year was commissioned a brigadier-general and was taken into the Continental service; but on account of a dispute arising out of a conflict between state and Federal authority resigned his command in 1777. He was lieutenant-governor of his state in 1780, when Charleston was surrendered to the British. For about three months following this event he was held as a prisoner on parole within the limits of Charleston; then, because of his influence in deterring others from exchanging their paroles for the privileges of British subjects, he was seized, taken to St Augustine, Florida, and there, because he would not give another parole to those who had violated the former agreement affecting him, he was confined for forty-two weeks in a dungeon. In 1782 Gadsden was again elected a member of his state legislature; he was also elected governor, but declined to serve on the ground that he was too old and infirm; in 1788 he was a member of the convention which ratified for South Carolina the Federal constitution; and in 1790 he was a member of the convention which framed the new state constitution. He died in Charleston on the 28th of August 1805. From the time that Governor Thomas Boone, in 1762, pronounced his election to the legislature improper, and dissolved the House in consequence, Gadsden was hostile to the British administration. He was an ardent leader of the opposition to the Stamp Act, advocating even then a separation of the colonies from the mother country; and in the Continental Congress of 1774 he discussed the situation on the basis of inalienable rights and liberties, and urged an immediate attack on General Thomas Gage, that he might be defeated before receiving reinforcements.
GADSDEN, JAMES (1788–1858), American soldier and diplomat,
was born at Charleston, S.C., on the 15th of May 1788, the
grandson of Christopher Gadsden. He graduated at Yale in 1806,
became a merchant in his native city, and in the war of 1812
served in the regular U.S. Army as a lieutenant of engineers.
In 1818 he served against the Seminoles, with the rank of captain,
as aide on the staff of Gen. Andrew Jackson. In October 1820
he became inspector-general of the Southern Division, with the
rank of colonel, and as such assisted in the occupation and the
establishment of posts in Florida after its acquisition. From
August 1821 to March 1822 he was adjutant-general, but, his
appointment not being confirmed by the Senate, he left the army
and became a planter in Florida. He served in the Territorial
legislature, and as Federal commissioner superintended in 1823
the removal of the Seminole Indians to South Florida. In 1832
he negotiated with the Seminoles a treaty which provided for their
removal within three years to lands in what is now the state of
Oklahoma; but the Seminoles refused to move, hostilities again
broke out, and in the second Seminole War Gadsden was
quartermaster-general of the Florida Volunteers from February
to April 1836. Returning to South Carolina he became a rice
planter, and was president of the South Carolina railway.
In 1853 President Franklin Pierce appointed him minister to
Mexico, with which country he negotiated the so-called “Gadsden treaty”
(signed the 30th of December 1853), which gave to the
United States freedom of transit for mails, merchandise and
troops across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, and provided for a
readjustment of the boundary established by the treaty of
Guadalupe Hidalgo, the United States acquiring 45,535 sq. m.
of land, since known as the “Gadsden Purchase,” in what is
now New Mexico and Arizona. In addition, Article XI. of the
treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which bound the United States
to prevent incursions of Indians from the United States into
Mexico, and to restore Mexican prisoners captured by such
Indians, was abrogated, and for these considerations the United
States paid to Mexico the sum of $10,000,000. Ratifications of
the treaty, slightly modified by the Senate, were exchanged on the
30th of June 1854; before this, however, Gadsden had retired
from his post. The boundary line between Mexico and the
“Gadsden Purchase” was marked by joint commissions
appointed in 1855 and 1891, the second commission publishing its
report in 1899. Gadsden died at Charleston, South Carolina, on
the 25th of December 1858.
An elder brother, Christopher Edwards Gadsden (1785–1852), was Protestant Episcopal bishop of South Carolina in 1839–1852.
GADWALL, a word of obscure origin,[1] the common English
name of the duck, called by Linnaeus Anas strepera, but considered
by many modern ornithologists to require removal from
the genus Anas to that of Chaulelasmus or Ctenorhynchus, of
either of which it is almost the sole species. Its geographical
distribution is almost identical with that of the common wild duck
or mallard (see Duck), since it is found over the greater part of
the northern hemisphere; but, save in India, where it is one of
the most abundant species of duck during the cold weather, it is
hardly anywhere so numerous, and both in the eastern parts of
the United States and in the British Islands it is rather rare than
otherwise. Its habits also, so far as they have been observed,
greatly resemble those of the wild duck; but its appearance
on the water is very different, its small head, flat back, elongated
form and elevated stern rendering it recognizable by the fowler
even at such a distance as hinders him from seeing its very
distinct plumage. In coloration the two sexes appear almost
equally sombre; but on closer inspection the drake exhibits a
pencilled grey coloration and upper wing-coverts of a deep
chestnut, which are almost wanting in his soberly clad partner.
She closely resembles the female of the mallard in colour, but has,
like her own male, some of the secondary quills of a pure white,
presenting a patch of that colour which forms one of the most
readily perceived distinctive characters of the species. The
gadwall is a bird of some interest in England, since it is one of the
few that have been induced, by the protection afforded them in
certain localities, to resume the indigenous position they once
filled, but had, through the draining and reclaiming of marshy
lands, long since abandoned. In regard to the present species,
this fact was due to the efforts of Andrew Fountaine, on whose
property, in West Norfolk and its immediate neighbourhood,
the gadwall, from 1850, annually bred in increasing numbers.
It has been always esteemed one of the best of wild fowl for the
table. (A. N.)
GAEKWAR, or Guicowar, the family name of the Mahratta
rulers of Baroda (q.v.) in western India, which has been converted
by the English into a dynastic title. It is derived from the
vernacular word for the cow, but it is a mistake to suppose that
the family are of the cowherd caste; they belong to the upper class
of Mahrattas proper, sometimes claiming a Rajput origin. The
dynasty was founded by a succession of three warriors, Damaji I.,
Pilaji and Damaji II., who established Mahratta supremacy
throughout Gujarat during the first half of the 18th century. The
present style of the ruler is Maharaja Gaekwar of Baroda.
GAETA (anc. Caietae Portus), a seaport and episcopal see of
Campania, Italy, in the province of Caserta, from which it is
53 m. W.N.W. by rail via Sparanise. Pop. (1901) 5528. It
occupies a lower projecting point of the promontory which forms
the S.W. extremity of the Bay of Gaeta. The tomb of Munatius
Plancus, on the summit of the promontory (see Caietae Portus), is now a naval signal station, and lies in the centre of the extensive earthworks of the modern fortifications. The harbour is
well sheltered except on the E., but has little commercial importance,
being mainly a naval station. To the N.W. is the
suburb of Elena (formerly Borgo di Gaeta). Pop. (1901) 10,369.
Above the town is a castle erected by the Angevin kings, and
strengthened at various periods. The cathedral of St Erasmus
(S. Elmo), consecrated in 1106, has a fine campanile begun in
- ↑ The New English Dictionary has nothing to say. Webster gives the etymology gad well = go about well. Dr R. G. Latham suggested that it was taken from the syllables quedul, of the Lat. querquedula, a teal. The spelling “gadwall” seems to be first found in Willughby in 1676, and has been generally adopted by later writers; but Merrett, in 1667, has “gaddel” (Pinax rerum naturalium Britannicarum, p. 180), saying that it was so called by bird-dealers. The synonym “gray,” given by Willughby and Ray, is doubtless derived from the general colour of the species, and has its analogue in the Icelandic Gráönd, applied almost indifferently, or with some distinguishing epithet, to the female of any of the freshwater ducks, and especially to both sexes of the present, in which, as stated in the text, there is comparatively little conspicuous difference of plumage in drake and duck.
