Yazoo: The Native Roots of Frontier Populism in the Early Republic
Ross W. Terry
3 May 2016
François Furstenberg, Adviser
THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY
Terry 2
“The last great purchase of land from the Indians, on the confines of Georgia, was at the rate of
a cent per acre; one hundred acres for a dollar!”—William Priest, Travels in the United States of
America, 1796.
“Dragon Canoe is guilty…being proven by a jury of matrons in a court to be holden
before the honorable judge Guillotine---the said Dragon Canoe ought to be punished with the
pains of Rope and Gallows, to deter others from the like in the future.”1 This passage, from a
newspaper editorial in May of 1795, is a bold and direct call for violence. This sentence and the
editorial as a whole are a scathing indictment of public figures for a dereliction of duty and an
abandonment of the welfare of the people. Perhaps most striking of all is the fact that it was not
written, as the year, tone of the piece, and mention of a guillotine might suggest, in France. The
editorial was rather a piece composed for the Augusta Chronicle of Augusta, Georgia, and the
public officials in question were the state’s political leaders. The question that this article
presents is therefore somewhat baffling. What drove Georgians in the mid-1790s to attack their
own political leadership with such vitriol and implications of violence? The answer to this
question is heavily intertwined with an area of land called the Yazoo.
Over the course of the 1790s, citizens throughout the young republic, but particularly in
Georgia, expressed much confusion, surprise, and shock over an area of land named after the
Yazoo River, in the western portion of the present-day state of Mississippi. The lands occupied a
great expanse of the southwestern United States, on the periphery of the newly independent
union. The new nation, even without the massive acquisitions of land that would come decades
later in the Louisiana Purchase and the Mexican Cession, still possessed vast areas south of the
Great Lakes and east of the Mississippi River largely untouched by concentrated settlements, of
which the Yazoo was one. The population of the United States at the time of the revolution was
1
Augusta Chronicle, May 2, 1795.
Terry 3
only around two and a half million, and only land relatively close to the coast was densely
inhabited. 2
Expansion of settlement westward toward the Mississippi had been inhibited during
British colonial rule, especially after the Seven Years’ War and the Proclamation of 1763, which
restricted settlement in British territory west of a line that roughly followed the Appalachian
Mountains. Some had defied the crown’s ban and made the move west anyway, often in very
hostile environments with little to no protection from Indian attack aside from what defense the
settlers themselves could provide.3 Before the Revolution, other interests sought to circumvent
the crown’s prohibition for financial ends. The vast backcountry became the subject of
innumerable financial schemes, with investors hailing both from the eastern colonies and from
Europe. These groups went by many names: speculator, landjobber, and financier. Some of the
men involved in the financial speculation of the late eighteenth century would eventually become
some of the most derided individuals in the United States and lambasted as “men who would ruin
the country.”4 Throughout the 1790s, activity of speculation companies affected the politics of
the new nation in dramatic fashion. In Georgia, the youngest and least developed of the first
thirteen states, land speculation activities in the western part of the state’s territories caused a
major political crisis that came to be called the Yazoo Land Fraud. The fraud was one of the
most notable events in national history that decade, and it remains the most remarkable episode
2
United States Census Bureau, accessed 15 March 2016,
https://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/facts_for_features_special_editions/cb10-ff12.html.
3
Matthew L. Rhoades, “Blood and Boundaries: Virginia Backcountry Violence and the Origins of the Quebec Act,
1758-1775,” West Virginia History 3, n. 2 (Fall 2009): 1-22, accessed 17 March 2016,
http://www.jstor.org/stable/43265120.
4
Georgia Gazette (Savannah), October 1, 1795.
Terry 4
in Georgia history after the American Revolution and prior to the Dahlonega gold rush and the
Cherokee Removal in the 1830s.
The furor around the Yazoo lands centered on the alleged bribery of members of the
Georgia General Assembly to induce sale of lands to four companies at what was viewed as an
unfairly low price. The existence of another, higher bid for the Yazoo land episode presented to
the people a clear indication of collusion and bribery between the companies and the General
Assembly. Outrage quickly spread throughout the state, and Georgia captured national attention
as something of a pariah. The disgust over the Yazoo Act took on some of the trappings of a
mass movement, with protest tactics evocative of the American Revolution. Grand juries acted in
the capacity of public advocacy bodies and condemned the bill openly; other citizens whipped
into righteous republican fury distributed signed broadsheet petitions in protest; and still others,
enraged at Senator James Gunn for his support of the Yazoo Act and Jay’s Treaty, paraded an
effigy of Gunn through the streets of Savannah and burned it.5 In an act that is unthinkable today,
James Jackson, one of Georgia’s sitting United States senators, resigned his seat in response to
the scandal to lead a crusade against the act and run for a seat in the state legislature.6 The
“Yazooist” faction, as it came to be known, had been in control of the state legislature but was
swept from power in the elections of 1795. The Jackson-led Republican faction, having emerged
triumphant, promptly repealed the sale to the speculation companies, declaring it invalid by due
to its origin in a corrupt and bribe-induced legislature. It was at this time that the most famous
images of the scandal were produced: a fresh legislature, seeking to purge all possible stains of
corruption from its reputation, physically destroyed all official records of legislative debates
5
George R. Lamplugh, Politics on the Periphery: Factions and Parties in Georgia, 1783-1806 (Newark: University
of Delaware Press, 1986), 128.
6
George R Lamplugh, "James Jackson (1757-1806)," New Georgia Encyclopedia, September 15, 2014 accessed 6
Febraury 2016, http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/government-politics/james-jackson-1757-1806.
Terry 5
leading to passage of the act, records of the vote for the bill, and all copies of the act itself. The
possibly apocryphal tale of an enterprising legislator using a magnifying glass to destroy the
Yazoo papers with the power of the sun and divine providence became emblematic of the entire
affair. Even while seeking to destroy records of a corrupt stain on the state’s honor, the new
legislature, so it was popularly believed, used political posturing to both elevate its own position
and provide an element of plausible deniability with regard to past involvement in similar affairs.
Nevertheless, the anti-Yazooists proved to be extremely popular. James Jackson was soon
catapulted to the governorship, which he retained until 1801.7 The Jackson faction dealt the
nascent Federalist Party a severe blow to its power and reputation in Georgia. By public opinion
and voice at the polls, state federalist leaders such as Governor George Matthews and Senator
James Gunn were deemed guilty by association, and the party never truly recovered. Excepting a
brief resurgence in Georgia in the 1798 congressional elections, due largely to fleeting southern
Federalist popularity in the midst of the Quasi-War with France, the party was finished in
Georgia, and to an extent, in the rest of the South as well.
7
Ibid.
Terry 6
The Burning of the Yazoo Act, by C.H. Warren. Courtesy of the Georgia Historical Society.
In the several accounts of the events of the fraud, the focus then abruptly shifts from
consequences within Georgia to the national constitutional implications of the Yazoo scandal and
the battle over the legality of the rescinding act, a controversy that was eventually resolved in the
landmark 1810 United States Supreme Court decision of Fletcher v. Peck. The case, one of the
signature decisions of the Marshall Court, declared a state law unconstitutional for the first time
and declared that Georgia had no right to repeal the Yazoo Act and abrogate its contractual
obligation to the Yazoo speculators, regardless of the conditions under which the original bill of
sale was passed.8 Somewhat ironically, the case itself and the specific suit of Fletcher and Peck
was largely seen to be a collusive one, mirroring the collusion some fifteen years prior between
the General Assembly and the Yazoo Companies. It is here that the story of the Yazoo episode
usually ends.
“Fletcher v. Peck,” Oyez, Chicago-Kent College of Law at Illinois Tech, accessed 13 March 2016,
https://www.oyez.org/cases/1789-1850/10us87.
8
Terry 7
The question that remains is what forces, aside from the allegations of corruption, caused
the Yazoo scandal to erupt so ferociously into a very public condemnation of the land
distribution policies carried out by the governor and General Assembly. It is tempting to explain
the anger that made the Yazoo affair the Yazoo Land Fraud by the simple facts of corruption,
bribery, and covert collusion. The fact that, aside from Fletcher v. Peck, Yazoo is remembered
mostly as an almost comically blatant case of government corruption would tend to support this
view. While there is some evidence to support this simple theory, the Anti-Yazooist and proDemocratic-Republican political revolution of 1795 and outbursts of violence that it inspired are
difficult to connect to one case of government corruption. The notion of outrage over bribery is
further weakened by the fact that the 1795 sale was far from the first attempt to dispose of the
lands claimed by Georgia in the Old Southwest. The myriad speculatory schemes throughout the
United States touched Georgia well before 1795, in cases such as the lesser-known Yazoo Act of
1789 and the Pine Barrens speculation. There was not great outcry at the disposal of similarly
large tracts of land in sales to corporate partners, cooperating very closely with state legislators,
in either of these cases. There were no overt reports of bribery, but the overall political process
surrounding those sales was remarkably similar.
What this thesis will demonstrate is not the well-established importance of Yazoo to the
Constitutional history of the United States, but rather its importance to the history of populism
and republicanism and the ultimate fate of the Old Southwest’s native population. To that end, I
will draw on the work of others who have studied those aspects of the early republic, while
establishing the significance of Yazoo in the course of history of United States politics and its
role in the ultimate growth of a populist movement that would forcibly and tragically lead to
eventual Indian removal from the Georgia and southwestern territories.
Terry 8
This thesis will follow the emergence of the forces of anti-federalist populism and ever
more hostile relations with Indians and demonstrate the Yazoo Fraud’s pivotal role in facilitating
their rise in three steps. First, I will examine the case of the ultimately unsuccessful Yazoo
Grants of 1789. Discussion of the details of the 1789 land grants by the state of Georgia to four
companies, in a similar fashion to what would occur more definitively in 1795, serves multiple
purposes. The 1789 grants elucidate problems with the view that the 1795 scandal was purely
driven by civic outrage above all other factors, and it also demonstrates the severity of the Indian
problem for Georgia, since as part of the purported rationale for the sale was to raise funds for
the militia.
Second, the transition from the sale of 1789 to its fallout will place the focus of the paper
on the federal government and actions taken in response to the first Yazoo sale, acts which
damaged its reputation as an impartial guardian of the rights and security of all American
citizens. This section will also discuss federal acts not directly associated with Yazoo that stained
the government’s image among those living on the frontier and those sympathetic to
frontiersmen and ideologies tending toward Jeffersonianism. Third, I will examine the role of the
famous 1795 Yazoo scandal itself and show the rhetoric, extremity, and far-reaching
consequences of the public discourse throughout that year and into 1796, demonstrating that the
anger expressed by Georgia’s citizens was caught up with federal Indian and land policy as well
as a dissatisfaction with the ruling political faction of the state and its perceived ambivalence to
the Indian threat. This state faction, Federalist in description, and its corruption, were conflated
with a federal government that the people of Georgia viewed as giving undue protection to
“savages” and depriving the people of the state of their republican birthright.
