On December 30, 1853, the United States minister to Mexico, James Gadsden, signed a treaty acquiring roughly 40,000 square miles of Mexican desert territory for the United States for a sum of $15 million. It was ostensibly purchased to provide a southerly route for a transcontinental railroad, which is why the sale was facilitated by Gadsden, a southern railroad executive who had been advocating a transcontinental railroad between South Carolina and California for years. But in the charged political environment of the 1850’s, when the difference between slave and free territory was the main topic of debate in Congress, the addition of new lands to the United States became about everything aside from just a railroad corridor.
While a lot was going on in America in the 1840’s and 50’s, political discourse during this time was couched almost entirely in the north-south and slave versus free states conflict. James Gadsden, a railroad man based out of South Carolina, saw the inevitable creation of a transcontinental railroad, but feared that it would take a northerly route and cut out commerce from the southern states. When a conference was organized in St. Louis to discuss the creation of this railroad line, Gadsden organized another competing conference in Memphis to determine the optimal course for a southerly railroad route. It would begin in Charleston, the main port city of Gadsden’s home state, and travel across the south and eventually carry wares to and from the new state of California.
The terrain of the south proved a major impediment to the eventual southern railway. The ideal route would travel south of the terminus of the Rocky Mountains in New Mexico, terrain too difficult and costly to build rail over. But this was complicated as the level ground was currently controlled by Mexico following the Treaty of Guadeloupe Hidalgo that concluded the Mexican-American War. It would take a major land purchase by the United States to build the railway, but Gadsden knew any new territory coming into the union would incite debate in Congress over whether it would be free or slave territory. Ultimately, with some tweaking (reducing the size and subsequently the price tag of the purchase), the treaty Gadsden signed with Mexican President Santa Anna would pass the required two-thirds majority of Congress, who also largely ignored the issue of slavery in the new land.
While Gadsden was able to make the land purchase to enable his railway, he ultimately wouldn’t be able to build it. With the land American and the route clear, Congress was unable to come to a resolution on the issue of funding. It was clear that the railroad Gadsden wanted to build was to support and spread the slave economy of the south, something increasingly controversial in the years preceding the Civil War. There would eventually be a transcontinental railroad through the south, but it didn’t come until the 1880’s - well after Gadsden’s death - and it also bypassed much of the Gadsden purchase due to the need to service particular cities. While Gadsden’s purchase didn’t work out to his ends, it did eventually lead to a southern railroad, and also served to solidify a number of large loose ends in the Treaty of Guadeloupe Hidalgo that could have incited further conflict between the neighboring nations. The most lasting contribution Gadsden made was to change, even just by a few hundred miles in the southwest corner, the shape of America, and for that he will forever be remembered.