In 1794, land speculation was a big thing. The Revolution had been won just a few years before, and everyone was looking to the vast new continent, now freer from European meddling, with designs for getting rich via the real estate mania. A number of wealthy and influential men formed companies for the purpose of land speculation. They set their sights on the western lands of Georgia. At the time, Georgia was the least densely populated of the former colonies, and it's western border went all the way to the Mississippi River. These men began to bribe Georgia legislators and offer to cut them in on the action in exchange for being able to purchase huge swaths of land at bottom-barrel prices.
The legislature turned out to be corrupt as hell, and the bribes worked. In January of 1795, Governor George Mathews signed the Yazoo Land Act. This was one of the biggest real estate deals in world history, encompassing most of modern-day Alabama and Mississippi. The land was sold to four speculation companies for less than two cents an acre. It would later be subdivided and sold for enormous profits, which, of course, was the whole point. They weren't interested in keeping the land any more than house flippers of the 21st century real estate bubble were interested in keeping their houses. It was all about fast profits. The land was resold a number of times, and oftentimes the same piece of land was sold to more than one person at once, leading to confusion as to just who owned what.
The people of Georgia were outraged. They considered it a betrayal of their rights as Georgians to purchase land and populate the frontier within their state's borders. They resented the idea of a new landed aristocracy gobbling everything up in shady back-room deals, and they began to protest. There were men brandishing ropes and threatening to hang legislators, and in 1795, such threats weren't just bluff and bluster like they would be today. It was an era where duels over matters of honor happened on a regular basis, and they really meant to hang some politicians. The election campaign season of 1795 was all about the Yazoo scandal.
Georgia's two U.S. Senators at the time were James Gunn and James Jackson, both heroes of the Revolutionary War. Gunn was in favor of the Yazoo Act, and he was one of those who stood to benefit from it. Jackson opposed it. Jackson opposed it so much that he actually resigned his U.S. Senate seat so that he could run for the Georgia state legislature. He was elected, along with Governor Jared Irwin, on a reform platform aimed at repealing the Yazoo Act.
The Heroes:
General James Jackson
Governor Jared Irwin
On February 13, 1796, Governor Irwin signed a bill nullifying the Act. He then set about striking all mention of it from the record, just like Pharaoh did to Moses's name in the movie The Ten Commandments.
Two days after the Act was repealed, on February 15th, a ceremony was held on the capital lawn. All copies of the Act had been destroyed except one. (Or so they thought; one copy survived--the one previously sent to George Washington) Georgia's capital at that time was in Louisville (pronounced Lewisv'l). It was decided that simply burning the last copy wasn't enough; they needed to call down "Fire from Heaven" to properly send the Act to its grave. Someone--probably either Governor Irwin or James Jackson, though there's also an apocryphal story about a mysterious rider on a white horse who showed up out of nowhere--produced a magnifying glass and used it to focus the sun's rays on the Act. It caught fire and was destroyed.
The matter wasn't legally settled, though, for decades. The consequences of the scandal would have far-reaching effects. At least one Supreme Court Justice, James Wilson, had a long history of land speculation and was said to be one of the bribers involved. He was financially ruined in the Panic of 1796-1797 and spent his final days bankrupt and literally on the run from his creditors. The scandal also produced the Fletcher v. Peck ruling, a landmark case that basically overruled the repeal of the Act and enforced the land sales. In the Compact of 1802, the feds agreed to remove the Indians from Georgia in exchange for Georgia's agreement to honor the Yazoo sales by selling the land to the feds for $1.25 million. The last of the Indians were removed in 1838 when President Jackson finally made good on the government's promise, but the Yazoo fraud remained a political talking point in the intervening years.
There are lessons to be learned from the Yazoo scandal, though no one seems to have learned them. We somewhat repeated the whole thing in 2007-2009.
Anyway, today is the anniversary of a victory over bribers and corruption and scandal, however incomplete that victory turned out to be. It's "Fire from Heaven" Day.
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