Mission Statement

In the noble spirit of the men and women of 1776, who fought and died for freedom under the flag of our namesake, the mission of the Gadsden Society of Colorado is to lobby elected and unelected members of the Colorado state government for political and economic freedom.

The original design of the Constitution delegated only a few and well defined powers to the federal government; the powers of state governments were broader and intended to be used to secure the lives, liberties, and property of the people. Both of these constitutional precepts have been perverted today: The federal government routinely exercises powers nowhere delegated to it, while state governments often threaten and injure individual rights more than the protect them. The result is greater power for government, less freedom for American citizens.

The Gadsden Society lobbies on behalf of those citizens and the freedoms that are rightfully theirs, all in defense of the greatest experiment in constitutional self-government the world has ever witnessed: the free United States of America.

Who was Gadsden?

Christopher Gadsden was an American Revolutionary War general and statesman from South Carolina.
According to South Carolina state congressional records, General Gadsden:

“Presented to the Congress an elegant standard, such as is to be used by the commander in chief of the American navy; being a yellow field, with a lively representation of a rattle-snake in the middle, in the attitude of going to strike, and these words underneath, ‘Don’t Tread on Me!’”

Gadsden’s flag looks like this:

We get our name from the Gadsden flag,
and have adapted it for our logo.