor had usurped the rights of the assembly and promised himself the matter would be revisited at a more opportune time.

Meanwhile, he trained a company that included members of the assembly, as well as ascending craftsmen, artisans, and mechanics who were considered the “middling class” of the city. They were growing economically and seeking a share of political influence. Dedicated followers within this group would become the foundation of Gadsden’s political support. They had the means to buy their own expensive uniforms and provisions while being able to take the time required to maintain a sharp and cohesive unit. The colony prepared for clashes with France, but the real conflict for South Carolina in this war came from a growing Cherokee problem in the backcountry.

Governor Lyttelton ignored the advice of government officials who warned him not to take military action; he took a volunteer force, including Gadsden and the artillery company, to impose a treaty that was shattered only weeks after returning to Charlestown. When violent interactions with settlers continued to grow, Lyttleton sent an urgent message north for assistance from the royal army and was promised thirteen hundred troops with a detachment of the Royal Artillery to be sent ahead to provide more extensive training to the Charlestown company. Gadsden quickly put a notice in the Gazette indicating that the “gentlemen of the artillery company under my command are desired to attend . . . every Wednesday and Saturday at eight o’ clock in the morning, precisely.”[7] His company was going to be well prepared to bring the Cherokee situation to a quick resolution.

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Lyttelton soon departed South Carolina and Lt. Gov. William Bull, who had served at different times in the assembly and royal council, became the acting governor. Gadsden was ready to engage the Cherokees aggressively. He supported legislation in the assembly to pay bounties for their scalps or enslavement, if they were sold to buyers in other colonies.[8] There was no equivocation in his feelings towards the Cherokees; he wanted them dead or removed. This attitude conflicted with a British army arriving in April 1760 that would not be in the colony long enough to bring about either of those goals and was not inclined to do so anyway.

Gadsden’s lifelong disdain for Indigenous tribes may have developed twenty years earlier with his apprenticeship to Thomas Lawrence, a merchant and member of the Pennsylvania Provincial Council. He helped broker a peace treaty with the Iroquois after they clashed with settlers intruding on their hunting grounds. Lawrence instructed the eighteen-year-old Gadsden to gather presents of hatchets, knives, and flints along with hundreds of pounds of ball and powder as presents to finalize the agreement.[9] Christopher may have held a dim view of rewarding those who threatened the lives of white men by handing them the means to achieve those transgressions.

With Lyttelton now out of the way Gadsden seized the opportunity to push through legislation for official recognition of the artillery company, and it now only needed the signature of Bull to become law. The acting governor took no action while still hoping for negotiations with the Cherokees. He was equally tepid about the proposed legislation for raising a provincial regiment to replace the British forces soon departing for an invasion of Canada.[10] This delay was more than Gadsden could tolerate and the frustrated assemblyman took pen in hand in the summer of 1760 to write an anonymous editorial for the South Carolina Gazette critical of the military leaving the colony and urging his fellow citizens to take action. He stated that “at such a time as this when . . . we seem likely to be destroyed because we dare not act like freemen . . . indignation makes a man break that silence which prudence would persuade him to keep.”[11]

Appealing to men of influence, he continued, “Since we must be deprived of the aid of his majesty’s troops, arm yourselves . . . get assistance from those who are equally concerned . . . for that is the hinge on which the policy of mankind turns.” He pointed out that because the Cherokees experienced destruction of their villages and sustained many casualties, “nothing but the most bloody war is to be expected.”[12] The following week Bull acknowledged the evolving situation and signed the legislation sanctioning the artillery company after Gadsden’s committee agreed to fund the ever-growing cost of military excursions to the backcountry.[13]

The situation in the west intensified and Bull requested another British force to engage the Cherokees long enough to produce a treaty and resume the long dormant deerskin trade with them. He was dealing with an assembly so pugnacious that it proposed an act to arm slaves for the conflict; the act was defeated by only a single vote.[14] The artillery company was now sanctioned but Bull had no intention of allowing this lethal and aggressive group into the backcountry as a unit. Needing officers for the provincial army, he dispersed its members to different companies in a newly formed regiment.[15]

Because the British would be directing overall operations, Bull temporarily appeased the firebrands by commissioning Gadsden’s political ally and close friend Thomas Middleton to be the colonel and leader of the South Carolina force. He balanced this choice with the conservative merchant Henry Laurens to be his junior officer. Lt. Col. James Grant of his majesty’s army was in charge and it was made clear that he would “hold himself entirely superior to any provincial commander.”[16] Grant was second-in-command of the previous expedition and was well aware that he would be battling not only the Cherokees but a troublesome assembly and a disgruntled Middleton before his mission concluded.

