Jasper County Democrat, Volume 2, Number 43, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 January 1900 — Story of the Yazoo Fraud. [ARTICLE]

Story of the Yazoo Fraud.

One of the most gigantic trusts ever formed on this continent was in the early days of the republic, back in 1795. Several gentlemen organized themselves Into a company for the purpose of purchasing from the State of Georgia her unclaimed western territory, extending from the Mississippi on the west to the Atlantic on the east and from the thirty-first degree of latitude north of the equator on the south to the southern boundary of Tennessee on the north, Including what now constitutes the territory of Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi. This vast territory was purchased for $500,000 and' this was the commencement of the famous “Yazoo fraud,” about which so much was said and written. The bill authorizing the purchase and sale passed the Georgia Legislature on Jan. 9,1795, and it is said that members were paid all the way from eight negroes to 200,000 acres of land to vote for it. Corruption by bribery was open. Great indignation spread throughout the State and upon the assembling of the Legislature one year later an act was passed declaring that the said resurped act was null and void; that the records relating to the same be burned in order that no trace of so unconstitutional. vile and fraudulent a transaction should remain public. ’’The infamous records were placed in one vast heap.” said the Senator, “and a sun glass was used to set it on fire, that It might be said that the fire that destroyed it was from heaven. This is the first and only instance in the history of the country where a legislative body personally superintended the destruction by fire of its previous records of corrupt and obnoxious laws. 1 regret to say that if the people of this day should be moved by the same spirit this continent would be a flame of fire from the Atlantic to the Pacific and from the Gulf of Mexico to the confines of the British empire?*—St. Paul Globe.