James Gadsden

US soldier, businessman, and diplomat, born in Charleston, South Carolina, USA. The grandson of Christopher Gadsden, he studied at Yale (1806), and served in the War of 1812 and during conflicts with the Seminole Indians. He was president of the Louisville, Cincinnati, and Charleston Railroad (1840–50) (renamed the South Carolina Railroad in 1842) and was a major proponent of a southern route from the E USA to the Pacific. While US ambassador to Mexico (1853–6), he was authorized to purchase a huge section of N Mexico in order to provide for a direct southern route. He succeeded in buying a smaller tract of land for $10 million, known as the Gadsden Purchase (1853).

Namesake of the Gadsden Purchase, in which the United States purchased from Mexico the land that became the southern portion of Arizona and New Mexico.

He was born in 1788 in Charleston, South Carolina, the grandson of American Revolutionary patriot Christopher Gadsden. In 1853, he was appointed U.S. minister to Mexico to negotiate the Gadsden Treaty which led to the Gadsden Purchase by the United States from Mexico of about 30,000 square miles in the southern section of what is now Arizona and southwestern New Mexico.

During the War of 1812, Gadsden served in the Army under General Andrew Jackson, and was responsible for the construction of Fort Gadsden in Florida.