The combined force in April 1761 was almost twice as large as the previous campaign. After three years of violence the Cherokees were in a dire condition and essentially defeated before the army even arrived, reduced to occasionally attacking its supply train while looking for a way to end the violence that destroyed their homes and crops. Middleton strongly supported the aggressive military policy of Gadsden that “nothing but the severest chastisement will ever procure from that perfidious people a firm and honorable peace.”[17] Grant criticized those who held this view as promoting continued violence while avoiding the unpleasantness of actually fighting themselves.

Middleton was galled that a man of his prominence was serving under a British officer and he felt slighted that Grant did not share military plans with him or seek advice in dealing with the Cherokees. Grant turned instead to Laurens, who traded with the Cherokees and also sought a peaceful outcome with more benevolent terms. Middleton was unhappy with the situation and resigned from further military obligations. He returned to Charlestown, informing Grant by written communication that he found that he could no longer be serviceable.

Grant was outraged that a subordinate would desert his post in the middle of a campaign and Bull was equally surprised, even though he had earlier given Middleton written permission to leave his position if it became irksome or inconvenient to him.[18] Grant found this disconcerting but knew Bull would oversee the treaty process and had no choice but to accept his decision. Gadsden welcomed Middleton back to the assembly for his needed vote in a closely divided house, and for his collaboration in proposing articles to extract retribution from the Cherokees before peace could be declared.

Normally, a vote in the commons would take place after the final treaty was received from the governor and the royal council, but in this instance Bull had been advised by authorities in London to include the assembly more in the drafting of the language.[19] The commons showed displeasure with the preliminary document proposed and found it “precarious and less honarable than we had reason to expect.”[20] Gadsden wanted to emphasize just how much and he became a force behind two controversial articles that kept finding their way in and out of the treaty. He represented hardliners who felt that in dealing with the Cherokees “peace without executions would be useless and dishonorable.”[21] The other punitive article called for the Cherokees to surrender land.

Grant knew these conditions would only extend the violence just as an evolving military policy in the north was assuring Native tribes they would not be deprived of their territory.[22] He prevailed upon Bull to have them removed even though he was only authorized to receive preliminary terms for a treaty with the Cherokees, not negotiate them. Grant stayed in the backcountry to prevent any violent flareups while Laurens escorted the tribal leaders back to the Charlestown area to conclude negotiations with the royal council. Gadsden was furious that a British officer was injecting himself into a matter reserved solely for the authority of the assembly in clear violation of his duties.

As the talks began, Gadsden appeared to the meeting uninvited, insisting that the two offending articles remain in the treaty. He was not about to let a British officer dictate conditions without a challenge. If Grant could violate the norms of protocol, so could he. The Cherokees made it clear they would not put to death their own people and the British army would not enforce such measures, rendering Gadsden’s language a moot point. The situation was resolved when the execution clause was removed and boundaries redrawn by Bull gained enough of a consensus from both sides to reach an agreement.

Grant arrived in Charlestown the week before the treaty was signed in December when emotions still ran high. A number of assembly members insulted him in the streets of the city whenever their paths crossed. These encounters were tolerated as Grant had no desire to answer to his superiors for improper engagements with the elites of the colony. That changed in an instant.