Terry 9
As we will see, the Yazoo controversy was essentially intertwined with the political
forces that led to the establishment of the first organized political parties: principally federal land
and Indian affairs policy. Anger against the Georgia legislature was ultimately a surrogate for
pent-up rage against two other entities entirely: the federal government, specifically the
Washington administration’s Indian policy, and the Native American tribes in the Old Southwest
themselves, especially the powerful Creek and Cherokee Nations. In the time between the
adoption of the Constitution in 1787 and the Yazoo Fraud in 1795, the people of Georgia,
especially frontiersmen and those sympathetic to their plight, grew increasingly frustrated with
perceived federal neglect of the Southwest, inaction against the threat of the Creek Indians, and
misapplication of federal power against the frontier and those sympathetic to republican political
positions. The Yazoo Fraud was appropriated by state political leaders like James Jackson to
eviscerate the Federalist Party power structure in the state and to attack Federalist policies on a
national level. The broader spectrum of the Georgian population used the scandal as an avenue to
attack the federal government’s Indian and western territorial policies and fully express growing
populist resentment toward a government and political party which was seen to largely ignore the
Old Southwest and, in some cases, actively protect the rights of Native nations at the expense of
white settlers. The awakening of this populist sentiment was to have lasting implications for the
future of American party politics, regionalism, and, most significantly and directly, the course of
United States–Native American relations and Indian Removal.
Terry 10
A late nineteenth-century depiction of George Washington meeting Creek chiefs in New York. From Harper’s
Magazine.
Because Yazoo is an event that on the surface only has implications for state history and
some significance in Constitutional law, the existing body of work is somewhat sparse. The
definitive work on the subject is Claude Peter Magrath’s Law and Politics in the New Republic:
The Case of Fletcher v. Peck, published in 1967. As its title would imply, the work focuses
heavily on the Yazoo Fraud’s implications for legal history, though it is not without detailed
background discussion on the state’s internal political situation and certain attributes of that
political dynamic which were unique to Georgia. Thomas Abernethy’s The South in the New
Nation, and George Lamplugh’s Politics on the Periphery offer a more detailed look at the sociopolitical situation in Georgia and the region in the 1790s. These works form the framework for
this paper’s explication of Georgia and regional politics. The development of attitudes toward the
federal government is perhaps one of the most extensively researched subjects in American
historical writing, especially given its implications for modern politics, and some specific
Terry 11
theories regarding regional views of federal power in the late eighteenth century exist, providing
meaningful insight into views of Southern and Western frontiersmen toward the federal
government, especially the Washington administration. The writings of Andrew Cayton are
particularly informative in this regard, though the case of Yazoo is not specifically discussed. 9
For the role of Native Americans in the Yazoo crisis, there is also little direct scholarship,
but there is a comparatively rich one about their plight in the Old Southwest more generally.
Kathleen DuVal of the University of North Carolina, who has graciously supplied me with some
of her notes on Yazoo company agents and Spanish government officials in West Florida and
Louisiana, has provided very recent insights into the role of Native Nations in the American
Revolution in her 2015 book Independence Lost. While that work focuses on the Revolutionary
War itself, it also develops the immediate history of conflict with native nations, especially the
Creeks, in detail, which is critical to understanding the mindset of 1790s Georgians toward their
Creek neighbors and toward the frontier more generally. This paper will contribute to these
bodies of scholarship by highlighting the importance of land, Indian, and foreign policy to the
Yazoo debate, and, consequently, the impact of that debate on national politics.
Andrew R. L. Cayton, “‘Separate Interests’ and the Nation-State: The Washington Administration and the Origins
of Regionalism in the Trans-Appalachian West,” The Journal of American History 79, no. 1 (June 1992):. 39-67.
9
Terry 12
Map from George R. Lamplugh, Politics on the Periphery: Factions and Parties in Georgia, 1783-1806.
Origins of Yazoo
“It therefore becomes the duty of the good people of this commonwealth… to be prepared
against an event highly probable, to wit, that of an Indian war.”—Statement of the Georgia
House of Assembly, August 3, 178610
The Yazoo Crisis of 1795 was rooted in a series of events that occurred several years
earlier, and dealt with largely the same lands that would become the source of such animated
10
Georgia State Gazette (Augusta), November 18, 1786.
Terry 13
controversy in the more well-known land fraud. In 1789 the Georgia legislature passed a
measure to sell to three companies, the Virginia Yazoo Company, the Tennessee Company, and
the South Carolina Yazoo Company, tens of millions of acres of largely unsettled lands in
western Georgia.11 While the response to this sale was not the same as the reaction to the later
controversial sale of 1795, it exposed many issues that in the intervening years would grow in
importance to public perception of the Georgian population and would make the Yazoo Land
Fraud the seminal event in Georgia in the early republic. The cloud of the perceived Indian
menace to state society hung over the first Yazoo sale. In addition, the activities of the land
companies exposed, for the first time, serious rifts between the federal government’s Indian
policy and the aims of frontier states, such as Georgia.
Georgia in 1789 was very much a state of the frontier. The youngest of the original
thirteen states, it was also very sparsely populated. The population density was especially sparse
given the fact that the state’s borders at the time theoretically extended to the Mississippi River
and included much of the modern-day states of Alabama and Mississippi. While most states with
large western land claims had given their territories to the United States during the Articles of
Confederation in the 1780s, Georgia had not; from this intransigence, the Yazoo fraud was made
possible. Even when considering the present-day borders of the state, the government had only
organized about a third of that territory into counties in 1790.12 The rest of the territory was
inhabited by several native peoples, most prominent among which were the Creek, Cherokee,
Chickasaw, and the Choctaw. These four tribes, along with the powerful Seminoles of Florida,
would later become known as the “Five Civilized Tribes,” and were also the subjects of the most
11
12
Lamplugh, Politics on the Periphery, 68.
Ibid., 18.
Terry 14
notorious instances of forced Indian removal in the 1830s.13 In the late 1780s, the majority of the
land claimed to be the sovereign state of Georgia was under the effective jurisdiction of these
powerful tribes.
At the time of Georgia’s ratification of the Constitution in 1788, the Indian group that
was of the most immediate concern to settlers on the state’s frontier was known as the Creeks.
Their inland location meant the Creeks were a significant impediment to settlers attempting to
strike west from the settled areas of the state along the Savannah River and the border with South
Carolina. The Creeks themselves were not a single tribe with completely homogenous language
and culture, but rather a loose confederation of tribes in central and southern Georgia which had
only arisen in roughly the last century before American independence.14 Although they were not
a single unitary tribe, the Creeks still posed a formidable threat to American settlement in the
Southwest. In the 1780s, the northern Creeks came under the leadership of a powerful chief,
Alexander McGillivray, the son of a Scottish tradesman and a Creek mother.15 He had served the
Creek nation during the Revolution, in which the tribe had maintained an alliance with Great
Britain against the United States.16 Georgia proved to be one of the most successful theaters of
war for Britain; it captured Savannah and reinstituted royal government, something which the
Crown did not accomplish in any other state.17 The recent history of the Creek alliance with the
British, coupled with the appearance of a strong Creek national cohesion under the guidance of a
Arrell M Gibson, “Constitutional Experience of the Five Civilized Tribes,” American Indian Law Review 2, no. 2
(Winter 1974): 17.
14
Kathleen DuVal, Independence Lost: Lives on the Edge of the American Revolution (New York: Random House,
2015). 25.
15
Ibid., 27.
16
Ibid., 78.
17
Edward J. Cashin, "Revolutionary War in Georgia," New Georgia Encyclopedia, October 6, 2015, accessed 31
January 2016, http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology/revolutionary-war-georgia.
13
Terry 15
powerful chief of partial European descent, meant that Georgians viewed the Creek Nation as an
urgent, perhaps even existential threat.
The narrative of Georgian life in the later 1780s was largely defined by the Creek threat.
Georgian leadership made no qualms in highlighting the savageness and severity of their attacks
along the frontier. In a direct meeting between state-appointed commissioners and various Creek
“Head Men” in 1786, the commissioners spoke in a very direct tone, accusing the Creeks of
having “barbarously murdered our innocent women and children” at the command of the “Half
Breed” Chief McGillivray.18 The summit in 1786 did not produce a lasting peace agreement for
the frontier, to say the least. The newspapers of Georgia are littered with a constant stream of
frantic reports of murder and destruction on both sides of the rough border with native tribes. An
August 1786 document of the Georgia House of Assembly notes that some Creek incursions
were even penetrating to the “old settlements of the state.”19
The Creek threat to Georgia continued largely unabated throughout the final years of the
decade. The consistent presence of such a significant threat in the western borderlands began to
have a marked impact on state society. The Independence Day celebrations of 1788 saw an
explicit call to arms against the Creek Nation. The Augusta Chapter of the Society of the
Cincinnati, in their Fourth of July toast, called for a “speedy reconciliation or serious war with
the Creek Indians.” 20 A call to “serious war” speaks to a sense of frustration in this situation, that
the recourses committed to combatting the Creeks were insufficient. The status quo on the
frontier was, for many Georgians, painfully static, not having changed significantly since the end
18
Georgia State Gazette (Augusta), November 4, 1786.
Ibid.
20
Georgia State Gazette (Augusta), July 5, 1788.
19
Terry 16
of hostilities with Britain in 1783. Many, like the Society of the Cincinnati, felt that not enough
resources were committed to the struggle to win the frontier and to secure the future of the state.
The Yazoo grants of 1789 came in the midst of this climate of fear and anxiety about the
fate of the Southwest. The investors themselves were an eclectic group of individuals from
throughout the United States, though they tended to be from the South. Patrick Henry was
perhaps one of the more notable individuals involved in the Yazoo lands and was a principal
investor of the Virginia Yazoo Company.21 The sale consisted of lands that were under the
control of major tribes such as the Chickasaw and Choctaw, but did little to affect the more
immediate situation on the much closer frontier with the Creek and Cherokee. The reaction to the
sale differed substantially to that of the Yazoo sale of 1795 and was very mild in comparison.
There was, understandably, some incredulity as to the scale of the sale and the swiftness with
which it was executed. One contributor to The Augusta Chronicle expressed his disbelief that “in
the course of nine days, a bill of so much importance was precipitated through the House of
Representatives, and every attempt to make the least amendment was frustrated.” The contributor
even went so far as to claim that “the rights of Georgia have been disposed of…without
opposition and in exclusion of her own citizens.”22 Such criticism of the 1789 grants was
relatively rare and extremely tame compared with what was to come, however, this restrained
criticism is somewhat odd, given that, by all appearances, the two bills passed under similar
circumstances.
Though there were never any direct accusations of bribery in 1789 and immediately
thereafter, the attempt to dispose of the backcountry injected a further element of uncertainty into
21
Thomas P. Abernethy, A History of the South: Volume IV, The South in the New Nation: 1789-1819 (Baton
Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1961), 77.
22
Augusta Chronicle,. December 19, 1789.
Terry 17
frontier life and instilled an impression that the West was the province of large companies, and
not the public domain of the state, held in trust for all. The Yazoo Grants of 1789 also provided
some of the foundation for the intervening events that led to the intense backlash in 1795. One of
the principal accusations in the scandal of 1795 centered on the idea of the existence of a
corporate-legislative collusion which undermined the interest of the common good for the benefit
of pure personal profit. The true extent of collusion in 1795 will likely not ever be truly known,
but in the events of the first Yazoo Grants, there is the relatively well documented case of The
Combined Society. With a name that naturally rings of conspiracy, the group was organized to
capitalize on the speculative atmosphere in the immediate aftermath of the 1789 grants, created
in secrecy for the sole purpose of obtaining for its members as much cheap land as possible.
