Governor John Gaillard.
John Gaillard (1765 - 1826?) served as Governor of Jefferson during the Mexican Civil War.
Gaillard was born in South Carolina on 5 September 1765. He was too young to participate in the North American Rebellion, and presumably did not take part in the original Wilderness Walk in 1780. He probably emigrated to Jefferson before the outbreak of the Trans-Oceanic War.
By 1815, Gaillard had risen in Jeffersonian politics to the point of becoming one of the Governors of Jefferson, along with Alexander Hamilton and James Monroe. Unlike Hamilton, Gaillard opposed reconciliation with the Confederation of North America and Great Britain, and favored close ties with France.
When Hamilton sent John Quincy Adams as his envoy to Mexican President José María Morelos to seek Mexican recognition of Jefferson, he did not inform Gaillard that Adams' diplomatic mission was intended to fail, and to serve as the pretext for Jefferson to invade Mexico. When Gaillard learned of Hamilton's deception, he resigned as Governor and left the Continentalist Party for the Liberty Party.
In the 1818 Jefferson elections, Gaillard was a Libertarian nominee for governor, along with William Bibb and Eligius Fromentin. However, the elections were a sweeping victory for the Continentalists, led by Monroe and General Andrew Jackson.
During the Mexico City Convention of September 1820, Gaillard spoke out against Jackson's proposed Mexico City Constitution, which would unite Jefferson and Mexico to create a new nation called the United States of Mexico. He argued that the Jeffersonians had waged a war of conquest and subterfuge against an innocent people, and that Jackson now intended "to give tyranny the mask of republicanism." However, in spite of the opposition of Gaillard and the other Libertarians, the convention voted to ratify Jackson's Constitution.
Sobel makes no further mention of Gaillard after the Mexico City Convention.
Sobel's source for the life and career of John Gaillard is Lewis Reins' John Gaillard: Nobility in Chains (Mexico City, 1943).
IOW John Gaillard served as a U.S. Senator from South Carolina from 1804 until his death in 1826.