56 THE YAZOO FRAUD.
THF YAZOO FRAUD SECTION I.
The great Yazoo Fraud was conceived earlier than the
Pine Barren Speculation, hut as it had a much longer gesta-
tion, it turned out that the two reached their hirth about
the same time, and were consequently contemporaneous
though not twin villainies; for there never was any actual
connection between them either as to facts or persons. It
would be impossible for people nowadays to form an ade-
quate idea of the immense and almost wild stir and excite-
ment caused by the Yazoo Fraud in its day ; and it was by
no means a short any more than a commonplace day that it
had. Not only was it radicated far back in the then Past,
but curious explorers will detect its roots and ramifications
interwoven with national matters of that period important
enough to claim a place in history. And when we come
down later and take a view of the great cancerous abomina-
tion in its several vicissitudes and more advanced stages, how
complicated it is seen to become alike in its facts and in the
questions and principles it involves! How the huge villainy
stands out and strikes us, distent with odious interest and
energy at every turn, making its way over all obstacles,
discouragements and delays, first through the State Legisla-
ture, next through the Cabinet, Courts and Congress of the
United States, and in the end, after near twenty years of
unholy striving and perseverance, triumphing at last and
plunging its felonious hands deep into the National Treas-
ury.
That memorable crime which was consummated in the
Legislature of Georgia on the 7th of January, 17'J5, is the
THE YAZOO FRAUD. 57
one to which I am now referring. The intelligence of it no
sooner reached Washington than it caused him great con-
cern, for he instantly saw its enormity and datigerousness,
having already a few years previously had to deal (and stern
and decisive was thatdealing) with its comparatively innocent
and Irss formidable and now almost forgotten predecessor,
the much smaller Yazoo Sale of 1780. Upon obtaining
from Augusta, then the seat of Government of Georgia, the
authentic documents on the subject, he hastened on the 10th
of February, 17015, to lay them before Congress with a mes-
sage in which he characterised the matter as one "of exceed-
ing magnitude, that might in its consequences affect the
peace and welfare of the United States." But Georgia on
this occasion saved trouble to the National Authorities, or
rather she staved it off' to a remoter day. For, as if seeking
to make amends for her apathy in regard to the Yazoo Sale
of 1780, she was now tierce and rapid in her action, and
stepping forward at once she of her own mere motion and
with her sole arm struck down this new and more monstrous
Yazoo crime to which corruption had just given birth on her
soil, leaving to the Federal Administration at that time no
other task to perform in relation to it than mere arraign-
ment and some steps of precaution and inquiry. It was
only a temporary respite, however, that resulted to' the
United States from the indignant, patriotic promptitude of
the State. For it turned out that the Hydra was only
"scotched, not killed" by Georgia. In a few years it
came to life again, developing a new head not vulnerable to
the blows of the State and only amenable to the National
arm, and from thenceforward it unceasingly harassed the
United States and exhibited such pernicious and deathless
faculties for mischief and annoyance that, finally in 1814,
Congress was glad to give up the warfare and compromise
with the great iniquity by passing a Bill appropriating five
millions of dollars to the appeasing of its claims.
Into the politics >f Georgia it continued to be ever and
anon draped for years afterwards laden with unforgiven
58 THE YAZOO FRAUD.
guilt and intense public odium. At length in the year 1825,
in the first popular election for Governor we ever had, and
by far the hottest and fiercest known to our annals, a fiery
farewell eruption of this old political Vesuvius gf the State
was provoked by Nome slight unfavorable reminiscences that
were stirred up connected with the name of one the candi-
dates for the office. For our people had not learned even
down to that period to pardon to any man the smallest par-
ticipation in that great parricidal crime. And if their ven-
geance has not been since inflamed in regard to it, it is
only because time has both extinguished the causes and
dimmed the recollections by which it could be kindled anew.
The wonderment, perplexity and curiosity which the very
word Yazoo used to excite in juvenile minds in Georgia fifty
and sixty years ago I have never been able to forget. Its
strange exotic sound to the ear and look in print was the
first and not a very small thing. Then, besides, it was a
word which had evidently long been, as it still was,
perfectly familiar in the mouths of all elderly and full grown
people, so much so, that taking it to be universally under-
stood they never bethought them that it needed explanation
to anybody, no, not even to the listening boy whom they saw
sitting silent and attentive. Most frequently it was of the
Yazoo Fresh they spoke, yet often of the Yazoo Fraud.
