Christopher Gadsden (1724-1805) was an early radical voice in Charleston for colonial union against the authority of Parliament. Born in Charleston, by 1761 he had amassed a considerable fortune in trade. In 1757, he entered the Assembly, serving there for 30 years. A leader in the protest against the Stamp Act in 1765, he was one of four South Carolinians elected to the First Continental Congress in 1774. He served as a Brigadier General in the Continental Army, and, after the war, opposed confiscation of Loyalist property. He supported the ratification of the Constitution, and sat in the state Constitutional Convention of 1790. This miniature was painted by Charles Fraser in 1819, after Gadsden's death.
Courtesy of the Gibbes Museum of Art/Carolina Art Association.
