blood-purchased right of self-government: Of both which
the above mentioned British treaties with us are to be con-
sidered but as a recognition and settlement.

Such is the principle, not the less sound because a little
subtle, which comes to our rescue, supplanting in our favor
the Spanish claim of title to all that part of the contested
territory lying South of the Yazoo line. It is not surprising,
however, that Spain should have been exceedingly averse to
yielding up so fine and large a region on so fine a point as
this. But when she went further, and upon the ground c
having conquered British West Florida, overstepped the
Yazoo line and advanced pretensions to an immense country
which had never been embraced in that province, no wonder
the American Continent grew impatient and almost lost
respect for a power that juggled in this manner for more
than it could with decency claim.

Thus, upon comparison of the two titles, Spanish and
Georgian, as they stood previously to the treaty of San
Lorenzo, that of Georgia on which alone the United States
relied and triumphed in their negotiations with Spain, is
found to be prior in time and consequently stronger in point



80 THE YAZOO FRAUD.

of right (prior tempore, ergo portior jure,) than the Spanish
title ; hoth heing founded on conquest from Great Britain
and our conquest heing the oldest of the two by nearly five
years.' But even supposing 4he title of Spain, though van-
quished in her diplomatic strife with our country, to have
been in reality better than that of Georgia by means of
which the United States vanquished it, yet the United States
would be precluded after the. victory from assuming an altered
language and denying the superiority and validity of the title
of Georgia under which that victory had been won. -For
Governments no more than individuals, after conquering
under a flag, whether of war or of words, have a right to
turn upon it and rend it. The wise arid beneficent princi-
ple of estoppel so well known in law and so sacred to peace,
honor and the repose of rights and property, here comes into
play, and not only forbade the United States from setting
up the vanquished Spanish title in opposition to that of
Georgia, but furthermore required that this vanquished
title should not be allowed in the hands of the United States
to have the effect of vesting any right whatever, against
Georgia, but should be made to enure, for whatever it
might be worth, to her benefit alone, and to the perfect clear-
ing and firm establishment of her right and title.

SECTION IV.

Fuch is a condensed account of the Spanish title and of its
eventual surrender to the United States who were contest-
ants against it under the elder and better title of Georgia.
The leagued speculators forewarned by Gen. Gunn, knew,
as we have seen, as early as 1794, how certain and near at
hand this surrender was, and by the many able and distin-
guished men whom they counted in their ranks, (among
whom were prominent politicians, eminent jurists and learn-
ed judges ;) they were all the while kept well enlightened
as to the manner in which this surrender whenever it should
happen, would work ; that it would enure, as we have above
stated, to the benefit of Georgia and to the disembarrass-



THE YAZOO FRAUD. 81

merit of her right in and to the immense territory they were
seeking to purchase from her. But whilst their confidence
in the clear title of what they were aiming to buy from
Georgia was thus perfect and free from doubt, they dread-
ed not a little the enhanced estimation of the lands and
other difficulties which they foresaw rising up in their path
in case they should fail to consummate their purchase in
advance of the coming Spanish cession. Among those other
difficulties was the ever haunting danger from the patriotic
competition of the United States government. For though
they had succeeded in triumphing over it in 1 789, they saw it
again starting up and all the while threatening them. To
which when we add the vast unprincipled cupidity by which
they were devoured and the mania then widely prevalent
for speculating in wild lands, we behold the reasons which
stimulated the Yazooists to the hurried and profligate efforts
of which they were now guilty in order to grasp, while they
might, an enormous prize which they apprehended would
not remain long within their reach.

