The Gangs of New York:
Lawlessness, Political Corruption, Civil Unrest...
What about the
Gangs of Georgia?
In the book (and movie), The Gangs of New York the tale is told of New York in 1863. Lower Manhattan is a place of lawlessness, rampant political corruption, and great unrest. I haven't seen the movie yet, but the storyline got me thinking. Were there any major scandals in early Georgia history? Well of course! Ever heard of the Yazoo Land Fraud?

First, a little background on political corruption or scandal in general. Most people think of it as a present-day thing. NOT!

During the presidential campaign of 1800, President John Adams was accused of sending a friend, General Pickering, to Europe to bring back mistresses. In 1828, the opponents of John Quincy Adams charged that when he served as Minister to Russia, Mr. Adams offered his children's nanny as a royal mistress.

Let us go back even farther, to 1792, when Alexander Hamilton was Treasury Secretary. A convicted con man, James Reynolds, accused Mr. Hamilton of giving him money from the U.S. Treasury to play the stock market. Upon investigation, Mr. Hamilton admitted giving money to Reynolds, but claimed the funds were his own. The pay-off was a cover up for an adulterous affair with Reynold's wife, Maria.

Back to the Peach State. Until 1803, Georgia distributed land based on the "headright" system. Each head of a family had the right to 200 acres of land for himself and 50 acres for each member of his family (up to 1,000 acres). After the Revolutionary War, in order to fuel land speculation, a number of governors signed land grants of much greater amount than the law allowed. Most of these grants were signed by governors George Walton, George Mathews, George Handley, Edward Telfair, and Jared Irwin. Governor Mathews, for example, granted over a million acres to a single man. In Montgomery County, Richmond Dawson received grants of 987,000 acres; James Shorter received 1,219,000 acres [Click for The Shorter Family book.]; and Micajah Vassar received 458,000 acres. Just these grants mentioned totaled more than 4 times the amount of land the county even had!

As stated above, this was supposedly done to increase land speculation in this area of Georgia. To make matters even worse, land was described as being suitable for farming, when in fact it was a pine barren. Therefore, this practice was known as the Pine Barren Speculation. This was soon to be over-shadowed on a national level by the Yazoo Land Fraud.

During the 1780s, Georgia claimed 35 million acres of land (much of present day Alabama and Mississippi). [Map] This land was known as the Yazoo because of the presence of a river by that name in the area. In 1789, Georgia sold much of this land to speculators, but the attempt to settle this land failed due in part to the presence of several Native American tribes, the Cherokee, the Creek, the Choctaw, and the Chickasaw.

In the mid 1780s, the Combined Society was formed. This was a secret organization whose sole purpose was to obtain large grants of the land from the state of Georgia for little money by applying pressure to (bribing) officials in order to make huge sums of money.

They finally succeeded in 1794 when 4 Yazoo Land Companies, the Georgia Company, the Georgia-Mississippi Company, the Upper Mississippi Company, and the Tennessee Company intimidated a bill through the Assembly (by bribing all but one official) that sold them over 40,000,000 acres of land for $500,000. That's about 1.25¢ an acre! [Map] The bill was signed into law by Governor Mathews 7 January 1795. Not so coincidentally, a number of Georgia legislators, as well as United States Senator James Gunn, were major stockholders in these 4 land companies.

Fortunately, the public would not allow this to stand. Most of the officials who supported the bill were voted out of office later that year. Reformers led by US Senator James Jackson took office, and the law was rescinded 18 February 1796.

All of this mayhem resulted in legal battles. Later, a court ruled that the contracts of sale of land under the law were binding and individuals shared in a $400,000 settlement.


Sources:
- "The Gangs of New York", <http://www.gangsofnewyork.com>
- Contemporary Controversies: Political Scandal in Historical Perspective, <http://www.gliah.uh.edu/historyonline/scandal.cfm>
- North Georgia Land - Yazoo Land Fraud, <http://ngeorgia.com/history/land.html>
- Fletcher v. Peck, <http://www.michaelariens.com/ConLaw/cases/fletcher.htm>


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Genealogy Links for Georgia Researchers
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If all this talk of land has you imagining the wonderful information you
can find regarding your ancestors in their land records, here are a few
databases you might want to check:
Georgia Land Lottery, 1827
1827 Georgia Land Lottery: Fortunate Drawers from Houston County
Georgia Cherokee Land Lottery, 1838


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