Sometimes it was the Yazoo Sale and the Yazoo Lands, and
then again the Yazoo Script and Yazoo Shares. * The Yazoo
Legislature, the Yazoo Speculators and Yazoo Companies
were likewise frequent topics, nor was the story of the burn-
ing of the Yazoo Act with fire drawn from heaven by Gen.
Jackson with a sun-glass left untold. Thus numerous, va-
rious and unlike were the things called by name of Yazoo;
and all of them too so much the theme of talk ! And yet
where was Yazoo, and what was it ? It seemed to be
all over Georgia and yet no mention was ever made of any
place in or out of Georgia where it was to be found or seen.
Was there, indeed, any such place, and if there was, why
should it cause so much talk and give its name to so many
THE YAZOO FRAUD. 59
arid such different things ? Or, perhaps it was not a place,
but only a thing; and if so, why was it such a noted thing,
and why were so many other things baptized with its name?
And did it pertain to land or water, or was it amphibious
and akin to both? All was vague, misty, mysterious, per-
plexed, yet pervaded not doubtfully with the general idea of
somewhat that was sinister, abhorrent and damnable.
This uncertainty, however, which tormented young imag-
inations was more and more dispelled, so far at least as the
question between land and water was concerned, by every
spell of heavy, unrelenting rains, by every extraordinary and
destructive inundation of the creeks and rivers. These oc-
currences never failed to renew arid strengthen the associa-
tion in youthful minds between Yazoo and water. For then
the Yazoo Fresh was sure to be in the ascendant in people's
mouths and thoughts. Another Yazoo Fresh was feared or
threatened, or such another fall of rain and rise of the wateis
had never been seen since the great Yazoo Fresh when all
the streams and rivers rose high above all former water-
marks and the mountain torrents and windows of heaven
were opened to swell the proud (Savannah, and the glorious
river vindicating the honor of its banks, swept in angered
majesty over the scene so lately desecrated by a monstrous
and unprecedented public villainy, and for the first time arid
the last too for more than forty years, made beauteous
Augusta, Georgia's capital, a subaqueous and navigable
city.
Terruit Urbem ;
Terruit civcs, grav ne redirer
Sacculum Pyrrhae nova monstra questse,
Omne cum Proteus pecus egit altos
Visere monies ;
PiM-ium et snmma gonus harsit nlmo
Nola qurr series fuerat cnlumliis,
Kt Mipi'i 'jccio paviil:i- nat,iniiit
Acquorc damae.
60 THE YAZOO FRAUD.
Vidimus flavum Tiherim rotortis
Littore Etrusco violenter undis
Ire drjectum momementa Regis
Templaqtie Vestse. #
But the watery visitation lasted not. long. The whelming
flood rushed quickly away, as if hastening in sorrow from
the havoc it had done and left the broad riparian plain which
Augusta adorns, bare to the genial sun once more and to
the woful gaze of men. And also in years ensuing, when more
time and knowledge had accrued to the younger folks, the
idea of water associated with Yazo.i gradually subsided from
their minds and in its stead, land and fraud and many cog-
nate abominations came up to view and grew to the name
and asserted themselves the originals to which the alien
word was first applied in Georgia. For it was a word not
native here. It was outlandish in its origin, born in a dis-
tant savage nook and imported from thence across hundreds
of miles of Indian wilderness and odiously denizened
amongst us. Its birth place and long its only and sinless
home, where its utterance called not up remembrances of
turpitude, was far away on the confines of the Mississippi,
*As it may be interesting to the non-latinist to see in an English poetic dress
these fine stanzas from Horace describing an inundation of the Tiber at Rome,
I subjoin a translation by Covington, which may perhaps also have some inter-
est for the classical scholar both on account of its own merits and as showing
the unapproachableness of the original :
Appalled- the city,
Appalled the cit'zens, lest Pyrrah's time
Return with all its monstrous sights,
When Proteus led his flocks to climb
The mountain heights;
When fish were in the elm tops caught
Where once the stock dove wont to bide,
And deer were floating, all distraught,
Adown the tide.