While Gadsden was not able to get the punitive language he wanted in the treaty, he was not going to be silent about his displeasure. He again turned to the press to publicly upbraid the individual he felt was most responsible for the deletions. On the day the treaty was signed he released a supplement to the Gazette under the pseudonym Philopatrios, or “lover of homeland.” It stressed that the most recent military campaign had been a failure because Grant would not seek the advice of Middleton or advance the wishes of a majority of the assembly while treating the provincial regiment with scorn. Gadsden excoriated Grant for blatantly interfering with the terms of the treaty, and for lacking the stomach to fight the enemy.[23]

Gadsden was not only defending Middleton’s actions, but also giving voice to his complaints, and Grant was not about to let a man who deserted the military accuse him of being a coward. A meeting on the field of honor was arranged and on the morning of December 23, the commanding officer of his majesty’s military and a leading member of the assembly engaged in a bloodless duel.[24] This was a relief to Thomas Boone, the new royal governor who arrived in Charlestown the previous day. He was ready to implement policies of the crown on a divided assembly and did not need added tension.

Gadsden and the assembly welcomed Boone to South Carolina with an impressive salute and demonstration from the artillery company as the new governor prepared to take up his duties. Initial good feelings fell by the wayside as the governor let it be known that he wanted to address two major legislative priorities, the first being the passage of a new election law for the colony. The most recent attempt to amend the existing one had been disallowed by the crown and Boone dissolved the assembly, calling for the election of a new Commons House in January to address the issue.[25] Gadsden was still simmering about the results of the recent peace treaty, spending much of his time poring over committee papers and dispatches, and conversing with officers of the provincial army for a lengthy essay he was writing; he chose not to return to the assembly.

Governor Boone started the new session by requesting legislation to correct the current elections law but was haughtily dismissed by the committee Middleton led with the determination that “no consequence . . . or objection” had been found and it was not “necessary at this time to alter that law.”[26] Though irritated about being ignored, he was determined to work with the commons while enforcing the crown’s wishes. Boone encouraged legislation favorable to the economic recovery of merchants and planters from losses during the war by repairing roads, bridges, and ferries as well as building pilot boats for smaller ports in the colony.[27] Hoping this would create a more cooperative environment, Boone then proceeded to the second mandate, which was to revive a business relationship with the Cherokees through a trade agreement.

Boone supported London’s desire for a centralized deerskin trade under terms favorable to the crown while taking that administrative prerogative away from the assembly. The governor would choose a board of directors and an official agent representing the colony through a single outpost in the backcountry.[28] It is unlikely Gadsden found these conditions acceptable. Restrictions placed on traders instead of the Cherokees was intolerable and he would never agree to the governor having the power of appointing directors instead of the commons. The governor’s proposal was unpopular and it would be a tough agreement to pass, but a desire to resume trade and the growing weariness of the backcountry problem discouraged another drawn out fight in the assembly.

Gadsden monitored the progress of the trade proposal and released his second Philopatrios essay to coincide with a vote on the agreement he wanted defeated. His bound essay ran over eighty pages and was available for fifteen shillings to the public. It was targeted towards men of influence, whether in the assembly or in the growing number of mechanics and artisans who now followed Gadsden with keen interest. This essay enhanced his political influence with that group while making him well known to men in power on both sides of the Atlantic.

It started with a diatribe regarding Grant’s leadership in the previous two campaigns, citing instances of missed opportunities to kill or capture more Cherokees. It continued with a detailed defense of callous and derogatory remarks Grant made in his dispatches against the South Carolina provincial army. Another section of the essay may have been directed towards the recently formed Fellowship Society, a group comprised mainly of artisans and mechanics who came together to assist the city’s poor. Gadsden insinuated in his writing that Grant cheated the colony when he picked a sutler for the military who overcharged for supplies and profited from the campaign. This would not be well received by businessmen paying higher taxes to satisfy the debts from previous excursions.

Gadsden then went after the Cherokees’ lack of adherence to terms of the recently signed peace treaty as an example of why no more agreements should be made with them. One of the conditions especially concerned him: the release of prisoners.[29] He noted the Cherokees continued to hold hostages in clear violation of a flawed treaty that he felt was now a main cause of the Cherokees trading with Virginia. “If no peace had been ratified no traders could . . . have been sent amongst them.”[30] Even as unwelcome as this development was, it was still preferable to a royal governor deciding the colony’s internal economic matters.

