History Files: 1754-1781
Christopher Gadsden and the “Don’t Tread On Me” Flag
Third Treatise to End Sovereign Immunity
by Sondra Wilson. Updated Aug. 2, 2025.

This article is continued from Second Treatise to End Sovereign Immunity: John Locke and the First U.S. Flag.

Preface: Contradiction and Construction: The Founders’ Complicity in Slavery

As architects of a nation predicated on liberty, the founding generation was ensnared in contradictions that undermined their ideals. From philosophical forebears like John Locke to American revolutionaries such as Jefferson, Gadsden, Hamilton, and Franklin, the blueprint for democracy was drafted alongside tacit — and often active — support of human bondage.

John Locke’s Moral Paradox

Though John Locke championed natural rights — life, liberty, and property — and condemned slavery as a “continued state of war” in his Second Treatise of Government (1690/1988), his real-world entanglements betray a more ambivalent legacy. Locke helped draft the Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina, which explicitly protected hereditary slavery (Laslett, 1988). He also invested in the Royal African Company, profiting from the transatlantic slave trade (Benoist, 2022). Locke distinguished between political and wartime slavery, evading direct condemnation of racial slavery — a silence that Enlightenment ideology never fully resolved.

Jefferson: Liberty’s Contradiction

Thomas Jefferson’s philosophical depth and legal precision were evident in his draft of the Declaration of Independence. He famously inserted a 168-word anti-slavery clause, accusing King George III of “cruel war against human nature” and perpetuating a market “where Men should be bought and sold” (Jefferson, 1776/1853). Yet this clause was removed due to pressure from Southern delegates and Northern merchants invested in the slave economy (Williams, 2020; BlackPast, 2009).

Jefferson enslaved over 600 people, including his own children with Sally Hemings, and offered only theoretical support for gradual emancipation (Monticello, 2025). He signed the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves in 1807, but opposed immediate abolition, fearing destabilization and re-enslavement — concerns echoed in Franklin’s calls for education and employment as pillars of lasting freedom (Franklin, 1789; VCU Social Welfare History Project, 2025).

Gadsden: Civil Law Champion, Silent Partner

Christopher Gadsden, a stalwart advocate of constitutional liberty and civil law reform, operated within South Carolina’s slaveholding elite. Though he fought British tyranny and supported the creation of non-criminal legal frameworks, he did not publicly denounce slavery. His silence illustrates how legal reform and racial justice were often divorced in revolutionary ideology (AllThingsLiberty, 2015).

Hamilton: Strategic Foe or Passive Accomplice?

Alexander Hamilton espoused anti-slavery ideals, co-founded the New York Manumission Society, and refused to return fugitive slaves (Varsity Tutors, 2025). However, archival records reveal his complicity: he facilitated slave transactions for his in-laws and purchased enslaved labor for his household (Smithsonian Magazine, 2020). Hamilton’s priority was institutional sovereignty — building financial infrastructure that severed colonial legal dependence. His push for a national bank was essential to disentangling the republic from British maritime law, including Vice-Admiralty Courts that upheld property rights over human rights (Louis Pressbooks, 2025; Federal Bar Association, 2025).

Franklin: From Advertiser to Abolitionist

Benjamin Franklin’s evolution was dramatic. Initially profiting from slave advertisements in the Pennsylvania Gazette, he later presided over the Pennsylvania Abolition Society and petitioned Congress to confront slavery’s moral stain (Franklin, 1790; National Archives, 2025). Franklin emphasized the need for practical support — education, moral instruction, and employment — to ensure freedom was sustainable (Franklin Historical Society, 2025).

Navigating a Ship of Contradictions

The founding generation did not operate as moral absolutes, but rather steered a vessel built on compromise and contradiction. Their legacies invite neither dismissal nor idolatry — but interrogation. Liberty was proclaimed while slavery persisted. Philosophical brilliance was wielded to design systems of law and finance, even as those systems were entangled with the preservation of human subjugation. The Declaration of Independence, stripped of its anti-slavery clause, became both a beacon and a blind spot — a document radiant with principle and darkened by omission. We cannot look to any one founder for unblemished truth; but we can examine their flaws to refine our present frameworks of equity and justice.

 

§11 Christopher Gadsden and the Forgotten Flag of Civil Resistance

The Gadsden Flag, often unfurled today as a statement of independence, is widely misunderstood. Its legacy isn’t just patriotic — it is juridical, born of a fierce defense of civil law, constitutional accountability, and moral resistance to the imperial criminal codes that sought to override local autonomy.