Old Tiber, hurled in tumult back
From mingling with the Etruscan main,
Has threatened Numa's Court with wreck
And Vesta's fane
THE YAZOO FRAUD. 61
in the land of the Ohoctaws, a region as wild to the eye as
its own sound to the ear. There it had been for unknuwn
ages articulated by barbarian tongues as the name of a
petty stream meandering sluggishly from the North to lo^e
itself in the bosom of the Leather of Floods. But what made
that petty stream so important and how came it to supplant
not only the Alabama, the Tuscaloosa, and the Tombigbee,
but the great Tennessee and even the mighty Mississippi
itself, and to impose its own ignoble name in preference to
all theips on the immense lerritory watered by them all,
and also on the stupendous feat of villainy of which that
territory was the subject matter and prize ? These are points
which used of yore to bother not a little the heads of both
old and young in Georgia and which, 1 durst opine, may be
still obscure to many at the present day. But even if it be
so, there is little reason why I should hang b#ck longer
from my destined task in order now to lift the veil arid clear
up the mystery. For it is one of those curiosities of Ameri-
can territorial history and controversy the explication of
which will assuredly come out in the course of that handling
of the Yazoo Fraud upon which it is high time I should
enter, if indeed I would redeem the promise held out in the
heading of this chapter.
SECTION II.
Beyond doubt no greater or more consequential event of a
mere worldly character has ever happened in the world than
the discovery and settlement of America. What an infinite
variety and multitude of things new and momentous under
the sun have been owing directly and indirectly to that vast
and pregnant occurrence ! How it has teemed with results of
all sorts and sixes, creating new, modifying or annihilating
old interests, reaching all over the globe, and sure of per-
vading all futurity ! Among the earliest and most striking
of the novelties to which it gave birth, was the practice
originated by Spain on this continent of what may be called
conquest by contract; by the associated enterprise, capital,
62 THE YAZOO FRAUD.
cupidity and ambition of bodies of private adventurers, act-
ing at their own pecuniary cost, though under regal sanc-
tion and protection, and enjoying a meretricious partnership
with royalty in the honor of ruling and the lucre of plun-
dering the conquered countries. War and the acquirement
by force of new dominions was by this cruel means rendered
easy and unexpensive to a government sitting enthroned
and uneridangered across the Atlantic, ignorant or unthink-
ing of the diabolical lawlessness and inhumanity which
sprang from its policy and sullied its arms, and which have
indelibly tarnished the Spanish name. It was thus that
Mexico was subdued for Spain by Cortes, Peru by Pizzaro.
Such too was the origin of the atrocious, warlike wanderings
of Fernando deSoto* arid his -martial companions, over the
immense regions stretching Northwardly from the Gulf of
Mexico, which at that day and for a long while afterwards
were massed by the Spaniards under the then comprehensive
name of Floridaf and which now form in addition to the
present Florida, the great States of Georgia, Alabama, Mis-
sissippi, Tennessee, Arkansas and Louisiana. If what was
first seen and known of the New World warranted its dis-
coverers in calling its inhabitants barbarians, assuredly
cause enough was soon given to those barbarians for regard-
ing the civilized new-comers as demons, who had on a sud-
den preternaturally appeared among them to be the curse of
their land and the destroyers of their race.
The course of Great Britain, however, towards the natives
in those parts of America colonized or acquired by her was
nobler and more humane. She sought not to enslave or
oppress or plunder them, or to extort tribute from them like
the Spaniards, nor did she imitate the bad Spanish example
of sentencing them to be brought under her yoke by the
agency of armed bodies of irresponsible free booters wearing
their Monarch's livery and flaunting his license, and only
Bancroft's History of the United States. Chapter 2d. Vol. 1. Pickett's
History of Alabama. Chapter 1. Vol. 1.
|Bancroft's History of the United States. Vol. 1. Page GO.
THE YAZOO FRAUD. 63
the more licentions because so licensed, and who emula-
ted the worst piratical hordes in their infamous disregard
of the laws of nature and of nations. It was on the contrary
the pervading principle of the policy of Great Britain, that
war and peace, negotiations and treaties with the Indians
and all territorial acquisitions from them, whether by con-
quest, purchase, or in any other way, should be strictly
affairs of Government to be transacted only by and through
its recognized officers and agents, civil or military, and
never to be given up to private hands, or subordinated to
private interests of any kind, or under any circumstances.