After an unflattering exposé by state senator James McNeil, the public was beginning to see
direct evidence of the poor moral fiber of speculators.23 The notion of nefarious corporate
interests, raised by the events of 1789 and 1790, was solidly placed into the public
consciousness. In addition to exposing the public to the inner workings of the land speculator,
perhaps more importantly, the grants of 1789 brought to light serious differences in the land and
Indian policies of the Georgia state government and those of the newly formed federal
administration of President George Washington.
23
Lamplugh, Politics on the Periphery, 74.
Terry 18
The State of the West
“[The west has an] aversion to Congress which was then acting in a despotic manner.”— James
O’Fallon to Spanish Governor Esteban Miró of Louisiana, May 24, 179024
The adoption of the federal Constitution brought with it significant expansion of
centralized oversight of the government on the western territories of the United States. While the
previous government under the Articles of Confederation was regarded as anywhere from
inefficient to totally inept even in its day, it did manage to achieve notable successes in western
land management and territorial regulation. The Confederation Congress negotiated the cession
of most of the western lands claimed by the various states west of the Appalachian Mountains to
be managed as federal territory, with the notable exception of Georgia. The lack of
Congressional control over the Southwest meant that attempts to regulate the West were largely
restricted to the Northwest. The Northwest Territory was also surprisingly well organized, at
least on paper, for an organization as bereft of authority as the Congress of the Confederation.
The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 remains a lasting blueprint of development for the entire
region and included the bold act of outlawing slavery in the entire territory.25 In Indian affairs,
the Congress also made moves to assert its auhority. In the Treaties of Hopewell, Congressional
representatives effected agreements with several tribes, including the Chickasaw and Cherokee.
The tribes were acknowledged to be “under the protection of the United States of America.”26
Even when negotiating from a position of little power, the central government was making clear
a notion of federal protection of Indian Nations.
24
Pontalba Papers, Temple Bodely Collection, Filson Historical Society, Louisville, Kentucky.
Northwest Ordinance, July 13, 1787, The Avalon Project, Yale Law School, accessed 20 February 2016,
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/nworder.asp.
26
Treaty With the Chickasaw, January 10, 1786, The Avalon Project, Yale Law School, accessed 21 February 2016,
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/chic1786.asp.
25
Terry 19
The Constitution created a powerful government that would expand on the moderate
successes of the Confederation in the West. The establishment of a strong central executive in
the office of the president was especially conducive to greater federal involvement in the affairs
of the West. Armed with significant discretionary power and Congressional taxes to back it up,
President Washington embarked on a program of negotiating treaties with Indian Nations with
greater frequency and on a much wider scope than did his predecessors in the Confederation
Congress. The landmark Indian treaty of Washington’s first term was the Treaty of New York,
signed in the then capital city of the young nation. Designed to be a more comprehensive deal
with the Creek nation than the patchwork of state treaties and agreements that had preceded it,
the treaty was signed by no fewer than twenty-four Creek chiefs, including Alexander
McGillivray himself.27 The presence in the nation’s capital of the chief considered the first
among equals for the entire Creek nation, a man who by all accounts was a strong threat to the
security of the southwestern frontier, was somewhat shocking and would have galled many a
Georgian, some of whom faced the very real danger of Creek attack on a daily basis. However,
the treaty projected the federal government’s position on Indian affairs quite clearly. The
authority given the government to negotiate with Indian nations by the Constitution was going to
be pursued to the fully by the Washington administration, and federal protection of Indian tribes’
territorial sovereignty in exchange for certain concessions was to be the norm.28 The Treaty
contained several articles that curtailed state rights significantly. One clause stipulated that “if
any citizen of the United States…shall attempt to settle on any of the Creeks lands, such person
shall forfeit the protection of the United States, and the Creeks may punish him or not, as they
27
Treaty With the Creeks: 1790, The Avalon Project, Yale Law School, accessed 10 March 2016,
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/chic1786.asp.
28
U.S. Constitution. Art.1 Sec. 8.
Terry 20
please,” and another guaranteed that any crime committed by a citizen against a Creek would be
treated as if it had been against a “white inhabitant.”29
Reaction to the Treaty of New York in Georgia was overwhelmingly negative. Coming
very soon after the 1789 Yazoo Grants, the treaty served as a direct rebuke of legislation that
freely sold land that was occupied by tribes generally considered to be of the same legal status as
the Creeks. It also presumed jurisdiction over lands that were wholly in the boundaries of what
Georgians considered sovereign state territory. In an editorial addressed generally to the citizens
of Georgia, someone calling himself “a Sentinel” railed against the treaty as an evil from which
“no possible advantage might arise.” 30 He was especially skeptical of the ability of the treaty to
produce a lasting peace on the frontier. The Sentinel wrote that “[Georgians] have but little
prospect of a peace with such a faithless, restless neighbor…no power on earth can secure it.”
Echoing earlier sentiments in a call to action, the writer proclaimed that “therefore, it is your
interest and your duty, to be more prepared for war than ever.”31
In the same issue of The Augusta Chronicle, another contributor calling himself Metellus
heaped on criticism of federal Indian policy. In an article dripping with disdain, Metellus decried
the acts of “some, possessed of more federalism than foresight,” who “have still a reliance on the
honor and justice of Congress.”32 In this person’s view, the infatuation that some had with the
new Constitution led them to abandon and even actively infringe on the rights of the state of
Georgia and support federal efforts to accommodate the destructive forces of the Indians.
Metellus’ use of the word “federalism” in this context carried two meanings: he was referring to
29
Treaty With the Creeks: 1790, The Avalon Project.
Augusta Chronicle, October 30, 1790.
31
Ibid.
32
Ibid.
30
Terry 21
not only an abundance of misplaced loyalty to the federal government above that of the state, but
was also likely making an a reference to the group of national politicians supporting Alexander
Hamilton and the nucleus of the future Federalist Party. Metellus made it abundantly clear that
federal policy in what he considered “OUR western territory” was either grossly incompetent or
genuinely affectionate toward the natives—both, as he saw it, grave violations of Georgia’s
sovereignty. To the sharp-tongued Metellus, inaction would mean “that liberty, (which now but
breathes here) will exist no more to us, from that instant we surrender one iota of our reserved
rights.”33 Further speculation was made as to the ultimate ends of Washington’s Indian policy.
Another contributor to the Chronicle mused that “[Congress] may give part of the Georgia or
Carolina to the Creeks or Cherokees, part to the Choctaws, part to the Chickasaws… and after all
make the Georgians and Carolinians aliens in their own lands…to gain the friendship of
savages.”34
The State of Georgia, as well as suffering circumvention of its authority in the
negotiation of the Treaty of New York, experienced embarrassment through the fact that its
policy in the form of the Yazoo Grants now directly contradicted federal policy, especially given
the important precedent set by the article of the treaty prohibiting settlement on Creek land. Even
if federalist-leaning politicians in Augusta had desired to coordinate policy with the Washington
administration, there was little opportunity to do so. The Yazoo companies now had a mandate,
issued to them by the state, but in opposition to federal treaty, to secure and settle the lands that
they had purchased in the Yazoo country. Including the jurisdiction of the Indians and the claim
of Spain to portions of the territory, the Treaty of New York now meant that in some locations
33
34
Ibid.
Augusta Chronicle, November 13, 1790.
Terry 22
there were five competing jurisdictions over land in the western part of Georgia. This was a
chaotic situation and, given the right circumstances, could have sparked open war with the
several Indian Nations and perhaps Spain itself. Into this maelstrom of competing claims for title
and constant conflict on the border of settlement and native-held land entered the adventurer who
would draw the most intense federal rebuke of acts against Indians to date. Doctor James
O’Fallon, an Irish Catholic and an agent of the South Carolina Yazoo Company, was about to
make his mark and heighten tensions throughout the region.
Doctor O’Fallon’s Debacle
“Doctor O’Fallon’s schemes have all blown up…”—Secretary of War Henry Knox to President
Washington, June 6, 1791.35
James O’Fallon, often referred to as a psychical in many records of the day, was, while
something of a personal enigma, a man who in many ways typified the limitless imagination and
boundless possibilities of the early republic. Like the exploits of his more famous and
accomplished contemporary, Aaron Burr, his actions at times bordered on treasonous. Like Burr,
he also possessed remarkably similar grandiose plans for the establishment of a western
confederacy that would be independent of the United States.36 As startling as these designs may
be, it is not for these wild schemes alone that he became significant to the story of the Yazoo.
While O’Fallon’s adventurism alone is fascinating, it is the response to his vainglorious actions
35
To George Washington from Henry Knox, 6 June 1791, Founders Online, National Archives, accessed 24
February 2016. http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-08-02-0174.
36
Morrison Shafroth, “The Aaron Burr Conspiracy,” American Bar Association Journal 18, no. 10 (October 1932):
671 accessed 10 April 2016, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25709909.
Terry 23
that would further alienate many in the southwestern frontier to federalist and quasi-aristocratic
authority structures, and also heighten awareness of Indian threats.
Relatively little is known about James O’Fallon’s early life. He was a first generation
American, born in 1749 in County Roscommon in Ireland. Being born to a relatively wealthy
family, he was able to overcome the hindrances of his Catholic upbringing and went to Scotland
to study medicine at the University of Edinburgh.37 He eventually moved to the American
colonies shortly before the outbreak of the Revolution and settled in Wilmington, North
Carolina. The details are somewhat unclear, but Doctor O’Fallon was involved in revolutionary
activity in Wilmington and eventually served in the medical service of the Continental Army,
mainly in the North.38
Doctor O’Fallon settled in Charleston after the war and was a member of several antiBritish and anti-Loyalist political societies, but otherwise did little of note in the immediate postwar period. It was only in the late 1780s that he became involved in intrigues in the West.
Having already sent overtures to Spanish officials for the purpose of organizing Catholic
immigration to strengthen the colony of East Florida, a scheme that never bore fruit, O’Fallon
became attached to the group of speculators that formed the core investors of the South Carolina
Yazoo Company. This company also had begun correspondence with Spanish officials, mainly
Governor Esteban Miró, regarding the possibility of the establishment of a colony in the lands of
the southwestern territories held by Georgia.39 In his capacity as general agent for the South
Carolina Yazoo Company, O’Fallon wrote letters to Miró beginning in 1790, explaining his
John Carl Parish, “The Intrigues of Doctor James O'Fallon,” The Mississippi Valley Historical Review 17, no. 2
(September 1930): 231, accessed 28 February 2016, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1892600.
38
Ibid.
39
Ibid.
37
Terry 24
employer’s position and generally attempting to curry favor with the governor. O’Fallon wrote at
length displaying his dismay with the state of the American government and noted a general
resentment for Congress on the western frontier.40 Perhaps to convince the governor of his
genuine intentions, or perhaps out of true feelings of Catholic comradery, the doctor even made a
declaration of fraternal loyalty to Spain, declaring that “my aims are solely for the purpose of
advancing the interests of Spain, to whom I find myself hereditarily drawn.”41 It is somewhat
surprising that Doctor O’Fallon would be driven to such ends, acts that amounted to treason,
without any clear motive aside from his Catholicism and the promise of land. The most notorious
case of treason in the early republic, the defection of Benedict Arnold, was at least spurred on by
what could be viewed as a personal affront, Arnold having been passed over for promotion. In
this case, there is no such clear chain of causation that led O’Fallon into dealings with Spain. The
desire for self-aggrandizement and a sense of adventure, combined with the relative newness of
the American nation producing a weak sense of loyalty, can both be seen as possible
explanations for the doctor’s deeds. There is also the possibility that O’Fallon was driven by
greed alone, and that the Yazoo Lands represented a chance for him to make a name for himself
regardless of what federal law might state.