Above image by Vikrum utilized for First Amendment purposes in accordance with the U.S. Copyright Office’s Fair Use Policy and the Fair Use Doctrine (Vikrum 2025).

Origins of the Rattlesnake Symbol

The rattlesnake motif first appeared in Benjamin Franklin’s 1754 political cartoon Join, or Die, published in The Pennsylvania Gazette. It depicted a segmented snake representing the fragmented colonies during the French and Indian War (Kiger, 2025). 

Above image from The Library of Congress utilized for First Amendment purposes in accordance with the U.S. Copyright Office’s Fair Use Policy and the Fair Use Doctrine (Kiger, Patrick J. 2025).

The rattlesnake, popularized by Benjamin Franklin, was more than a symbol — it was a metaphor for civil vigilance and moral restraint. In his pseudonymous letter as An American Guesser, published in the Pennsylvania Journal on December 27, 1775, Franklin wrote:In a 1775 letter signed “An American Guesser,” Franklin wrote…

“I recollected that [the rattlesnake’s] eye excelled in brightness, that of any other animal, and that she has no eye-lids. She may therefore be esteemed an emblem of vigilance. She never begins an attack, nor, when once engaged, ever surrenders: She is therefore an emblem of magnanimity and true courage. As if anxious to prevent all pretensions of quarreling with her, the weapons with which nature has furnished her, she conceals in the roof of her mouth, so that, to those who are unacquainted with her, she appears to be a most defenseless animal; and even when those weapons are shown and extended for her defense, they appear weak and contemptible; but their wounds however small, are decisive and fatal. Conscious of this, she never wounds ’till she has generously given notice, even to her enemy, and cautioned him against the danger of treading on her,” — Franklin, Great Seal Essay (Franklin, 1775).

This ethos mirrored the civil law system that American patriots sought to uphold — a system based on consent, equity, and local governance. In contrast, British officers enforced criminal law, often through Vice-Admiralty Courts and military tribunals (Federal Bar Association, 2025).

Christopher Gadsden’s Defiance

Decades later, the image was resurrected by Christopher Gadsden as an assertion of unified civil authority against British criminal enforcement.

But Gadsden was not merely a designer — he was a civil officer, constitutional architect, and prisoner of conscience. On August 27, 1780, British General Charles Cornwallis arrested Gadsden and 20 other American officers not for bearing arms, but for continuing to exercise civil authority under local law. Their detainment marked a decisive moment in the legal and ideological divide between civil law, which sought to protect people’s rights, and criminal law, which under British imperial rule was used as an instrument of suppression.

Gadsden and his fellow civil officers were deported to St. Augustine, Florida, where Governor Patrick Tonyn offered them “freedom of the town” in exchange for surrendering their status. Most accepted. Gadsden refused, declaring he could not give his word to a false system. He was held in solitary confinement at the Castillo de San Marcos — a fortress with stone walls as rigid as the British legal orthodoxy he defied (National Park Service, 2025).

Civil vs. Criminal Law in Revolutionary America: Gadsden’s Legal Resistance

Franklin’s rattlesnake cartoon first appeared, Gadsden resurrected the image as a symbol of unified civil authority defying British criminal enforcement.

On August 27, 1780, British General Charles Cornwallis arrested Gadsden and 20 other American officers — not for bearing arms, but for continuing to exercise civil authority under local law. Their detainment crystallized the legal and ideological divide between civil law, which aimed to protect individual rights, and imperial criminal law, which suppressed dissent and punished resistance (Federal Bar Association, 2025).

Deported to St. Augustine, Florida, the officers were offered “freedom of the town” in exchange for surrendering their legal status. Most accepted. Gadsden refused, declaring he could not give his word to a false system. He was confined for 42 weeks in solitary at the Castillo de San Marcos — a stone fortress as unyielding as the British legal orthodoxy he rejected (National Park Service, 2025; American History Central, 2025).

His defiance wasn’t symbolic — it was structural. Gadsden understood that law must be built from the bottom up. After his release in 1781, he helped restore South Carolina’s civilian courts and demanded that ratification of the U.S. Constitution include a Bill of Rights, enshrining protections like speech, assembly, and due process (Gadsden House, 2018). As he declared:

“We hold our rights neither from [the House of Commons] nor from the Lords.” — Gadsden House Archives (2018)

Gadsden’s legacy lives on in three essential dimensions:

• Civil Law Restoration: Reaffirming that legal authority must serve the people, not the state.
• Constitutional Safeguards: Anchoring national liberty in local justice and personal rights.
• Legal Symbolism: The coiled rattlesnake warns before striking — a metaphor for laws that caution power before holding it accountable.