These efforts they consequently commenced making very
soon, not waiting even for the meeting of the Legislature.
For months beforehand, the ringleaders and their most
wily, trusted accomplices were hard at work to secure suc-
cess from that body when it should assemble. They kept ?
however, a thick veil over their machinations. It was quite
unknown to the public how they were busied. Little was
it supposed that they were industriously occupied in per-
fecting their schemes, in tampering with the elections to the
Legislature, in enlisting men of influence far and wide, and
in getting up funds for the purpose of corruption and paying
for the lands. Even upon the assembling of the Legislature
in November, no siege was at first laid ;" no lobby showed
itself; no demonstration of any sort was for sometime made.
Every thing was kept still, quiet, unsuspected, awaiting a
very significant, pre-arranged, auxiliary event, namely, the
re-election of Gen. Gunn for another six years to the United
States Senate, which was no sooner accomplished than it



82 THE YAZOO FRAUD.

was hailed everywhere by his associates as a great prelimi-
nary triumph, and an auspicious prelude to the grand Yazoo
campaign, which was now at once boldly opened at Augusta
under the leadership of Gunn himself, robed in all the
bravery of his renewed Senatorial dignity A dignity basely
sought by him on this occasion with the direct intention of
prostituting its great influence to the shame and betrayal of
the people who honored him, and to the vile enrichment of
himself and his confederates, who had not over estimated
the importance of his election to their cause, rightly judg-
ing that a Legislature which should re-elect such a man to
so noble a station would not be found proof against the aug-
mented bad influence with which they had thereby armed
him, nor be beyond the reach of those arts of corruption that
were pre-determined to be exerted by himself and his co-
workers, who took it for granted from their failure at the
preceding session that such arts would have to be employed
in order to success now.*

Quickly then upon Gutm's re-election the veil was entire-
ly thrown off by the Yazooists and four great land compa-
nies developed themselves that had evidently been already
organized and in waiting for that signal. These companies
soon perceived that in playing the part of competitors
against one another they would be greatly in each other's

Extract from Mr. Randolph's speech on the Yazoo claims in the House of
Representatives of the United States, January 31st, 1805 : "There is another
fact, too little known, but unquestionably true, in relation to this business.
The scheme of buying up the Western territory of Georgia did not originate
there. It was hatched in Philadelphia and New York (and I believe in Boston,
of this, however, lam not certain), and the funds by which it was effected were
principally furnished by monied capitalists in those towns. The direction of
these resources devolved chiefly on the Senator (Gunn), who has been mention-
ed. Too wary to commit himself to writing, he and his associates agreed upon
a countersign. His re-election was to be considered as evidsnce that the tem-
per of the Legislature of Georgia was suited to their purpose and his Northern
confederates were to take their measures accordingly. In proof of this fact,
no sooner was the news of his re-appoiniment announced in New York than it
was publicly said in a coffee house there, "Then the Western, territory of
Georgia is sold.'' Benton M. of Congressional Debates, Vol. Ill, p. 331.



THE YAZOO FRAUD. 83

way and that by combining their resources and influence they
would almost certainly be able to control the Legislature to
their purposes. They hastened accordingly to enter into a
cocilition, the parties to which, more grasping than their
predecessors of 1789, resolved on seizing and partitioning
among themselves all the immense country from the Ala-
abama arid Coosa in the East and the Mississippi in the
West, and from the Northern boundary of Georgia along
the 35th parallel down nearly to her Southern limit on the
31st degree of latitude a region of surpassing natural ad-
vantages and comprising some forty or fifty millions of acres
of what was mostly very fertile land in a very fine climate,
every where well watered and abounding in good navigable
rivers.

Over the proposals and efforts of the combined speculators
to buy this almost imperial expanse the State's unworthy
representatives higgled and hesitated for some time, not, as
the upshot showed, in order to obtain a better price for the
State, but with a view only to bigger bribes for themselves.
At length, paid to their own full satisfaction for their votes,
they sold the whole coveted region at one "fell swoop" of
legislation for the sum of $500,000 to the four leagued com-
panies, the purchase money being apportioned among them
as also were the lands, according to their own wishes and
dictation ; the State getting one-fifth of the money in hand
and receiving mortgages on the lands themselves for the
remainder, which was fully paid before the expiration of a
stipulated credit of ten months. The Georgia Company was
the leviathan of the coalition, paying just one-half of the
gross amount of the purchase money, $250,000, the Georgia-
Mississippi Company paying $155,000, the Upper Mississip-
pi Company, $35,000, and the Tennessee Company, $60,000,
each getting by metes and bounds lands proportioned to
their respective payments.