These letters were never leaked or otherwise made available to the press, and widespread
outrage over the sale was never ignited. When the South Carolina Yazoo Company actually
made moves to occupy and establish itself in the territory it had purchased from the state of
Georgia, the friendly attitude with the Spanish soured somewhat over the issue of Spain’s Native
American allies. This is to say nothing of the newly minted federal government, what James
40
41
Pontalba Papers, Temple Bodely Collection..
Ibid.
Terry 25
O’Fallon dismissively termed the “Atlantic Confederation,” and eventual federal condemnation
of the South Carolina Company’s actions.
Map from Thomas P. Abernethy, A History of the South: Volume IV, The South in the New Nation.
To fully understand the social conditions in which Doctor O’Fallon was making his
overtures to Spain and the climate in which the Washington administration brought his
adventures to heel, the role of speculation in American society of the 1790s must be understood.
In many respects, the actions of O’Fallon and the South Carolina Yazoo Company more
generally were not completely outside the norms of American society in the formative years of
the early republic. For decades prior to, during, and after the American Revolution, the wealthier
and more adventurous elements of society in the British Colonies continually embarked in the
enterprise of land speculation. George Washington was a notable investor in speculation in the
western reaches of Virginia’s colonial holdings, lands that would become the present state of
Terry 26
Kentucky.42 The pursuit of wealth in a market for land was pervasive and in the pre-war period
often led to intense disagreements with the British Crown. The proclamation of 1763 was
especially galling to colonial economic elites in that it immediately made any investments of the
speculators or “landjobbers” practically meaningless in the eyes of the law while accomplishing
little in a concrete effort to halt the flow of westward-bound settlers.43 This interference of the
crown in their investment activities was one of the several reasons many of the most
economically powerful elites in America eventually sided with the Patriot cause once hostilities
broke out in April 1775. Even while the war itself raged on, some the economic elites who
largely controlled the various American states sought to preserve personal wealth in decisions
concerning the progress of the war. At one point, the reticence of the leaders of Maryland to
ratify the Articles of Confederation in order to preserve pre-war speculation even caused France
to openly criticize the lack of political unity of its ally.44 Though O’Fallon was no high placedpolitical elite, the practice of private citizens engaging in increasingly shaky business practices
and a heavy reliance on risky financial assets was prevelent throughout the new nation. In the
major coastal centers, Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, the beginnings of global finance
collided with the hodgepodge of conflicting land title in increasingly unstable fashion. The
position of speculator had, by the end of the eighteenth century, become increasingly focused on
nebulous investments rather than a drive to sponsor tangible settlements and material goods.
Instead of actually settling claimed territories, deeds were traded in eastern markets in
speculative bubbles. O’Fallon and the South Carolina Yazoo Company’s attempts to actually
42
Woody Holton, Forced Founders: Indians, Debtors, Slaves, and the Making of the American Revolution in
Virginia (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1999), 9.
43
Ibid., 29.
44
George L. Sioussat and J. Maccubbin, “The Chevalier de la Luzerne and the Ratification of the Articles of
Confederation by Maryland, 1780-1781,” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 60, no. 4 (October,
1936): 391-418.
Terry 27
settle the Yazoo were anomalies in increasingly paper-driven money making schemes. A
particularly notorious case of high-stakes financial speculation that drove resentment toward the
activities of coastal merchants and financiers was the case of Samuel Dexter of Boston, detailed
in Kamensky’s Exchange Artist. Dexter dealt, among other financial products, in Yazoo deeds
that had only a tenuous connection with the original companies that purchased them from the
state. In a series of risky endeavors that led to the first large-scale bank failure in the United
States, financiers like Dexter and the companies that obtained land in the first place tainted the
entire profession of banking and finance in the eyes of many and led to a close association
between the young Federalist Party and the interests of risky investments.45 The grants of 1789
and the escapades of the South Carolina Yazoo Company came at the beginning of this process
of association, but are firmly in the framework of the trend toward a conflation of the Federalist
political persuasion, the actions of the federal government itself, and regional favoritism toward
the coast and New England.
In late 1790, the South Carolina Yazoo Company began to put forward its plan to assume
control of its lands and make good on its claims. The company raised a military detachment for
the purpose of securing its territory in the West, and it was, at least on paper, a significant force.
The War Department, then led by Secretary Henry Knox, reported that the Yazoo Battalion, as it
would come to be known, had no less than thirty-four commissioned officers and an
indeterminate strength of regular soldiers.46 This was at a time when the United States Army
boasted a grand total of 1,216 enlisted soldiers and only about ten commissioned officers.47 In
Jane Kamsenky, The Exchange Artist: A Tale of High-Flying Speculation and America’s First Banking Collapse
(New York: Viking, 2008), 169.
46
Indian Affairs: Volume I, American State Papers, 1st Congress, 3rd Session, Library of Congress: A Century of
Lawmaking for a New Nation, accessed 28 February 2016, https://memory.loc.gov/cgibin/ampage?collId=llsp&fileName=007/llsp007.db&recNum=118.
47
Ibid.
45
Terry 28
light of this, it is probable that the all of the commissioned officers of the Yazoo battalion were
not militarily necessary. Many of the appointments were likely paid favors and the men who held
them probably did not expect to see action but rather payment in the form of land deeds of the
new company’s holdings. As general agent for the company, it was O’Fallon’s role to proceed
west and assemble the battalion, settlers, and go on to New Orleans to obtain the Spanish
government’s consent in settling the area claimed by the company, which was in territory
disputed with Spain. The Spanish Governor of Louisiana, Esteban Miró, informed the company
that its claim to lands in the disputed territory, especially the portion that encroached closely on
the settlement of Natchez, “so far as it did not belong to the Indians, was in the possession of
Spain, and that all attempts to settle it would be resisted.”48 It is was in response to this
opposition that O’Fallon, perhaps out of desperation, or perhaps revealing long-simmering
cultural resentment of the status of Catholics, wrote his letter professing loyalty to Spain. Miró
found the letters and the prospect of a quasi-independent buffer between Louisiana and the
United States intriguing and even forwarded them on to Madrid. However, Spain never made any
definitive response to the doctor’s proposal. Spanish authorities were sufficiently worried of
forcible settlement of the Yazoo lands by a company which indicated that it would disregard the
territorial sovereignty rights of the Natchez colony and Spain’s Indian allies that they supplied
arms to the Natives to prepare for that eventuality.49
O’Fallon, undeterred, sought to raise troops in Kentucky to make good on the company’s
claims in the Yazoo. Indian rights were of little to no concern to him, and he saw the protests of
Spain a temporary setback. The doctor’s actions to settle the territories of the South Carolina
48
49
Charles Homer Haskins, The Yazoo Land Companies (New York: The Knickerbocker Press, 1891), 11.
Ibid., 15.
Terry 29
Yazoo Company ran square up against the activist Indian policy of President George Washington
and his new federal administration. Aside from the competing claims of Spain, Georgia, and the
Company, the federal government also claimed ultimate jurisdiction over the lands around
Natchez.50 The acts of O’Fallon stood in direct contradiction of both Indian and Spanish claims
and in conflict with an earlier treaty signed with the Choctaw tribe under the Articles of
Confederation that allotted them protected territory that overlapped with the grant of the Georgia
General Assembly.
President Washington and Secretary of War Henry Knox saw the reckless actions of
O’Fallon in an extremely negative light and viewed them as a direct threat to peace. In a letter to
the president, Knox noted with some sense of urgency that that “certain persons claiming under
the said Companies are raising troops for the purpose of establishing, by force, one or more
settlements on the lands belonging to the aforesaid indian nations.”51 It is notable that Knox did
not focus on the potential ramifications of the Yazoo companies’ adventurous plans for
settlement in terms of relations with Spain, but rather possible fallout with Native populations.
Even at the highest levels of government, the cultural importance of Indians and Indian relations
to the future of the American state was pervasive. In this sense Secretary Knox and the people of
frontier Georgia shared common concerns, though they would vary widely on the appropriate
course of action. Knox concluded that Yazoo adventurism was a grave threat to the stability of
the republic, writing: “the authority of the United States is thus set at defiance—their faith
pledged to the said indians and their constitution and laws violated, and a general indian War
50
Treaty with the Choctaw, 1786, art. 3, Oklahoma State University Library, accessed 16 March 2016,
http://digital.library.okstate.edu/kappler/vol2/treaties/cho0011.htm.
51
Henry Knox to George Washington, January 22, 1791, Founders Online, National Archives, accessed 29 February
2016, http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-07-02-0146.
Terry 30
excited on principles disgraceful to the Government.”52 Washington agreed with this conclusion
and denounced James O’Fallon in the most public way conceivable, by issuing a presidential
proclamation decrying his violation of Indian treaties, eviscerating his credibility, and directing
all citizens of the United States to avoid association with him. O’Fallon, not being foolish
enough to openly defy the power of the new president, quickly stepped down from any active
effort to mobilize a force to take the Yazoo, and the company severed ties with him.53 In part, the
proclamation reads: “It is my earnest desire that those who have incautiously associated
themselves with the said James O'Fallon may be warned of their danger, I have therefore thought
fit to publish this proclamation, hereby declaring that all persons violating the treaties and act
aforesaid shall be prosecuted with the utmost rigor of the law.” 54
Doctor O’Fallon’s direct role in the Yazoo crisis largely ended as a consequence of this
chastisement, but the legacy of his cavalier approach to the western territories and Washington’s
rebuke would serve to directly inform the development of anger and discontent toward heavyhanded federalism. O’Fallon’s significance to the Yazoo would ultimately not be his role in the
escalation of tensions between Spain and the American government and an eventual settlement
of the West Florida dispute between the two. James O’Fallon rather became a sort of martyr for
federal government overreach and illegitimate use of power. The Doctor acting as a surrogate for
populism at first seems odd, given that as an agent of a speculatory company and servant of
wealthy investors, one would be inclined to associate him directly with the Federalist Party.
O’Fallon instead served to further agitate those tending toward Jeffersonian ideals by standing in
52
Ibid.
Parish, “The Intrigues of Doctor James O'Fallon,” 256.
54
George Washington, "Proclamation 2 - Respecting the Acts of James O'Fallon in Kentucky," March 19, 1791, The
American Presidency Project, Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, accessed 20 February 2016,
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=65590.
53
Terry 31
direct contrast to the government’s Indian policy and the notion of federal power itself. This
nuanced effect, which played out in the state’s newspapers, increased resentment against
Federalist sympathizers and their financier allies, and was one of the factors that led to the 1789
land grants and laid the groundwork for the scandal of 1795.
