James A. Leonard (November 6, 1841 Ireland – September 26, 1862 Annapolis, Maryland) was an American chess master, who grew up as a son of poor Irish immigrants in New York City.

Commentators have compared his promise, never realized, to that of American chess giants Paul Morphy and Harry Nelson Pillsbury.

[1][2] However, his biographer John S. Hilbert, states, based on Leonard's military records, that "recent evidence strongly suggests he was born in Ireland".

[3] Leonard grew up in New York City with his parents, who were poor, working-class Irish immigrants.

[4] Hilbert believes, based on 1850 United States census records, that his parents may have been John Leonard, a cabinet maker, and his wife Eleanor.

Chess journalist Myron Hazeltine remarked that Leonard was the Rooms' "light and lustre".

[5] In October 1860, Paul Morphy, the de facto world chess champion, visited New York and played Leonard, giving him rook odds.

[7] In 1861, Leonard visited Philadelphia, where he played a match against William Dwight, who later became a general in the Union Army.

The Philadelphians treated Leonard as a social inferior, and took offense at an article about the match he published in the New York Clipper.

Francis Well wrote of that article in the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, "It is as vulgar, coarse, and illiterate as might be expected from anything emitting from such a source, and published in such a column.

[8][9] By late 1861, Leonard was giving simultaneous exhibitions of blindfold chess, commonly on eight boards.

[10] The most blindfold games that Leonard ever played simultaneously was apparently ten, in New York on November 16, 1861.

"[12] On February 1, 1862, Leonard enlisted on the side of the Union in the American Civil War in Company F., 88 N.Y.

While held in a facility in Annapolis, Maryland that housed prisoners of war captured by both sides, he contracted scorbutic dysentery and died on September 26, 1862.

[13] Chess historian Edward Winter writes that Leonard "acquired fame among his contemporaries for his brilliant attacks and blindfold prowess".

[14] William Ewart Napier wrote in the mid-1930s, "Among the neglected masters of this country who should be kindly remembered as exhibiting the premonitory signs and urge of champions was Leonard.

In style, he was no doubt frankly satellited to Morphy, whose exploits were still a fresh memory in Leonard's day.

James D. Séguin, in a tribute to Harry Nelson Pillsbury on page 127 of the July 1906 American Chess Bulletin (reprinted from the New Orleans Times-Democrat) remarked of Leonard:[14] With the admitted exception of the king of chess kings, our own Paul Morphy, Pillsbury assuredly stands as the finest exponent of the game that America has yet produced – unless perhaps on a plane with him may be placed the natural (though never fairly developed) capacity of that remarkable if erratic and early eclipsed genius of the early sixties, James Leonard, of New York, whose life so soon disappeared amid the smoke and gloom of battle in the great Civil War.

But, of course, lack of opportunity to attain development of genius on Leonard's side precludes fair comparison in this instance.

Gustavus Reichhelm went even further, writing in 1898 that Leonard "was, after Morphy, the most promising player America ever produced".