In this gigantic transaction we behold shamelessness and
audacity, falsity and artifise vying with the pecuniary cor-
ruption by which it was disgraced. For instance, the Leg-



84 THE YAZOO FRAUD.

islature had the hardihood, as we are informed in the pre-
amble to the Rescinding Act, to accept this price of $500,000
in the face of a proposition by other parties equally reliable
to pay $800,000, which was refused for no better reason than
the smaller bribes, or perhaps the no bribes, by which it was
backed. How grateful the bare idea that the failure of thet=e
higher bidders was owing to their virtue ! Moreover, also,
during the time the measure was on hand the speculators gross-
ly misrepresented the amount of the lands they were seeking
to buy, pretending that they amounted to not more than
21,000,000 or 22,000,000 of acres.* After the bargain was
clinched they quickly made the discovery that they had got-
ten at least 40,000,000 acres. And then the pretense set up
in the Act of a necessity to sell these lands in order to raise
funds to pay the State troops and to extinguish the Indian
title to lands lying elsewhere, is transparently false and hyp-
ocritical on the very face of the law. Further still, among
the numerous badges of fraud and villainy by which the case
is deformed, not the least remarkable is that tliese great ter-
ritories were clandestinely sold, as it were, by the Legisla-
ture without any notice whatever having been given to the
public that they were for sale.

*ln the debate on the Yazoo Claims in January, 1805, in the House of Repre-
sentatives, Mr. Lucas, of Virginia, said :

"It ought to be observed that the four land companies, who are original
purchasers under the Act of the Legislature of Georgia, passed on the 7th of
January, 1795, stated in their petition containing their proposal to the Legisla-
ture to purchase certain lands belonging to the State of Georgia, that the lands
contained within the bounds which were described in their petition amounted
to 21,750,000 acres It was evidently upon the fai'h of this statement that the
Legislature consented to sell that land for $500,000. However, it is now as-
certained that the quantity of land thus described amounts to 35,000.000 acres
and the companies themselves compute it to be near 40,000,000. From this
it appears evidently that the companies have deceived the Legislature by stating
what was not true. * * * *

"The Legislature have consequently sold twice as much land as they intended
to sell, or which is the same thing, they have sold it one-half cheaper than it
was their intention, and all this loss is the result of the false statement given
by the land companies.'' BentoiCs jib. of Congressional Debates, Vol. Ill,
p. 323.



THE YAZOO FRAUD. 85

Bul in order to see this Yazoo affair in its full turpitude,
it is necessary to advert to another law enacted at the same
session. I mean the Act passed for the purpose of making
provision for paying with Indian lands the State Troops for
their services in defending the State in the Indian war
which had been so long pending and which, indeed, was not
yet perfectly terminated. This law authorizes Surveys and
Head Rights in favor of the citizen soldiers to be located on
lands yet in the occupancy of Indians lying in the Tallassee
country and to the South of the Oconee. Such and so
thorough, however, was the change of ideas that had been
wrought among the people of Georgia by the policy and
principles of Washington as displayed and enforced in his
warfare against the Yazoo sale of 1789, that whatever they
may have previously thought on the subject, they now cer-
tainly disclaimed all right of entering themselves or of
authorizing by their laws and grants, others to enter on the
Indian lands within the limits of the State until the Indian
title should be first extinguished and the consent of the
general Government given. Accordingly in this State Troops
Act, care was taken to insert a clause declaring that the Act
was not to go into operation until after the extinction of the
Indian title, and in regard to the Tallassee country, not
until after obtaining the consent of the General Government.
Such were the restrictions the Legislature felt bound to put
into a Law appropriating Indian lands for so favorite an
object as that of compensating our citizen soldiers.