Equally contrary was it to the British system for the
Government to sell or convey to private persons or compa-
nies the right of soil in any lands before the aboriginal title
therein had been first regularly extinguished by the Govern-
ment itself, nor would the Government in any manner,
direct or indirect, warrant or tolerate private individuals
or companies in buying or conquering lands from the
Indians. Such rights and all others affecting the con-
trol over Indian relations, it always retained to itself
and vigilantly guarded as a high and incommunicable pre-
rogative.
This bare statement of what the two systems were shows
the ineffable superiority of the British over the Spanish in
point of justice, good mowals, wisdom, and humanity. And
to the latest times, upright and enlightened natures among
us will continue, when recalling the harrowing scenes
through which even Anglo- America had to pass in her long
process of colonization and settlement, to find an exalted
satisfaction in rememhering the correct and humane maxims
towards the Indians practised by our great ancestral nation,
and handed down by her to us as a part of that blessed
national inheritance which war, revolution and the rending
of all the ties of national unity were not able to cause us to
surrender or lose. Nor let it be forgotten that the advan-
tage of observing these maxims was always mutual and
eminently reciprocal between us and the Indians. Whilst
G4 THE YAZOO FRAUD.
they were rendered thereby more secure against the intru-
sions, and outrages of bad and lawless white people, our fron-
tiers were at the same time more exempt from Indian incur-
sions and depredations, and our whole country from the hor-
rors and calamities of Indian wars.
Right here then at this point the first great damning fea-
ture of the Yazoo crime presents itself to view in its viola-
tions of these benign, long consecrated principles of our
Indian policy principles so dear to peace, righteousness and
humanity in our relations with the Indians, of such pervad-
ing and perpetual importance, and so much demanding uni-
form and universal enforcement, that the makers of our new
Federal Constitution deemed it their duty to incorporate
them in that great instrument among the trusts exclusively
assigned to the General Government. And there they have
ever since been preserved, wrapped up in the great powers
of war and peace, the treaty making power and the power to
regulate commerce with the Indian tribes. Nor did the new
Government after getting into operation long defer the ne-
cessary legislation for giving full effect to these inherent
principles of the Constitution. And moreover such was the
estimation in which Georgia herself soon came to hold these
principles, that when Gen. Jackson and his compatriots in
1798 undertook the work of framing a new Constitution for
the State, warned by the then recent Yazoo enormity and
determined to take away the possibility of its repetition,
they took care to insert in that Constitution a prohibition
against the sale of any of the State's Indian territory to
individuals or companies, unless after the Indian right there-
to should have been extinguished and the territory formed
into counties.
Grossly disregardful, however, of these great and sacred
principles the Legislature of Georgia unhappily showed
itself to be on two occasions during the period of the early
immaturity of the State. Men not of us, men from abroad,
many of them of fair, some of them of high name, had long
had their avaricious gaze fixed on Georgia's vast and fertile
THE TAZOO FRAUD. 65
Indian domain (great speculations in wild lands were a fash-
ion and a rage in those days) and they had conspired with
self-seeking, influential persons among our own people to en-
rich themselves by despoiling the State of it on a huge scale.
