The first legislature of Georgia that met after the adoption of the national Constitution undertook to sell out to three private companies the preemption right to tracts of wild land beyond the
Chattahoochee River. Five million acres were allotted to the
South Carolina Yazoo Company for $66,964, 7,000,000 acres to the Virginia Yazoo Company for $93,742, and 3,500,000 acres to the Tennessee Yazoo Company for $16,876. This movement was in response to a prevailing spirit of land speculation stimulated by extensive migrations of people from the
Atlantic seaboard to new lands in consequence of pecuniary embarrassments, a result of the
Revolutionary War. In 1790 the national government, by treaty, gave much of the lands south and west of the
Oconee River to the
Creek Indians.
This offended the Georgians, and the more violent among them proposed open resistance to the government and to settle on those lands in spite of the treaty.
Sales of the lands were made
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to a Georgia Yazoo Company formed subsequent to the treaty.
The sales in 1796 had amounted to $500,000, a sum totally inadequate for the amount of land purchased.
There were evidences of great corruption on the part of the Georgia legislature, and in 1796 Congress revoked the sales as unconstitutional and void, and directed the repayment to the several companies of the amount of money which they had paid to the
State, if called for within eight months.
The original act authorizing the sale was burned in front of the State-house, and all records relating to it were expunged.
In 1798 the constitution of
Georgia was revised, and in certain provisions, having reference expressly to the
Yazoo lands, an effectual check was put to these speculations.
In the organization of Territories west of the
Chattahoochee the subject of the
Yazoo lands presented some grave questions, for there were still claimants under the original grants who were importunate.
They claimed in the aggregate about $8,000,000 as an equivalent for a relinquishment of their rights.
In 1804 the
New England Mississippi Company, successor, by purchase, to the Georgia Yazoo Company, appeared as claimant, by its agent, and solicited a settlement.
It appeared that a great share of those original grants had passed into the hands of
New England men. Their claims were violently opposed, partly on political and sectional grounds.
The subject was before Congress several years, many of the
Southern members, led by the implacable
John Randolph, defeating every proposed measure for making an honorable settlement with the
New England purchasers.
The claimants turned from Congress to the courts.
In 1810 the Supreme Court of the
United States decided that the act of the Georgia legislature in repudiating the original grants of the
Yazoo lands was unconstitutional and void, being in violation of a solemn contract.
This decision and other considerations caused Congress to make a tardy settlement with the claimants in the spring of 1814.
Such was the end of a speculation out of which Southern grantees made splendid fortunes, but which proved very unprofitable to Northern speculators.