But when it came to the Yazoo Law and the selling of a
realm of Indian territory to gangs of profligate specula-
tors for almost nothing in comparison with its value, a
mighty change comes over the Legislature. It now no
longer gave heed to the principles and policy of Washing-
ton. There is now no waiting for the extinguishment of
the Indian title, or the consent of the General Government ;
no postponement of the operation of the Law for these or
any other events. On the contrary the sale is absolute, im-
mediate, unconditional, trammeled with no delays, con tin-



86 THE YAZOO FRAUD.

gencies or restrictions. In a word the restrictions studious-
ly inserted in the State Troops law are as studiously left
out here, and the door is intentionally left open for the
State's bribhig grantees and whoever might become their sub-
purchasers to possess themselves, so far as the terms of the
Law are concerned, of the Indian lands at their own pleas-
ure and by their own arts and means. Arid in order to add
strength to such their claim under the law and place it be-
yond cavil, recourse is had to an extraordinary and most
discreditable Legislature trick A lying Title is prefixed to
the Law. It is falsely christened an "Act supplementary"
to the State Troops Act. Thus, by forging the relation of
principal and supplement between the two laws and thereby
making them for all purposes of judicial interpretation one
and the same law, the construction was the more strongly
necessitated that the insertion of the restrictions in the State
Troops Law and their omission in the Yazoo Law was tanta-
mount to their express exclusion from the latter, accord-
ing to the universally recognized legal maxim, Inculsio
uniiJLS est exclusio elterius. Behold here bv what unwor-
thy parliamentary legerdemain the Yazooists contrived to
strengthen the argument of their exemption from restrictions
demanded at once by righteousnesss and good policy and by
the laws and constitution and treaties of the Union ; restric-
tions also to which our meritorious citizen soldiers were
subjected by the very same Legislature that in the very
same breath exempted the Yazooists therefrom. Certainly
we see here a device altogether worthy of the law-learning
and technical artifice and skill which abounded in the
Yazoo ranks ; a device moreover, which nothing but Yazoo
corruption could have carried in triumph through the two
Houses of the General Assembly and then through the Ex-
ecutive Branch of the Government also. For corruption must
have found its way there too, if not directly to the very
breast and pocket of the Governor, which we would fain
hope was not the case, yet undoubtedly to those by whom
he was advised and influenced.



THE YAZOO FRAUD. 87

It was the ill fate of Col. George Matthews to fill the Exec-
utive Chair at this date and to affix the signature that at once
made the monstrous iniquity a law and fastened forever upon
himself the character of a great public criminal. Vain
would be any attempt to palliate his conduct, although there
have been writers who ventured upon such attempt. The
best that can be said in mitigation for him is that his entire
action in the matter seemed to be the result as much of weak-
ness as of wickedness, and excites our sorrow along with our
anger whilst we are sternly consigning his name to dishonor.
The heart cannot but feel some generous relenting towards
this heroic, hard-fighting and thorough-going, though un-
couth and unscholarly Revolutionary patriot and warrior,
when we behold him elevated, after the close of the war, to
a great political post for which he was wholly unfit and
where he was destined almost certainly to fall a victim to
his own utter incompetency and the misleading arts and in-
fluence of those around him on whom he was obliged help-
lessly to lean. The wounds received and the laurels won
by such a man in the terrible days of his country's dangers
and trials, "plead like angels, trumpet-tongued," in his
favor ever afterwards, and cause us to look upon his worst
political misdeeds with a gentleness of reprobation which
we extend not to mere civilians and men who can show no
blood earned title to the public gratitude. But, neverthe-
less, Governor Matthews, in spite of this kindly popular feel-
ing towards him and although no direct charge of being
personally bribed and corrupted, so far as I ever heard, was
at any time alleged against him, was politically ruined in
Ge Tgia by the odium of his official complicity with the
Yazoo Fraud. 'It was enough for the people that by his single
dissent he might have defeated that stupendous villainy and
that he did not do it, but on the contrary gave it his assent
and vitalized it with his signing hand. And besides there
were other strongly exasperating circumstances against him.
The two bills, the State Troops Act and that for the Yazoo
Sale, were both before him for his signature at the same



00 THE YAZOO FRAUD.

time. The former lie signed and returned on the 28th of
December. The latter he refused to sign and sent back with
his objections on the same day. How it happened that so
soon afterwards as the 7th of January he was gotten to fore-
go all his objections and to sign another bill substantially
the same, only enough altered to give him a pretext for
saying that it was not the same but another bill, was never
explained and naturally gave rise to deeply damaging sur-
mises against him. And assuredly, moreover, his case was
not bettered by the unhappy fact of his total neglect in his
list of objections of the 28th of December, to take any notice
of a matter so capital and striking as the omission in the
Yazoo Bill of the above mentioned restrictions contained in
the State Troops Act, which he had just examined and signed.
His failure to notice and brand this omission cannot be
viewed otherwise than as a mark of his sanction given to it
at that time by implication, as afterwards it was expressly
given when on the 7th of January, he finally signed the bill
and made it a law.

