How the States Got Their Shapes Too_ The People Behind the Borderlines - Mark Stein [98]
—JAMES GADSDEN, PRESIDENT, SOUTH CAROLINA RAILROAD COMPANY
The life of James Gadsden reveals that there is nothing new about powerful lobbyists winning government funds to support their special interests. Nor is there anything new about individuals leaving high-level government jobs for corporate positions from which they operate as influential lobbyists. Gadsden was an adjutant general in the U.S. Army who left government service and became a railroad president—a railroad president later appointed by President Franklin Pierce to purchase land from Mexico for the purpose of building a railroad. The Gadsden Purchase, which the United States acquired in 1853, also resolved a lingering boundary dispute between the two countries. It now forms the southern end of Arizona and southwestern New Mexico.
James Gadsden was born in 1788 to a distinguished South Carolina family. His grandfather had been a delegate to the Continental Congress and, later, a brigadier general in the war itself. After graduating from Yale and serving in the military, Gadsden became the president of the South Carolina Canal and Rail Road Company. In that capacity, he saw opportunities to connect the South via rail to gold-rich California and ports on the Pacific. A firm believer in slavery, he also saw in the newly acquired western lands the opportunity—indeed, the necessity—to secure its continued legality through additional congressional votes from new slave states. Toward that end, Gadsden joined an effort under way to divide California in two, with slavery permitted in the southern half. To encourage the legislature via the prospect of bringing development to sparsely populated (mostly by Mexican Americans) Southern California, he sent a petition in 1852 bearing 1,200 signatures of people seeking permission to establish a district that would be farmed by “African Domestics.”1 Slavery was a hotly contested issue in California. Gadsden’s plan aroused debate but went nowhere.
James Gadsden (1788-1858) (photo credit 28.1)
The Gadsden Purchase
When President Franklin Pierce decided the United States should seek to purchase land from Mexico, Gadsden was ideally situated for the appointment—just as appointments today often go to corporate executives whose resumes include previous government positions and powerful politicians as references.
The reason the southern railroads said they needed this Mexican land was that it contained mountain passes that did not exist elsewhere in the region. One such pass, in the area still under dispute, was so important that the town where it was situated had been named after it: El Paso.
Still, the purchase of land for the purpose of building a railroad triggered a three-way clash of political power, ideals, and pork. Abolitionists believed the government should not actively promote the economy of the slave-holding South. Southerners responded with outrage, though others in the South who were troubled by slavery argued that promoting industry in the region would help build an economy that need not depend on slavery to be financially viable.
Ideals and pork also came into conflict. Southerners’ commitment to states’ rights had previously led them to oppose federal expenditures for road and bridge construction. Such projects, they believed, were the responsibility of the states. Once the federal government entered in, they argued, it would open the door to ever-increasing centralization of power. Indeed, history has proven them right.
But in this instance most leaders left their ideals on the campaign trail and reached for the pork. Railroads, after all, were beginning to shift the flow of commerce through the north, rather than along the waterways leading to the Mississippi River. Moreover, even if the Southern states could