A letter by one Daniel Gaines to the Chronicle in May of 1791 is particularly elucidative
in this respect. Notably not using a pseudonym, Gaines lamented those who would make protest
against the Yazoo sale. While expressing a somewhat understanding tone when considering
those who had opposed the 1789 sale, Gaines expressed his frustration at those who “so warmly
opposed the Yazou [sic] bill, [and] directed the passions of other to a wrong channel.” 55 In
Gaines’ view, this improper channel of anger, against a group he referred to as the “Tennessee
adventurers,” was wasted; he considered the federal government the true foe. Gaines did not
perceive the actions of Dr. O’Fallon as strictly money-seeking ventures on behalf of his
company, but rather well-intentioned efforts to settle the land and revoke Indian claim and title
as necessary. The Washington administration, according to Gaines, consciously labored against
enterprises such as that of O’Fallon with the intention of protecting Indian rights and avoiding
overt contact between natives and settlers. Gaines wrote:
When our contest began with Great-Britain, one of the heaviest charges brought against
the King and his Ministry, was their encouraging the savages to let loose the bloody
tomahawk and scalping knife, on those unfortunate sons of liberty who might casually
fall in their power: And will Americans, who call themselves patriots, Christians; or even
men possessed of ever so moderate a share of common humanity, applaud our merciful
Federal rulers, for improving on the horrid policy? Heaven forbid!
I know some among the thoughtless, who think Congress and President omnipotent or
infallible, argue that the Tenessee adventurers are engaged in a lawless undertaking, and
that they must take the consequence. The British partizans used the same argument, and
with at least as many fallacious reasons to support it.56
55
56
Augusta Chronicle, May 28, 1790.
Ibid.
Terry 32
Gaines did not restrain himself in his attack against the government and Indian polices of 1791;
in his view, the American experiment had come full circle and the federal government now
resembled the British Crown. He used imagery that hit at the core of the 1790s Georgian’s fears
appealed to his most base sensibilities. Gaines presented the threat of Indian war and general
anarchy on the frontier upon the reader with the ominous image of a blood-drenched tomahawk
and its quest for white scalps. The thought of government acting in the interests of, or even allied
with, native tribes was a concept generally abhorrent, especially to those who lived proximate to
the frontier and the boundary of settled lands and relative wilderness. Suggesting such a
connection indicated Gaines’ clear distaste for the state of federal governance and its policy
toward Natives, comparing their acts directly to that of Britain and their hated Loyalist
sympathizers in America. In Gaines’ view, a blind faith in the righteousness of the federal
administration, even though it was led by the illustrious General Washington, could not be
sustained if a just and secure society was to be maintained. The intense sarcasm with which he
describes this faith in an all-powerful president was an especially prescient comment for
Georgians in the spring of 1791. In May of that year, President Washington arrived in Savannah
as part of a tour of Georgia and the rest of the South. Savannah gushed over the arrival of the
president-general, greeting him with feasts, receptions, and parades, with taxpayers of the city
ultimately footing the bill.57 Gaines’ editorial, coming as it did so soon after the president’s visit
and the proclamation condemning O’Fallon, does much explain his perception of the
population’s blind faith in the federalist powers-that-be. The president’s warm embrace from
57
Walter J. Fraser, Jr., Savannah in the Old South (Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 2003), 148.
Terry 33
downriver, mercantile Savannah also heightened a connection between trade, finance, and the
Federalists.
Frustration with the actions of the president was compounded by the perceptions of his
treatment of Native American leaders. The Treaty of New York, as well as providing the legal
rationale that doomed O’Fallon, galled many who saw the acknowledgement of Creek chiefs at
the very seat of federal power as an affront to decent society. Returning to remarks written by “A
Sentinel” proves insightful as to just how the treaty impacted public discourse when considering
the acts of O’Fallon. Sentinel expressed disgust at the treaty and the fact that Alexander
McGillivray had been given an honorary commission in the United States Army: “A British
subject–a Spanish Officer–an Indian chief–and now—‘Oh Shame, where is thy blush!’-made a
Brigadier-General in the army of the United States!”58 He went on that “the other states in the
Union have long enjoyed uninterrupted peace, while you [Georgia] have been continually
disturbed, harassed and plundered, by a cruel, faithless, blood-thirsty, savage enemy; exited to
ten-fold rancor by the insidious arts of their mongrel chief [McGillivray]…[who] possesses all
the cunning, ferocity, and vindictive rage of Indian assassins.” In addition to recognizing a
neglect of Georgia, Sentinel made the case that the treaty of New York, in addition to appeasing
blood-thirsty Creeks, robbed “those intrepid heroes, who in the glorious cause of freedom, have
bravely fought and freely bled” of their rightful due and reward in land. By recognizing the
Creek territory and providing “a coarse and scanty fare” to deserving veterans, Washington’s
administration “promoted over their [the veterans] heads, an avowed enemy to the cause in
which they lavished, without reward, in the flower of their days.”59 However, some of Sentinel’s
58
59
Augusta Chronicle, October1790.
Ibid.
Terry 34
anger is revealed to be perhaps at least somewhat directed to the Nonintercourse Act of 1790,
and not the Treaty of New York exclusively. In one section of his anti-federal diatribe, Sentinel
stated:
That no possible advantage might arise from this evil, to the citizens of the United States,
by a commercial intercourse with those Indians, they have granted to a foreign company,
of unlimited credit in Europe, the privilege of an establishment in one of the most
advantageous situations in Georgia, with an exclusive right, to import goods free of all
duty; thereby unconstitutionally granting a monopoly of the Indian trade, directly tending
to the material injury of your own merchants.
Congress passed the first Indian Nonintercourse Act in July of 1790, establishing federal
exclusivity rights over trade with Native Americans.60 Sentinel’s unsubstantiated and likely fearmongering talk of a foreign company managing Indian trade aside, this paragraph reveals a clear
economic rationale for some in Georgia, not necessarily living on the frontier itself, to be
opposed to Federalist Indian policy. An act that stipulated that “no person shall be permitted to
carry on any trade or intercourse with the Indian tribes, without a license” 61 struck an
understandably disconcerting chord with small-time traders and those merchants reliant on
frontier trade. While Sentinel’s main arguments, arguing for a stout defense against the “new
half-breed commander, and his swarthy myrmidons,”62 were cloaked in racially-charged
alarmism concerning the Creeks, his mention of the issue of trade is elucidative. His mention of
the fanciful foreign corporation also reinforces the connection between anti-financial sentiment
and Nativephobia. This tirade gives a sense of the sort of concerns that a businessman, someone
who might otherwise see sense in Federalist policy, saw in Washington’s handling of the
Southwest and the interests of northern business.
60
Library of Congress, accessed 3 April 2016, https://www.loc.gov/law/help/statutes-at-large/1st-congress/c1.pdf.
Ibid.
62
Augusta Chronicle, October 1790.
61
Terry 35
Men like Gaines and a Sentinel saw anger with adventurers such as O’Fallon as
ultimately misguided, especially since the Doctor, unlike many other speculators solely occupied
with paper profits, actually made concrete efforts to occupy the Yazoo land and evict its
Amerindian tenants. The entire O’Fallon adventure served to highlight the conflict between the
interests advanced by Washington’s Indian land policy and the desires of those, who tended to
live along the frontier, for a more aggressive policy toward native populations with little regard
for the federal-native treaty. The wayward doctor, despite his deep connections in speculatory
business, was emblematic of more aggressive attitudes toward Western policy. The first Yazoo
episode faded due not only to the swift condemnation of O’Fallon and the Yazoo Battalion, but
also the ultimate failure of the 1789 Grants to be legally completed. After months of legislative
wrangling and the support of Governor Edward Telfair, the treasurer of the state refused to
accept the companies’ payment for the lands in December 1791, which had largely consisted of
old Georgia revolutionary currency and promissory notes.63 When buyers were unable to pay the
full amount in specie, the government revoked sale and the first Yazoo grants came to a quiet
end. Georgia’s government revoked he 1789 grants without a political firestorm but had exposed
deep rifts and disagreements concerning Indian and western land policy between the federal
government, the state of Georgia, and sympathizers with the plight of the frontiersman. Land
policy and Indian policy began to be conflated with each other and seen as a single issue in
Georgia. The federal view of Indian affairs and Indian policy as foreign policy was seriously
challenged by the first Yazoo episode. The “bloody tomahawk” described by Daniel Gaines
63
Lamplugh, Politics on the Periphery, 72.
Terry 36
loomed large in the Southwest and continued to prove a menace to the frontier, only a few dozen
miles from Savannah and Augusta.
Interlude
“[men] riding in their chariots—plotting the ruin of born and unborn millions—aiming with
feathers to cut throats, and on parchments to seal destruction.”—Abraham Bishop, 1797.64
While the Yazoo and O’Fallon debacle cooled down in Georgia and the Southwest, other
events transpired that did little to endear Washington to those who felt under constant threat of
Indian attack. The intervening years and missteps by the administration in Philadelphia further
agitated republican sentiments and angered agrarian sensibilities. On the domestic front, the
infamous Whiskey Rebellion and the organized and efficient response that suppressed it enraged
many Georgians, whereas diplomatic endeavors, especially Jay’s Treaty with Great Britain and
the treaty of San Lorenzo with Spain, led many to question the efficacy of Federalist positions.
The Whiskey Rebellion, the violent unrest in 1794 in response to a federal excise tax on
spirits, seemingly bears little relevance to the Yazoo escapade. The rebellion took place far from
Georgia, largely in western Pennsylvania and the area around Pittsburgh.65 The whiskey excise
was, however, a national tax, and the enterprise of Alexander Hamilton did not come into effect
in Georgia unscathed. Once news of the tax’s passage in March of 1791 reached the state, it
dominated the front page of the Chronicle for months; the Augusta paper reprinted the text of the
64
Abraham Bishop, Georgia Speculation Unveiled (Hartford: Elisha Babcock, 1797), 38.
65
John C. Miller, The Federalist Era: 1789-1801 (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1960), 157.
Terry 37
law periodically well into July of that year.66 The Whiskey Tax was clearly regarded as a
watershed piece of federal legislation and a remarkable application of Congress’s direct taxation
power. The direct taxation of a certain good had not been seen in decades and evoked British
levies in the period before the revolution. The novelty of the tax, while contributing to a general
notion of federal overreach, was not as influential in Georgia and the southwest as President
Washington’s response to the rebellion.
Whiskey production was not central enough to the Georgia economy to evoke spirited
opposition to the law, but the story in western Pennsylvania was quite different. Whiskey was
produced at high levels and even served as a form of de facto currency in some areas of the
backcountry—many considered a 25% tax on the value of liquor onerous. The protests and
actions against federal governance followed the pattern of movements that had come before,
from the regulator movement of western North Carolina to Shays’ Rebellion. The whiskey
agitators shut down federal administration in the area, hindered the delivery of federal mail, and
forced the federal excise agent for the region, General John Neville, to surrender.67 The Whiskey
Rebellion posed a more potent threat to the power of the president than the adventures of James
O’Fallon ever had. The rebels organized for the express purpose of subverting federal law, and
they appeared to be succeeding. In response, Washington assembled a massive federal force of
nearly thirteen thousand men to quell the insurrection.68
The military response to the whiskey tax protest caused the anti-federal contributors to
the Chronicle much consternation. The notion that Washington’s government had assumed
greater powers in imitation of the British monarchy—in measures from the whiskey tax and the
66
Augusta Chronicle, April 30, 1791-July 9, 1791.
Miller, The Federalist Era, 157.
68
Ibid.