Gadsden’s efforts to defeat the treaty were for naught and it narrowly passed two weeks later, but he was now invigorated and ready to return to a place of direct political influence. Several weeks later he won a special election for an open seat in the assembly. When it was time for him to take the oath of office, however, Boone found that a technical violation in the election process had occurred. It was a minor, but clear breach of the regulations, and was enough to give Boone a political cudgel to use against an impertinent member of the assembly who twice slandered a representative of the crown in the press and had become a nuisance to him.

Boone was critical of an assembly that did not adhere to the technicalities of a law it produced, even after he pointed out this deficiency upon arriving in South Carolina. To make his point clear, he refused to administer the oath of office to Gadsden. He then dissolved the assembly again and called for new elections. This move by the governor was a political windfall for Gadsden as it coalesced what had been a divided assembly into one that supported him philosophically on the issue, if not uniformly in its consequences.

New elections were held and Gadsden was again elected to the assembly. For a brief period, there were no brushes with the governor as neither side mentioned the obvious and inconclusive issue at hand. That lasted only until Gadsden got appointed to the committee on privileges and elections to prepare an official report on his previous treatment by the governor. It stated that “it is the undeniable fundamental and inherent right and privilege of the Commons House of Assembly . . . to examine and finally determine the elections of their own members.”[31] When no satisfactory response came from the governor, the assembly voted to suspend all business with him until he issued an apology for his abusive behavior.[32]

It was not a unanimous vote; some of the more conservative members, including Henry Laurens, voted against it. He backed Gadsden in his confrontation with the governor on principle but felt that ceasing all business was unwise. Laurens knew funds would be needed for the government to pay its current debts and obligations along with the infrastructure projects that were recently passed. A bitter back and forth between the two took place in the newspapers and permanently ended a friendship that had existed since childhood, with Laurens lamenting “this unhappy time when all respect for the authority of government . . . seems to be at an end.”[33]

Gadsden refuted this by declaring it was “absolutely necessary, and the only step that a free assembly . . . could freely take.”[34] He insisted that the rights of Englishmen did not stop at the country’s shores and since South Carolina had no representation in Parliament, it could naturally decide its own policies only through its House of Commons.[35] It was not a unique viewpoint; men like Samuel Adams of Boston were coming to similar conclusions regarding the growing crown intrusions. Boone and the assembly each presented their respective petitions to a Board of Trade puzzled as to why governmental business was not being conducted. After the standstill lingered with no sign of a compromise, Boone was recalled to England in May 1764, never to return to South Carolina. Until a new royal appointee was named, Bull would resume his previous duties as acting governor with no more attempts by the crown to direct the way elections were conducted.[36]

The war with France finally ended and Great Britain began looking for ways to raise funds to administer new obligations in the American colonies. Parliament passed the Revenue Act of 1764, commonly known as the Sugar Act. This tax was defended by the prime minister who stated that England had “the power, authority, and sovereignty of Parliament over every part of the British dominion to raise and collect any tax that should appear . . . right and just to be established.”[37] Added taxes were certainly not welcomed, and when a currency act was passed soon after prohibiting the printing of new money, planters and merchants became caught in a fiscal vice due to the restrictive monetary policies. The courts were filled with cases attempting to recoup debts and some merchants were forced into creating partnerships amongst themselves just to stay in business.

When word was received that England was considering a stamp act taxing virtually all aspects of transacting business, Gadsden took steps to mobilize the mechanics and planters most affected. He was now the clear influencer of those groups and they would soon become the core of the colony’s Sons of Liberty. Gadsden wanted this burgeoning political force to fully understand the historical allusions he was making in his writings regarding the threats to their liberty. Because he was also a member of the elite Charlestown Library Society, he requested money to purchase more of the classics for its collection so he could lend them out to inquiring friends, a request initially denied by the society but later granted for a smaller amount.[38]

The Stamp Act was passed in London and set to take effect in the fall of 1765. The legislatures of the American colonies were quite concerned, with the Massachusetts Assembly initiating a collective discussion by sending a circular letter to the other colonies proposing a congress that would seek relief through a petition to Parliament. South Carolina responded positively with Gadsden making sure he was one of the representatives.