The Gadsden Flag is more than colonial iconography — it is a constitutional declaration. It embodies resistance to unjust systems and the struggle for lawful accountability. Today, its symbolism remains deeply relevant as communities challenge violations of civil rights statutes like the Iowa Civil Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It stands as a call to protect vulnerable populations from systemic abuse, extortion, and legal manipulation.

 

Sidebar: The Myth of “British Accreditation Registrar”

A common misconception in alternative legal discourse suggests that “BAR” stands for British Accreditation Registrar. Despite its persistence online, especially within sovereign citizen and anti-establishment circles, this claim lacks historical or institutional support.

• • In established legal tradition, “bar” refers to the physical railing in courtrooms. Being “called to the bar” means a lawyer has earned the right to practice law past that dividing line.
  • No credible evidence exists that any legal licensing body—British or American—was historically called the “British Accreditation Registrar.”
  • While such a registry does exist today, it certifies technical bodies (e.g., ISO auditors), not lawyers.
  • The acronym “BAR” is not used officially by any recognized legal association in this context.

This myth often serves as a symbolic critique of perceived elitism or imperial residue in legal institutions. While compelling rhetorically, it does not reflect historical reality.

 

§12 Locke’s Legacy, Jefferson’s Vision, and Hamilton’s Institutional Prowess

John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government (1690) was the intellectual backbone of the Declaration of Independence. His articulation of natural rights — life, liberty, and property — and the right to revolution against unjust governments was echoed almost verbatim in Jefferson’s draft. Scholars have noted that Jefferson’s phrasing, particularly “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” was a direct adaptation of Locke’s triad (Goforth Swanzy, 2019; Laslett, 1988).

Locke’s influence extended beyond Jefferson. He was the most cited political philosopher among American revolutionaries, appearing in the writings of Adams, Franklin, and Madison. Jefferson himself described the Declaration not as original thought, but as “an expression of the American mind” (Jefferson, 1825, as cited in Bill of Rights Institute, 2025).

Yet Jefferson’s draft also contained a 168-word condemnation of slavery — a passage that blamed King George III for perpetuating the transatlantic slave trade and described it as “piratical warfare” and an “assemblage of horrors” (Jefferson, 1776/1853):

“He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian King of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where Men should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or restrain this execrable commerce. And that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people on whom he has obtruded them: thus paying off former crimes committed against the Liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.“

This section was removed by Congress, largely due to pressure from Southern delegates and Northern merchants invested in the slave economy (Williams, 2020; BlackPast, 2009).

Jefferson’s personal contradictions were stark. Though he owned over 600 enslaved people, he lived in Virginia — the epicenter of the domestic slave trade. Between 1790 and 1860, more than one million enslaved people were sold from the Upper South to the Deep South, with Richmond serving as the largest hub (Zaborney, 2025). Slaves were essentially dumped on U.S. shores in concentrated waves. Had Jefferson freed his slaves, they likely would have been re-enslaved or trafficked anew — a reality Benjamin Franklin acknowledged when he argued that education and employment were essential to sustaining their freedom (Franklin, 1789; Franklin Historical Society, 2025). Due to the 

Franklin, once a slaveholder himself, became a vocal abolitionist. As president of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, he petitioned Congress to end slavery and insisted that freed people needed “education, moral instruction, and suitable employment” to remain free (Franklin, 1790).

Jefferson’s presidency marked a turning point. On March 2, 1807, he signed the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves, which took effect January 1, 1808 — the earliest constitutional date allowed (VCU Social Welfare History Project, 2025). He also took steps to prevent the trade from migrating northward, particularly into Ohio, where abolitionist sentiment was growing and where descendants of Monticello’s enslaved families later settled (PBS Frontline, 2025).

Meanwhile, Alexander Hamilton — Jefferson’s ideological rival — insisted that if the U.S. was to have its own laws, it must also have its own financial institutions. His push for a national bank was not merely economic; it was strategic from a legal standpoint. Hamilton realized that sovereignty required infrastructure, and that without a centralized bank, the republic would remain tethered to British commercial law — including the maritime codes enforced by Vice-Admiralty Courts (Louis Pressbooks, 2025).