67
Terry 38
proclamation against O’Fallon, to negotiating guarantees to powerful nations in treaties—was
reinforced in an article attacking the rebellion’s suppression by “Memento.” In a piece entitled
“More Traits of Monarchy,” Memento wrote that the disproportionate response to the whiskey
incident constituted a further step toward a total abrogation of revolutionary and republican
principles. Astutely noting that in pure financial terms, the vast military expedition’s cost would
far outweigh any revenue to be collected by the whiskey tax, Memento claimed that suppressing
the rebellion with such vigor would “encrease the creatures of government, both in the military
and civil departments,” leading to “a fearful odds in favor of monarchy----one hundred for
one.”69 Further criticizing federal application of power, Memento shifted abruptly to Indian
matters and then wrote:
I will conclude with a question, in which is involved the civil, political, and pecuniary
interests of the state of Georgia; as also the political interests of all the Southern and
Western states.
Why are such extraordinary exertions made to quell the Western Indians, whilst those in
the Southern department seem rather under the protection of the union than otherwise?70
This abrupt shift in criticism from of the use of federal power against white farmers on the
frontier to an uneven treatment of Indian Nations underscores both a strong belief in state
sovereignty and a particularly identifiable element of the overriding importance of Indian affairs
in all aspects of civil governance. Such criticisms also reveal a central tension in the logic of
federalism and the Constitution: Memento desired federal aid to quell Indians, but reviled the
government when it attempted to raise operating revenue.
69
70
Augusta Chronicle, January 10, 1795.
Ibid.
Terry 39
Backcountry anti-federal sentiment gradually became a potent force, strong enough to be
noticed by foreign visitors. The future King of France, Louis-Philippe, travelled throughout the
United States in the 1790s, and extensively in the West. While traveling in Tennessee, the young
Duc d’Orléans recorded in his journal the expressive anti-federalism of one Captain Chapman,
likely a militia commander. He wrote that Chapman “vilified the American government roundly,
stating that it imposed crushing taxes to pay a lot of useless people’s salaries, and neglected
honest men’s political interests scandalously, etc. I made no answer and let him run on.”71 From
this anecdote the passion of the anti-federalist cause expressed itself and its pervasiveness in the
West is clearly seen. This was a passion which ultimately boiled over in Georgia in the 1795
scandal, but was present throughout the frontier areas of the nation.
Washington, Hamilton, and the Federalist-leaning group that dominated the first few
years of Constitutional government also set their sights on recovering America’s standing in
foreign relations. In several aspects, and a view that would have been shared by many Georgian
anti-Federalists, the Washington government handled Indian affairs as an aspect of foreign
relations, and its actions in this regard can therefore be seen as a subset of a grander
Washingtonian foreign policy. In the period from 1783 to 1787, the Confederation Congress’s
weak delegated powers and general inaction had not resolved many of the lingering issues from
the Revolutionary War following the ratification of a peace agreement in 1783, especially with
regard to Loyalists and associated property disputes. With the Constitution, the United States
was now equipped to more effectively handle international disputes. However, much like with
71
Louis-Philippe, trans. Stephen Becker, Diary of my Travels in America (New York: Delacorte Press, 1977), 112.
Terry 40
Indian affairs, which in their own right might have been considered international affairs, the
implications of the 1794 Jay Treaty with Great Britain rankled Georgia republicans.
The terms of Jay’s Treaty confirmed in the minds of many a Northern and commercial
bias in the administration and in Federalist policies. The treaty was primarily commercial in
nature; Jay’s main objective was to secure shipping rights for Americans in British territory. It
also secured the withdrawal of British troops from the Northwest Territory according to the
borders of the 1783 peace treaty. Most strikingly, while Jay and the other negotiators arranged
mutual recovery of damages sustained to property during the war, the American delegation and
the British government came to no agreement to compensate planters for the value of slaves
freed by the British Army during their southern campaigns.72 This omission, at a time when
Britain had yet to outlaw slavery or even the international slave trade, was especially galling to
many Georgians and other Southerners. Those who were heavily invested in the slave system
were not pleased by the foreign policy priorities laid out in the treaty. The terms of the treaty
confirmed suspicions “that the federal government is neglectful of the state of Georgia.”73 This
perceived neglect was seen as yet another blow to the position of the state in the Union and a
further degradation of state power to the benefit of the federal government. Though the treaty’s
negotiations reached a conclusion in 1794, it would not be ratified by the Senate until mid-1795,
well into the Yazoo crisis. The impact of non-Native foreign relations in the form of the treaty
with Britain was therefore bound up in the midst of the Yazoo Fraud of 1795 itself.
In addition to the foreign relations controversies that tainted Federalist policies between
the first and second Yazoo sales, the threat of Indian warfare continued largely unabated. Though
72
Miller, The Federalist Era, 166.
Columbian Herald (Charleston, SC), July 25, 1793, NewsBank/Readex, Database: America's Historical
Newspapers.
73
Terry 41
the Treaty of New York had ostensibly settled territorial questions with the Creek chiefs, conflict
and attacks on the borderlands went on. The failure of the Washingtonian treaties to produce a
settlement and the appearances of an equitable treatment of native nations served to further
inflame frontier sentiments. An account of an attack which took place near Fort Washington, a
small militia-manned outpost in Franklin County, a new jurisdiction in the northwestern part of
the state, displays the ferocity of the ongoing Indian war. Archer Norris, a member of the militia,
described an ambush in which an unspecified tribe of Indians using stolen horses attacked the
militia party and killed the commander of the party, a Lieutenant Hay. When Norris returned a
day later to the skirmish site to bury the dead, he and the rest of the party discovered them
“scalped, stripped naked, & mangled with knives & tomahawk in the most barbarous manner,
with their privates cut off.”74
Later in 1794, edging closer to the Yazoo sale, further reports of unabated Indian attack
filtered their way through to Augusta, and in at least one case to Philadelphia, where Senator
James Gunn received a report from Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Stewart in November of 1794,
one month before passage of the Yazoo Act. James Gunn was a noted proponent of Federalist
policy, and was occasionally in direct contact with Alexander Hamilton regarding federal policy
in Georgia. In 1790, Gunn wrote to Hamilton concerning the widespread opposition to the treaty
of New York, saying that “the late Treaty with the Creeks is much complained of in the Southern
States,” and noted the cause of this lamentable situation: “Unfortunately the encouragement
given to Savage insolence has spurred them to action, for they continue to kill the defenseless
Inhabitants on our frontier.”75 Gunn himself saw evidence of this encouragement in late 1794 in
Joseph Vallence Bevan papers, “Deposition of Archer Norris, 1794 August 1” Folder 12, Item 105. Georgia
Historical Society, Savannah, Georgia.
75
“To Alexander Hamilton from James Gunn, 11 November 1790,” Founders Online, National Archives
(http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Hamilton/01-07-02-0162.)
74
Terry 42
a letter from Lieutenant Colonel Stewart, which detailed attacks on the families of a Mr. Johnson
and Mr. Baggs, two residents of frontier Liberty County. The militia commander paints a further
grim picture, writing “they have killed and scalped Johnson’s eldest daughter, his son about 3
years old was also scalped, but he is not dead.” The graphic depictions of violence against
children continue: Mr. Baggs’ infant child had been beaten against the house and was found
lying almost breathless in the yard.”76 Reports such as these represented an indictment of the
failure of Federalist Indian policy and the consequences predicted by those who had criticized
the 1790 treaty. In this light, the Yazoo Grants clearly took place in an environment highly
charged with violence and conflict with Native Americans. For many on the frontier, the
protections due to them by the Constitution in exchange for an abandonment of full state
sovereignty were simply not being rendered. Federal protection, if it was to mean anything,
implied “ridding the region of Indians.” 77 This was a project that clearly was not occurring,
especially in Georgia.
The Scandal Erupts, and Transforms Georgia
“Entitled an act supplementary to Chickemitrantro, which said iniquitous act contains amongst
other things, the sale of a certain empire in the west.” —Editorial, signed “Van Tanterobogus,”
The Augusta Chronicle, May 2, 1795.
The Yazoo Land Fraud of 1795 was a culmination of dissatisfaction with the inaugural
six years of federal rule in the United States. Georgia, the youngest and least developed of the
Joseph Vallence Bevan papers, “ Letter of Colonel Daniel Stewart to General James Gunn, 1794 November 2”
Folder 12, Item 106. Georgia Historical Society, Savannah, Georgia.
77
Patrick Griffin, American Leviathan: Empire, Nation, and Revolutionary Frontier (New York: Hill and Wang,
2007), 185.
76
Terry 43
original states, was in many ways most affected by the new government. The Constitution
designed the federal government to specifically manage many of the issues facing frontier
development: military protection of the nation’s undeveloped land, foreign relations, and, most
importantly, Indian affairs. The 1795 fraud became the forum for an explosion of a populist
revolution and a demonization of an investor class identified with Federalist policies. Language
previously reserved for Indians, or the Tory sympathizers, was hurled at the Georgia legislature
and its pernicious ties to money.
After the nullification of the 1789 Land Grants, disappointed investors did not remain
idle long. Within a short period, speculators were back at work to obtain many of the same lands.
In the aftermath of the nullification, revelations of the existence of the Combined Society and
their new efforts to secure land did much to solidify the perception of speculators as secretive,
greedy financiers. The Combined Society was founded as a secret group, conceived of as a
means to promote the interests of investors in Georgia.78 The mere knowledge of the existence of
such a group planted the seed of the notion of corruption related to land sales in the Georgian
populace. With the strong support of James Gunn, one of two United States Senators from
Georgia and a public supporter of Alexander Hamilton’s Federalist views, and former members
of the defunct 1789 companies, the efforts to secure a second sale moved forward in fall of
1794.79 The support of a prominent Hamiltonian politician such as Gunn does much to explain
the furor that would follow—though in violation of Washington’s foreign policy, the sale played
into Republican rhetoric perfectly. In the Republican view, the real ideal of the Federalists was
78
79
Lamplugh, Politics on the Periphery, 75.
Ibid., 107.
Terry 44
not law and order and strength, but money to the detriment of all else, including security on a
frontier far away from Boston, Philadelphia, or New York.
Map from Thomas P. Abernethy, A History of the South: Volume IV, The South in the New Nation.
With some differences, including a fourth speculatory company and a somewhat larger
sale of land, the grants resembled the sale of 1789. The defining difference, which would propel
the fraud and Georgia into the national discourse, was the exposure of corrupt practices
employed to ensure passage of the Yazoo Act through the General Assembly. To ensure the
bill’s passage, Senator Gunn and others sold shares of the Yazoo corporations to members of the
General Assembly; all legislators except one who invested in such shares voted in favor of the
bill.80 This conflict of interest is the only well-documented and certain aspect of the legislature’s
corruption, but allegations and some evidence of direct bribery and money for votes emerged
80
Ibid., 109.
Terry 45
later, and the populace largely believed them. Despite lingering reservations, the sitting
governor, George Matthews, signed the second Yazoo Act on January 7, 1795.81
Whatever the true nature and scope of the Yazoo corruption, the discourse concerning the
act quickly took a fierce tone and channeled many of the frustrations of the previous years
against what was, by all appearances, a corrupt state legislature. By early February, grand juries
began urging a correction of the disposition of the western lands. A jury from Chatham County,
the jurisdiction that includes the City of Savannah, declared in a February 9 letter to the
Savannah-based Georgia Gazette that they did not “conceive that the framers of the Constitution
[of Georgia] possibly could have had in contemplation that any Legislature would have adopted
such a mode of disposing of our territory.” 82 While mild in comparison to some of the later
attacks on the land law, it signaled a swift beginning and displayed a wide dissatisfaction with
the acts of the legislature, even in low-country and mercantile Savannah.