Gadsden was eager to interact with other illustrious and like-minded men who would contribute to the eventual revolution such as John Dickinson, James Otis, and Caesar Rodney, who voiced collective opposition to the economic policies of the crown. Many of these men were less radical than he and reserved in their reactions. Gadsden put aside his large ego and quick temper to contribute to a gathering he firmly believed was the first serious contemplation of the American colonies becoming independent from England.[39] Among the proposals contemplated at the congress was a Declaration of Rights and Grievances with a petition to be sent to the king and Parliament pointing out language in their respective colonial charters to uphold their positions of self-government and the right to tax themselves.

Gadsden disagreed with treating Parliament as an entity to be petitioned as he viewed it to be merely equal to the colonial assemblies and he deplored the tactic of relying on colonial charters to prove their point:

A confirmation of our essential and common rights as Englishmen may be pleaded from charters safely enough; but any further dependence on them may be fatal. We should stand upon the broad and common ground of those natural rights that we all feel and know as men, and as descendants of Englishmen. I wish the charters may not ensnare us at last by drawing different colonies to act differently in this great cause. Whenever that is the case, all will be over for the whole. There ought to be no New England man, no New-Yorker, known on the continent, but all of us Americans.[40]

Gadsden’s participation in the Stamp Act Congress was something he was very proud of and he mentioned it to others frequently in his later years. The contacts and friendships he developed there encouraged frequent correspondence between the colonies as events got progressively more heated in the coming years. Roughly five months after this congress, Parliament repealed the legislation requiring stamps but continued passing legislation that was rejected by the colonies. Gadsden became a prime speaker when meetings were held at the “Liberty Tree” in Charlestown to discuss these intolerable laws and was described by William Bull as one of the “tribunes of the people.”[41] Gadsden gave credit to the mechanics themselves as “that useful body of citizens, whose worth no man in the city, perhaps, is better acquainted with than myself.” He also mentioned that “had it not been for their assistance, we should have made a very poor figure indeed.”

When the revolution finally came, Gadsden became a general in South Carolina and was captured when Charlestown fell to the British in 1780. After spending some time as a paroled prisoner in the city, he and others were taken from their homes and shipped to Florida where they were offered a new, but more restrictive parole. True to his nature, Gadsden refused to sign by indicating “With men who have once deceived me, I can enter into no new contract.” This rejection would cost him eleven months of solitary confinement in a prison dungeon before he was released.[42]

As the revolution wound down, Gadsden was elected governor for his past services but declined to serve due to bad health from his recent incarceration. He would later attend his state’s ratifying convention for the United States Constitution and voted affirmatively for its passage. He was one of his state’s electors and proudly cast his vote for George Washington to be president. He died at the age of eighty-one after falling in an uncovered ditch after he had been advised to walk around it. That was not his way, he forged his own path regardless of the obstacles.

Christopher Gadsden was a tireless advocate for the enforcement of Englishmen’s rights in the American colonies. He focused on the promise of self determination that was not predicated on any laws created in England. He was too radical for the conservatives in South Carolina and was eventually looked upon as too conservative by the Sons of Liberty when he declined to endorse a loyalty oath the group supported.[43] Long before independence was even a consideration he was a consistent and useful agitator, educating citizens of their heritage and liberties while simultaneously mobilizing them into action to preserve those rights.

[1] Richard Walsh, “Christopher Gadsden: Radical or Conservative Revolutionary?” South Carolina Historical Magazine 63, no. 4 (October 1962): 195.

[2] Frederick A. Porcher, A Memoir of Gen. Christopher Gadsden, Read before the South Carolina Historical Society (Charleston: Printed by the Journal of Commerce Job Office for the South Carolina Historical Society, 1878), 4.

[3] William Henry Drayton, The Letters of Freeman, Etc.: Essays on the Nonimportation Movement in South Carolina, edited by Robert M. Weir (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1977), xiv.

[4] E. Stanly Godbold, Jr. and Robert H. Woody, Christopher Gadsden and the American Revolution (Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 1982), 18.

[5] Ibid., 12.