For years they had stood on the watch for a favorable mo-
ment ior taking hold. The main cause which had kept
them back was the unsettled state of the title, which was in
strong dispute between South Carolina and Georgia, and
they cared not to have to treat with two contending States, or
to buy from either what was contested and claimed by the
other. At length by the convention of Beaufort, in April,
1787, this dispute was settled in favor of Georgia, and its
settlement would have been the signal for an open, energetic
movement of the laud-seekers on our very next Legislature
but for the fact that an exceedingly formidable competitor
appeared on the carpet, whom it was deemed best first to
dispose of and get out of the way. This competitor was
none other than the Continental Congress itself, which some
years before had made earnest appeals to the States owning
Indian lands to cede them to the United States as a fund
for paying the Revolutionary debt. Georgia not having
made any response to these appeals, Congress, in October,
1787, at its first session after the Beaufort Convention, ur-
gently called upon her again to follow the magnanimous
example of Virginia and other States and make the much
desired cession. The Legislature in February ensuing, re-
sponded to the call, but how ? Why, by offering to make a
cession confined to the territory south of the Yazoo line, the
part most compromised by the litigous pretentious of Spain,
as we shall hereafter see, and that offer, too, clogged with
conditions impossible to be accepted by Congress. Where-
upon the offer being rejected and certain modifications pro-
posed by that Body which would make it acceptable, those
modifications were transmitted to the next Legislature, that
of 1789, for its consideration and action. But no action
whatever did it take in regard to them. There can be no
doubt that the unworthy course pursued by the Legislature
66 THE YAZOO FRAUD.
of 1783 in making an offer that was obliged to be rejected,
and the equally unworthy conduct of the Legislature of
1789, in not considering and acceding to the modifications
proposed by Congress, were the result of the bad inspiration
and influence of the Yazoo speculators who, as yet, stood
cloaked and in the dark as a secret organization. One thing
is certain, that by some untold means, both the competition
of Congress and its proposals were smothered and thrust out
of the way, and the speculators succeeded in getting the
field clear and wholly to themselves, free from all competition.
Of the advantages they thus had they made very success-
ful use in dealing with the petty diminutive Legislature of
that era, numbering only eleven Senators and thirty-four
Representatives. History records not, that they had any
difficulty in outdoing Congress in its suit for the lands, and
in getting for themselves the first Yazoo sale, that of 1789,
although their success being at the cost of gross incivism and
supplanting of their country, brought them no small store
of dishonor, and added new ingredients to the other
elements of guilt to which we have adverted in their con-
duct.
By that piece of Legislation the State sold by metes and
bounds and on a credit of two years, to the South Carolina
Yazoo Company lands estimated at five millions of acres, for
$66,964; to the Virginia YazoO Company, lands estimated
at seven millions of acres, for $93,741; to the Tennessee
Company, lands estimated at three and a half millions of
acres, for $46,785; amounting in all to fifteen and a half
millions, though as now well known exceeding that quantity
by many millions of acres. All these lands, (among the
best arid most desirable on the Continent) lay far to the
West, on the waters of the Mississippi, the Great Tennessee,
the Tombigby, and their tributaries, and had always been
and were still Indian Teriitory in the undisputed possession
of several powerful and by no means very friendly Indian
tribes, to whom different portions of it belonged, the Creeks,
Cherokees, Choctaws and Chickasaws. In addition to
THE YAZOO FRAUD. 67
which Indian occupancy, Spain was disputing with the
United States the title to the whole of these lands, and
vastly more, and an intense territorial quarrel was then
pending between the two countries as to the ownership and
sovereignty of the same.
No sooner, nevertheless, had the bargain been made with
the Legislature than the three Companies determined to pro-
ceed at once to selling and settling the lands they had
respectively bought, regardless of Indian rights and of the
effect on our relations and negotiations with Spain. To this
course of conduct they were influenced as well by necessity
as by choice. For except by immediate sales, they had no
means of raising money wherewith to pay Georgia for the
lands ; which, if they failed to do, within the prescribed
time of two years, the lands were to revert at once to the
State, and their whole speculation would come to nothing.
It is remarkable that Georgia took no notice at all of these
mischievous possessory movements of the Yaxoo Companies.
The sale to them had by some means, long sunk into obli-
vion, glided through the Legislature in silence, at least
without making any noise or meeting with any opposition
that has come down to us either by history or tradition.
And now the seizure and disposal of the lands by the pur-
chasing companies under that sale, was on the point of
taking place just as silently and with quite as little opposi-
tion, so far at least as the State was concerned.
Washington, however, was on the alert and fully awake to
the case and to the lawless, unconstitutional and dangerous
character of all these doings : Lawless, because in viola-
tion of the aforementioned well settled maxims in our Indi-
an policy : Unconstitutional, because at war with those
wise provisions of the Federal compact, which confided the
whole subject to Federal management : Dangerous also in
a high degree, because big with four great Indian wars, or
rather with one Indian war with four formidable tribes at one
time, backed by Spain to boot : Dangerous again, because