The public political discourse of the Yazoo debacle played itself out largely in
newspapers and in pamphlets. The two major urban centers of the state, Savannah and Augusta,
provided the intellectual battleground for the dispute. Savannah, the oldest settlement in Georgia
and the capital up until the revolution, heavily relied on a trade network dominated by its sister
city Charleston, and was an integral component of the Atlantic trade network more broadly.83
Savannah also had served as the center of reestablished royal government during the revolution,
and through newspapers such as the Royal Georgia Gazette it was at the forefront of the Loyalist
cause.84 Augusta, Georgia’s second city, served as the capital during the war as the Patriot
81
Robert Bruce Cannady, The Public Life of George Mathews, in Georgia (Athens: University of Georgia Press,
1957), 99.
82
Georgia Gazette (Savannah),February 12, 1795, NewsBank/Readex, Database: America's Historical Newspapers.
83
Walter J. Fraser, Jr. Savannah in the Old South (Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 2003). 63.
84
Ibid., 130.
Terry 46
government fled the British advance and was also the legislative seat at the beginning of the
1795 scandal. It participated less in the Atlantic trade network and was more sympathetic to
agrarian political tendencies. As a consequence, its newspapers provide a true representation of
frontier opinions on state governance and were indeed the most vociferous in their opposition to
the Federalist Party and the Yazoo sale. During the Yazoo Scandal, the capital of the state had
moved to Louisville, a small town which only served as the seat of government for a few years
before it shifted again westward to Milledgeville. There were no newspapers that were active in
small Louisville during the scandal, but it can be presumed that they would have been
Jeffersonian and anti-Yazooist in character. Louisville was also the county seat of Jefferson
County, created in early 1796 as the anti-Yazoo legislature was at the height of its power. It is
telling that what essentially amounted to an endorsement of Jefferson for the presidency would
occur at this moment; state politics had shifted in favor of republican agrarianism, and the
Yazooists and Federalist Party were forever linked in political discourse.
The language of attack soon escalated, and exposing deep populist sentiments that had
emerged throughout the Washington administration. Anti-Federalists directed these attacks at the
Yazooists, in many instances beyond the scope of the sale itself, with increasingly hostile and
eventually violent language evocative of the rhetoric during the Indian Wars and earlier criticism
of federal overreach. In a letter by an unknown Georgian to an associate in Baltimore, the author
feared a reversion to the principles of the mother country: “We are, I fear, my friend, galloping
fast in the road of corruption, and contaminating out manners with the aristocratical principles of
Terry 47
Great-Britain.”85 This was one of the first instances that directly connected the Yazooists to
principles antithetical to republican government and a sign of language to come.
Simultaneous to the beginnings of the Yazoo crisis, the Washington administration
further acted to put Federalists in Georgia in an unenviable position. The sale of 1795, much like
the 1789 iteration, flagrantly violated the same Indian treaties that doomed James O’Fallon and
the more recent 1790 Treaty of New York. A Congressional committee, responding to an inquest
of the president concerning the Georgia grant, squarely condemned the state’s legislation. It
recommended that Washington “use all constitutional and legal means, to prevent the infraction
of the treaties made with the Indian tribes,” by the Yazoo companies.86 James Gunn and his
associates were now placed in a unique position. Despite being the principal drivers behind the
Yazoo act, Congress and members of their own party recommended that the sale be undone or
corrected for the furtherance of Native rights. Resentment of Federalists in Georgia was now
two-fold, through association with a national administration that protected Indians, and an
association through the Yazoo with the risky financial aspects of Hamiltonian economic policy.
In this way, the Yazoo Fraud tapped directly into the national political discourse of
Hamilton against Jefferson, and by extension, Federalist against Republican. Thomas Jefferson
resigned his position as Secretary of State in Washington’s cabinet at the end of 1793 and had
progressively distanced himself from Washington. The national political opposition to the faction
of Washington, Hamilton, Adams, and other administration figures that would become organized
as the Federalist Party, coalesced around the figure of Jefferson. The future president was free to
more actively oppose the Federalists and promote his agrarian republican views now that he was
85
86
Augusta Chronicle, March 14, 1795.
Augusta Chronicle, March 28, 1795.
Terry 48
no longer in government. Hamilton, the face of high-Federalism since the beginning of
Washington’s first term and his implementation of the state debt assumption plan, was also out
of government, resigning his post as Secretary of the Treasury in January of 1795. The factions
that these two men represented were starting to become more active in criticism of each other,
perhaps in anticipation of the presidential election of 1796, in which Washington would not
contest. The Yazoo Scandal broke as the framework of the American political parties themselves
began to emerge.
Backlash to the government’s Yazoo sale swiftly appeared in the pages of the state’s
newspapers in Augusta and Savannah. It quickly became apparent to what extent the Yazoo
debate would be intertwined with the ongoing national political battles. Savannah, as a center
commerce, especially the importation of luxury goods from Great Britain for consumption by the
planter elite, would not seem the most likely center for the criticism of the Yazoo bill.87
However, there existed in Savannah a large artisan class that was attracted to many of the
elements of Jeffersonianism, though it had a reputation largely as an agrarian ideology. Some of
the most prominent critics of the Yazoo bill in Savannah were the so called “Mechanics
Societies” which sprang up in several urban centers in the 1790s. In the city of New York,
mechanics and other skilled laborers that formed the nucleus of what would eventually become a
working class were attracted to the nascent Tammany Society that would go on to achieve great
infamy in the late nineteenth century. New York was not alone; this process replicated
throughout major urban centers and with similar Jeffersonian societies because “the Federalist
party appeared to them to be ready to betray liberty and independence.”88 In Savannah, there was
87
Fraser, Savannah in the Old South, 155.
Peter Paulson, “The Tammany Society and the Jeffersonian Movement in New York, 1795-1800,” New York
History, Vol. 34, No. 1 (January1953), 72-84, accessed 12 March 2016, http://www.jstor.org/stable/23153981.
88
Terry 49
a sharp difference in views between the less elite artisans and the British import merchants.89 The
Tammany Society itself was a somewhat ironic manifestation of populist attitudes, given that it
was named for Chief Tammany, one of the most admired native chiefs of the pre-revolutionary
era, noted for his civility and friendliness toward Europeans. Europhilia and adoption of
hallmarks of Western civilization would ultimately not secure Native positions against a wave of
racially-charged populism and nationalism that swept the heavily Europeanized Cherokee Nation
from their homeland in the 1830s.
In Savannah, the Mechanics organized themselves into societies rather than attaching
themselves to an already existing body. In late 1793, the artisans of the city organized
themselves into the Savannah Mechanics’ Association and became a visible and outspoken
source of urban Jeffersonianism. When the Yazoo scandal erupted, the Mechanics sprang into
action in opposition to the act and in support of the Republican slate of candidates for the
legislature. Because they lived in coastal Savannah, issues of land policy itself were less
important and threat of attack from Natives less imminent. However, their attack on the Yazoo
faction on the basis of republican morals added greater credence to assertions that the corruptionriddled legislature was threatening the society and creating an existential crisis for the republic.
This alarmist mentality played into the rhetoric of those on the frontier.
A contributor to the Georgia Gazette of Savannah, writing under the simple appellation
of “A Mechanic,” put these concerns of the artisan class to paper in September 1795. The
Mechanic’s criticism was intertwined with the controversy over the passage of Jay’s Treaty, a
political point that was particularly controversial in a center of overseas commerce such as
89
Fraser, Savannah in the Old South, 155.
Terry 50
Savannah, divided between artisan interests and Anglophile merchants. The Mechanic wrote
concerning the progress of Treaty Committees, bodies set up to protest the passage of the treaty
in various municipalities throughout Georgia. The Mechanic warned that the people “ought, I
think, to be on their guard against the persons on each [Treaty] Committee who are embarked or
any wise concerned in the Yazoo and Western Territory speculations, and to suspect that they
have been active merely to curry favor at the next Election.”90 By this point, the view of
Yazooists as pernicious agents of self-serving nefariousness had become a hallmark of virtually
every political discussion in Georgia. About one month later, the Mechanic’s relatively light
criticism of the Yazooists was seized upon even more vociferously by the “Real Mechanic” in
the October 1 edition of the Georgia Gazette.
Going further than the Mechanic, the Real Mechanic stated that “I agree with him, and
advise my fellow voters to beware of Yazoo speculators; beware of wolves in sheeps clothing;
beware of men that would ruin the country, without regarding oaths or the principles of honor, to
make their own fortunes.”91 Already writing about a sort of existential crisis of morality for the
state, the Real Mechanic saw the ouster of the Yazooists as a social and political imperative. His
tirade against the Yazoo faction continued, venting anti-Federalist frustrations at a class of
financiers and speculators and showing how deep corruption and misuse of public funds and land
struck against populist ideology. His full commentary against the Yazoo men concludes:
These persons will oppose, by every artifice, the election of such worthy men as we sent
last year to legislate for us, who prove their regard for the country by virtuously and
bravely opposing the torrent of fraud and bribery that swept away with it the base
majorities of both houses. These are the kind of men that made the paper money, by
which the merchant and the hard working mechanic were paid off with one fourth of
what was justly due to them, to the disgrace of the state. These are the kind of men that
90
e Georgia Gazette(Savannah),September 10, 1795, NewsBank/Readex, Database: America's Historical
Newspapers.
91
Georgia Gazette (Savnnah), October 1, 1795, NewsBank/Readex, Database: America's Historical Newspapers.
Terry 51
made a law cutting off interest upon all accounts contrary to our Constitution, which
forbids the making of retrospective laws, as all bargains and contracts ought to be
governed by the laws under which they were made.
These laws, made by knaves, were fitted only to benefit such, for honest men scorned to
take advantage of them. Beware, therefore, my fellow citizens, of such men; choose
honest men for our law makers; choose no knaves, nor speculators; and if all the other
counties follow the same plan the wicked law disposing of our western lands will be
repealed, for being fraudulent; the hopes of these perjured men will perish, and we shall
have the pleasure of seeing vice humbled, and virtue triumphant.92
The Real Mechanic repeatedly demeaned and lowered the Yazoo faction to a status of not real
men, or at the very least not true citizens deserving of the title. Not content with blaming mere
greed, he called the Yazoo speculators “wicked” and suggested some purposeful malicious
intent. The investors behind Yazoo were consigned to a category outside the framework of a
virtuous republican society, a position that had theretofore only been occupied only by Tories
and loyalists and, most notably, Native Americans.
Perhaps one of the most telling of the anti-Yazoo newspaper pieces, and also one of the
most confusing editorials in attack of the Yazooist cause, was written under the bewildering pen
name of “Van Tanterobogus.” In an era of journalism flush with the use of pen names, “Van
Tanterobogus” remains a particularly unusual one. Aside from the word “Van,” typically
indicating a person of Dutch background, there is virtually no other information regarding the
significance of the name. Further adding to the mystery and confusion concerning Van
Tanterobogus, the term “bogus” as referring to something counterfeit or false was only first
documented in 1827, some thirty years after the Yazoo episode.93 In an edition of the Augusta
Chronicle published before Van Tanterobogus made his appearance, another contributor
92
Ibid.
"bogus, n.1 and adj.". OED Online. March 2016. Oxford University Press.
http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/20990?rskey=EkYFZU&result=1&isAdvanced=false (accessed April 20, 2016).