The clue to the excessive anxiety we have noticed on the
part of the Yazooists to have on the very face of their
Legislation clear, merchantable titles, free i'rom all restric-
tions or contingencies, is to be found in the fact that their
scheme was designed from the beginning to be one of rapid
sales and conversion into money, not of protracted ownership
awaiting the extinction of the Indian title by government
and the subsequent gradual increase of the value of the
lands. It was in order that they might successfully carry
out this scheme that they wanted a law which they could
parade and bepraise in the markets of the world as giving a
present absolute estate, not merely future contingent rights
and expectations. With such a law and titles under it
good and specious on the surface though well known to
themselves to be in reality unsound and vulnerable to attack
by both the United States and Georgia,- they hoped to be
rapidly able to succeed in alluring into large purchasing



THE YAZOO FRAUD. 89

strangers and uninformed, distant people, that class who are
always predestined as their victims by wicked, shrewd-con-
triving speculators.

But not only did these shrewd, enterprising speculators
want and resolve to get per fas aut per nefas, titles that
should he in all respects current and alluring in the land
market, hut they wanted all the world as a market for their
immense and unrighteous landed wares. To this end, how-
ever, it was necessary to contrive some way of evading the
law of Georgia disabling aliens to hold land in this State.
And here agian it was deemed expedient not to drive at
their object openly but to seek it by legislative indirection and
trickery. Their cunning plan was to have a clause inserted
in the very Act of Sale affecting a patriotic hostility to
foreigners becoming owners of real estate in Georgia. By
this 'clause the Yazoo purchasers and their associates are
prohibited from disposing of the lands in part or in the
whole, in any way or manner, "to any foreign king, prince, po-
tentate or power ivliatever." The palpable, precogitated ob-
ject of inserting this clause was that the Yazoo companies
should by clear implication be entitled to sell and convey to
all other foreigners than the very few who fall under the
description of .' 'kings, princes, potentates and powers."
And not only is this almost boundless license of selling to
foreigners thus surreptitiously incorporated in the law, but
it is also required to be set forth in the very face of the
grants that were to be issued under the law to the companies,
in order that foreigners might thereby be the more strongly
tempted to become buyers, seeing that their right to buy was
doubly secured both by the law itself and then by the State's
grants and conveyances founded upon it. Fit companion-
piece this to the villainous "supplementary" device to which
it is appended and which we have but a moment ago had
occasion to reprobate and brand !



90 THE YAZOO FRAUD.

SECTION V.

Not for more than three score years and ten, not indeed until
a new and monstrous race of political caitiffs, foul harpies
of the North, the vile brood of a peace worse than war, of a
reconstruction worse than ruin, swarmed down upon our fair
and hapless South and made it one vast sickening scene of
official atrocity and villainy, securely practised under a re-
morseless Federal patronage, had the people of Georgia ever
gotten over their vivid, loathing remembrance of this old
Yazoo crime. Now, however, that renowned turpitude of
the last century has been unseated from its preeminence. Far
outstripped by the teeming infamies, political and pecuni-
ary, of these latter times, it is rfo longer capable of exciting
amazement in the recollecting mind. Little wonder is now
felt that in young, immature Georgia, some eighty years
ago, a gigantic, corrupt speculation, as remarkable for the
ability and standing of the men concerned in it as for the
abundance and baseness of the means they employed, should
have succeeded in debauching and triumphing over a poorly
enlightened and very diminutive legislative body of those
early times.

Yes! very diminutive that body still was. For, although,
by the formation of new counties the Senate had grown