[6] Jack P. Greene, “The South Carolina Quartering Dispute,” South Carolina Historical Magazine 60, no. 4 (October 1959): 203.

[7] South Carolina Gazette, February 16, 1760.

[8] Terry W. Lipscomb, ed., The Journal of the Commons House of Assembly: October 6, 1757–January 24, 1761 (Columbia: South Carolina Department of Archives and History, 1996), 457–58.

[9] The Treaty Held with the Indians of the Six Nations at Philadelphia, in July 1742 (Philadelphia: B. Franklin, 1743), 12.

[10] Jonathan Mercantini, Who Shall Rule at Home?: The Evolution of South Carolina Political Culture, 1748–1776 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2007), 153, 154.

[11] South Carolina Gazette, July 26, 1760.

[12] South Carolina Gazette, July 26, 1760.

[13] Lipscomb, Journal of the Commons, 741.

[14] Daniel J. Tortora, Carolina in Crisis: Cherokees, Colonists, and Slaves in the American Southeast (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2015), 137.

[15] “Officers of the South Carolina Regiment in the Cherokee War, 1760–61,” South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine 3, no. 4 (October 1902): 203 (John Moultrie), 204 (James Coachman), 205 (Francis Marion).

[16] Alastair Macpherson Grant, General James Grant of Ballindalloch, 1720–1806; Being an Account of His Long Services in Flanders, America, and the West Indies (London: Published privately, 1930), 66.

[17] Mercantini, Who Shall Rule at Home?, 154.

[18] Ibid., 164.

[19] Ibid., 160.

[20] Kinloch Bull, Jr., The Oligarchs in Colonial and Revolutionary Charleston: Lieutenant Governor William Bull II and His Family (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1991), 97.

[21] John Oliphant, Peace and War on the Anglo-Cherokee Frontier, 1756–63 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001), 177.

[22] Jack M. Sosin, Whitehall and the Wilderness: The Middle West in British Colonial Policy, 1760–1775 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1961), 32.

[23] Daniel J. McDonough, Christopher Gadsden and Henry Laurens: The Parallel Lives of Two American Patriots (London: Associated University Presses, 2000), 40, 41.

[24] Paul David Nelson, General James Grant: Scottish Soldier and Royal Governor of East Florida (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1993), 40.

[25] Mercantini, Who Shall Rule at Home?, 167.

[26] Jack P. Greene, “The Gadsden Election and the Revolutionary Movement in South Carolina,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 46, no. 3 (December 1959): 490.

[27] Thomas Cooper, ed., The Statutes at Large of South Carolina, Vol. 4: Containing the Acts from 1752, Exclusive, to 1786, Inclusive (Columbia: A. S. Johnston, 1838), 157, 166, 168.

[28] William L. McDowell, Jr., Documents Relating to Indian Affairs: 1754–1765 (Columbia: South Carolina Department of Archives and History, 1992), 557.

[29] Christopher Gadsden, Some Observations on the Two Campaigns against the Cherokee Indians, in 1760 and 1761. In a Second Letter from Philopatrios. [Two Lines of Quotations]. (Charlestown: Peter Timothy, 1762; Gale ECCO Print Edition), 73.

[30] Ibid., 75.

[31] McDonough, Christopher Gadsden and Henry Laurens, 50–51.

[32] Greene, “The Gadsden Election,” 479.

[33] Godbold and Woody, Christopher Gadsden, 34.

[34] McDonough, Christopher Gadsden and Henry Laurens, 53–54.

[35] Ibid., 55.

[36] Greene, “Gadsden Election,” 490.

[37] Mercantini, Who Shall Rule?, 189.

[38] Godbold and Woody, Christopher Gadsden, 48–49.

[39] Ibid., 50.

[40] Richard Walsh, ed., The Writings of Christopher Gadsden: 1746–1805 (Columbia: The University of South Carolina Press, 1966), xx, xxi.

[41] Walsh, “Christopher Gadsden,” xxi.

[42] McDonough, Christopher Gadsden and Henry Laurens, 249.

[43] Walsh, “Christopher Gadsden,” 200.