93
Terry 52
appeared under the possibly related name of “Tantara-Rara.”94 In addition, an earlier edition of
the Augusta Chronicle made cryptic reference to Van Tanterbogus before it published the most
incendiary anti-Yazoo article of the entire affair, merely stating at the end of a list of headlines
reported from Philadelphia that “ ‘Van Tantorobogus’ [sic] is received.”95
Regardless of the true origins of this pseudonym, the Van Tanterobogus piece
encapsulates the spirit of the anti-Yazoo movement succinctly and with a startling degree of
viciousness. The piece was written in the form of a somewhat confusing and fantastical satire set
in the fictitious “Commonwealth of Washington,” a stand-in for the state or, given the name, the
Union as a whole.96 It begins by introducing the character of “Dragon Canoe,” against whom
charges of corruption are to be laid. The name “Dragon Canoe” on its own carries much of the
same notes of gibberish as “Van Tanterobogus,” but it is in fact a corruption, intended or
otherwise, of the name of a famous Cherokee Chief, Dragging Canoe. Dragging Canoe, though
dead by 1795, had terrorized the Southwestern frontier throughout the American Revolution and
after the war. Dragging Canoe was described as having a “hatred of the white men who were
stealing their land [which] would soon divide the Cherokee nation, and make him an implacable
enemy of the Americans.”97 The image of Dragging Canoe called out to readers of the Augusta
Chronicle and evoked the very worst perceptions of Native Americans; any pretention of the
existence of a “Noble Savage” was eschewed in favor of the view of the native as bloodthirsty
and savage. Employing an allusion to such a figure represented the highest level of disdain.
94
Augusta Chronicle,March 28, 1795.
Augusta Chronicle, April 25, 1795.
96
Augusta Chronicle, May 2, 1795.
97
John L. Nichols. “Alexander Cameron, British Agent among the Cherokee, 1764-1781The South Carolina
Historical Magazine” 97, no. 2 (April 1996): 104, accessed 17 March 2016, http://www.jstor.org/stable/27570150.
95
Terry 53
The piece goes on to say that Dragon Canoe, who serves as de facto leader in the
fantastical Washington Commonwealth, and possibly a literary surrogate for Governor George
Mathews, was being led by those “being of malicious heart, and evil and wicked mind” who
were members of the nefarious “State Goose Society.” 98 This is a likely reference to actual
organizations like the Combined Society of years previous, thus linking the events of 1795 to a
train of past speculation and possible conspiracy. The succeeding paragraphs are littered with
additional confusing prose and Indian language. The Yazoo Act is coded in Native imagery in
the description of actions leading to the passage of “an act supplementary to Chickemintrantro,
which said iniquitous act contains amongst other things, the sale of a certain empire in the west,
to the said State Goose Society¸ in exclusion to all others, because they would give least to the
said commonwealth and most to [Dragon Canoe] as a burgess.” 99 All of this language, given the
atmosphere of the state against both Native Americans and speculators, cast them as similar in
morals and aims for society. This rationale gives the climax of the Tanterobogus exposition all
the more gravity and blistering tone of a call to violence, when the writer declared that “the said
Dragon Canoe ought to be punished with the pains of Rope and Gallows, to deter others form the
like in the future.”100 Regardless of any genuine intention to incite violence, such an editorial
brought the rhetorical tone of state politics to a place it had not been since the Revolution and
was a harbinger of the future revolution in American politics, albeit peaceful, in the election of
1800 and the evisceration of the national Federalist party. Van Tanterobogus’s call for vengeance
against corrupt officials and colluders with morally repugnant speculators likely did claim one
known life. In September of 1795, Robert Thomas, a sitting senator of the Georgia General
98
Augusta Chronicle, May 2, 1795.
Ibid.
100
Ibid.
99
Terry 54
Assembly, was shot and killed while in his South Carolina home.101 The assassin was never
apprehended nor identified. The rationale behind the shooting was not certain, but it was reported
that “it is generally supposed that his death was occasioned by his voting for the Yazoo bill, and
receiving upwards of FOUR THOUSAND DOLLARS for that vote.”102
Politically, the most influential criticism of the Yazooists was the Letters of Sicilius, a
series of pieces lambasting the Yazoo sale and exposing its moral indefensibility. Written under
the pen name of Sicilius, but generally known to the work of Senator James Jackson, the letters
proved instrumental in catapulting Jackson to the governorship and setting the tone of Georgia
politics for the next few decades. His tone was dismissive of self-serving politics and reveled in
populist appeal, but also took a non-caring approach to the plight of Indians as a consequence of
the fraud and in western land policy in General. Jackson, under the guise of Sicilius, broke apart
the Yazooist claim to legitimacy at every level. From a legal standpoint, Jackson laid out the case
that the Yazoo sale was illegitimate from its inception, not only due to its corrupt passage, but
because of its violation of Indian Treaty. This argument seems surprising, given the hostile
climate toward federal Indian policy, but Jackson made a clear distinction when he answered his
own query: “Now let us ask one question, were there no treaties with Indian tribes within the
limits of Georgia, existing at the time of her adoption of the Federal constitution, and staring her
convention in the face?” Sicilius responded to this by dismissing the Treaty of New York as
obviously not applicable, writing, “I will drop the infamous treaty at New-York, and all prior
negotiations with the perfidious Creeks.” He further wrote: “Yes, there existed two treaties—one
signed at Hopewell with the Choctaw nation, on the 3rd January, 1786. The other signed at the
Mabel L. Webber, “Marriage and Death Notices from the City Gazette,” The South Carolina Historical and
Genealogical Magazine 23, no. 2 (April 1922): 72.
102
Independent Gazetteer (Philadelphia), October 21, 1795.
101
Terry 55
same place with the Chickesaws, on the 10th day of the same month; the whole or nearly so of
the boundaries defined in those treaties and guaranteed by them, by the United States to those
tribes, are included in this sale.”103 Jackson expressed a degree of sympathy for the Chickasaw
and Choctaw and their pacts with the Confederation Congress and affirmed their legitimacy in
his Sicilius treatise. The Senator was not unaware of the hostilities toward the Creeks and
roundly dismissed the validity of any treaty with the Creek Nation due to their violence toward
settlers. While using federal legal precedent in Indian affairs in his attack of Yazoo, he left open
the possible legitimacy of discarding a federal Indian policy that is too light on violent threats to
the frontier. To make it abundantly clear that he was no friend of the Creeks or the federal
government, Jackson wrote: “I have neither my eyes or ears shut to the complains of my fellow
citizens, and I view the savage cruelties of the Creeks, and the hitherto tame conduct of the
United States with as much aversion as any man.”104 However, Jackson recognized that the
Creek issue was not directly related to the particulars of the Yazoo grant and further explained
that “the complaints and injuries of our citizens, the savage cruelties of the Creeks is one thing,
but the constitutionality of the grant is another thing.”105 Here Jackson expressed a profound
distaste for Washingtonian Indian policy without making the main thrust of his anti-Yazoo
argument. The governor-to-be found it expedient to rally the disaffected, including Jeffersonians,
to his cause while still making it clear that he had no desire to see federal protection of the Creek
nation. By injecting this anti-Creek discourse into his populist rhetoric against the Yazooists,
103
James Jackson, The Letters of Sicilius to the People of the State of Georgia (Augusta: John E. Smith, 1795), 31.
America’s Historical Imprints by Newsbank/Readex.
104
Ibid., 32.
105
Ibid.
Terry 56
whom he rails against as “a corrupt majority of the legislature,” Jackson manipulated anti-federal
and anti-Indian sentiment in his quest to obtain the governorship and dominate state politics.106
The Treaty of New York, the denunciation of O’Fallon, and suppression of the Whiskey
Rebellion had all signaled an unwillingness to seriously deal with the Indian issue and apply due
power to chastise the Creeks and Cherokee. When a new land sale in imitation of the 1789 grants
came once again after President Washington put the first one to a halt, Georgians perceived it as
a mere tool of Federalist speculators and overseas investors and not a serious effort to settle the
land. When the Yazoo crisis, with its corruption, conflicts of interest, and claims of overt bribery,
burst onto the scene, it caused a firestorm of resentment and a seminal moment in state politics.
Anger toward a speculator class, compounded and intertwined with the politics of the Federalist
Party, the Indian and western land policy of George Washington, and a feeling of neglect toward
the state, all caused the Yazoo Scandal, not merely a belief in acts of ethical malfeasance.
The Yazoo Land Fraud and subsequent populist revolution under Governor James
Jackson was a seminal moment in Georgia politics and a substantial event in the formative stages
of American party politics. The political aspects of the fraud, both state and national, are well
documented and well established. The Fletcher v. Peck decision’s landmark stature as a defining
case of United States federalism in opposition to state power has contributed to a consideration
of the Yazoo in this way and this way alone. The Yazoo case’s most indelible impact on the
culture and society of the Old Southwest, for Anglo-Saxons, Hispanics, and Native Americans,
was its redefinition of the relationship between the white settler population at large and the
Native American community. For Georgia voters and the state’s citizens more generally, the
106
Ibid., 48.
Terry 57
Yazoo scandal represented their first real opportunity to castigate the forces that were eroding
their republican, agrarian livelihood, not just in corrupt land sales, but in Indian affairs. Indeed,
for many, the distinction between the two was unclear and muddied. The land policy of a
financier-influenced legislature in political alliance with the Federalist Party was toppled by what
appeared to be overwhelming popular will. The emergence of a populist savior in the person of
James Jackson, inaugurating a what could be called a Jacksonian era in state politics, dominated
by the Jeffersonian Republicans, allowed for a complete domination of the Republicans in
regional affairs and a channeling of populist impulses into public discourse. While it might not
have directly resulted in the “serious war with the Creeks” that some demanded, it set an
important precedent, indicating that a popular mandate could override many of the dictates of
quasi-aristocratic, entrenched, commerce-friendly politicians. When considered within the wider
context of the maturation of American populist rhetoric, the Yazoo crisis is more clearly seen as
influential, and perhaps even formative. The Jackson government and the faction favorable to
him were instrumental in the eventual implementation of the land lottery distribution system in
Georgia, replacing the chaotic system then in place, which obviously favored large speculation
companies.107
A populist democratic revolt that results in the upturning of an established, perceived
elitist political establishment is an archetype that has occurred many times since the foundation
of the republic, but the Yazoo movement represents the earliest incidence of this phenomenon
within the framework of the Constitution and democratic processes. For the South, this process
would repeat itself most notably, and on a much larger scale, some thirty years later with the
election of President Andrew Jackson against John Quincy Adams, an intellectual and political
107
Lamplugh, Politics in the Periphery, 190.
Terry 58
descendent of the conflict between Federalists and Republicans in the 1790s and early 1800s.
The rise of Jacksonian democracy and its blatant disregard for the legal rights of Native
Americans was not a direct result of the Yazoo crisis, but the seeds of that movement can be seen
in Yazoo. Wresting the mantle of state government from the grasp of Federalist policy, which
had been deft in legalistic approaches to land, western expansion, and Native American policy,
gave the republican populist movement one of its first notable victories after 1787. The train of
events that would eventually lead to passage of the Indian Removal Act, over the protests of the
last vestiges of Federalism in the Supreme Court, began decades earlier in the Yazoo.
Terry 59
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