These courts, operating without juries and under imperial commercial law, were antithetical to the Lockean ideal of justice by consent. Their overlap with common law jurisdictions created contention and injustice. The legal profession — including early bar associations — upheld and legitimized these courts, often favoring imperial interests over local autonomy (AllThingsLiberty, 2015; Federal Bar Association, 2025).

Thus, the founding generation stood at a crossroads: between Locke’s demand for a court system based on principle and reason instead of mere profit, whim, and prejudice, Gadsden’s ardent fight to ensure the U.S. would have a civil law system — and not just criminal, Hamilton’s knowledge that to truly break free from the foreign legal system, Revolutionaries would need their own bank; between Jefferson’s deep knowledge of law and history which gave him prophetic foresight on how to steer a large ship instead of trying to make instant change which would not last, to Franklin’s grounded pragmatism and ability to unite the masses behind a common theme.

Thus, the founding generation stood at a crossroads: between Locke’s insistence on courts governed by principle and reason rather than profit, prejudice, or imperial whim; Gadsden’s unwavering fight to establish a civil law system that prioritized justice over punishment; and Hamilton’s strategic understanding that to sever ties with foreign legal and financial control, the Revolutionaries would need their own bank.

Between Jefferson’s deep command of law and history — which gave him the foresight to guide systemic reform with patience rather than haste — and Franklin’s grounded pragmatism, whose ability to craft common themes could move masses toward unity.

The Declaration of Independence
Like You’ve Never Heard

 

§13 Seeing Through the Lies, and Picking Up the Torch

Slavery was not invented by the founding generation; it is a system older than democracy itself. From the slave codes of ancient Mesopotamia to the bonded labor systems of Greece, Rome, and Islamic caliphates, human commodification formed the economic backbone of empire. Even during the era of the transatlantic slave trade, other systems — including the Arabic slave trade, which extended across Africa and the Middle East — operated simultaneously (Lovejoy, 2012; Alpers, 2004). These weren’t isolated wrongs, but a global infrastructure of exploitation forged across millennia.

The American founders did not abolish this machine. But they cracked it. Jefferson’s philosophical legalism, Hamilton’s strategic financial architecture, Franklin’s moral evolution, Gadsden’s commitment to civil law — together, these laid the scaffolding for future reform. John Locke’s Enlightenment framework, though itself complicit in colonial slavery, provided a rhetorical and legal model that remains in our hands today (Laslett, 1988; Benoist, 2022).

We have since moved forward. Slowly. Painfully. Strategically.

In Iowa, Article I, Section 2 of the state constitution affirms that “all political power is inherent in the people… they have the right to alter or reform the government whenever the public good may require it” (Iowa Legislature, 2025). This clause is not decorative — it is directive. It places the torch in our hands and demands vigilance, not passive inheritance.

Today’s media landscape, influenced by powerful interests, often invites us to dismiss the founders as mere racists — to overlook the staggering complexities of the system they were born into and the incremental risks they took to reshape it. To adopt that simplification is to abandon the opportunity they left behind. It is to mistake tragedy for futility.

By learning the real history — messy, complicated, courageous — we pull the rug out from under modern imposters who wave the American flag while distorting its meaning. The flag is not theirs to misuse. It belongs to the people who labor for justice, equity, and structural change — the very people the founders themselves could not free, but whose freedom they gestured toward. The Gadsden flag, once a symbol of resistance to imperial overreach, now calls for justice against officials who violate civil rights protections.

Liberty is not inherited. It is cultivated. And the torch is in our hands. We must keep moving forward.

 

Continued on
Part Four: How the American Republic was Usurped Under Hans v. Louisiana (1890

 

References

Alpers, E. A. (2004). East Africa and the Indian Ocean Slave Trade. In R. E. Skinner (Ed.), The Trans-Saharan Slave Trade. London: Routledge.

American History Central. (2025). Christopher Gadsden. https://www.americanhistorycentral.com/entries/christopher-gadsden/

American History Central. (2025). Christopher Gadsden: Revolutionary patriot. https://www.americanhistorycentral.com

Benoist, J. (2022). Slavery in the Age of Enlightenment. London: Routledge.

BlackPast. (2009). The deleted passage of the Declaration of Independence. https://www.blackpast.org

BlackPast. (2009). Jefferson’s omitted anti-slavery clause. https://www.blackpast.org

Bill of Rights Institute. (2025). Natural rights and the Declaration of Independence. https://billofrightsinstitute.org

Christopher Gadsden (1724–1805), Lexicon, Vikrum