Sonya Taylor's Suspicious 'Official' Stories, ATHENS BANNER-HERALD January 4, 1994, p4 , col. 3, so badly muddles the facts that it sounds suspiciously like a Suspicious Official Story. Taylor has apparently amalgamated The Yazoo Land Fraud with The Pine Barren Speculation and added a little original history of her own invention. Perhaps I am being a little too harsh.

Cooper, The Story of Georgia vol. 2 p 146, not only merged South Carolina Yazoo Company vs. Georgia, which arose from the 1789 Yazoo Act, with Fletcher vs. Peck, which arose from the 1795 Yazoo Act and its rescission in 1796, but also credited Marshall's 1810 decision which was based on Article 1 Section 10.1 of the United States Constitution with having inspired the drafting and inclusion of Section 10.l in the United States Constitution twenty three years earlier in 1787. Georgia History like austrovexillology is apparently a slippery subject

The Pine Barren Speculation occurred during the years 1789 to 1796 when Governors Walton, Telfair, Irwin and Mathews, during their terms in office, made free gifts of three times as much land in Georgia's then twenty-four counties as the counties contained. The area of Montgomery county was 407,680 acres. Richmond Dawson received grants of 987,000 acres, James Shorter received grants of 1,219,000 acres and Micajah Vassar received grants of 458,000 acres of land in Montgomery county. These grants alone totaled 2,664,000 acres of land in a county with an area of only 407,680 acres of land. Total grants in Montgomery County came to 7,436,995 acres of land or 85 % of the total area of all twenty-four counties. All told 29,097,866 acres of land were granted in the twenty-four counties of Georgia which had a total combined area of only 8,717,960 acres of land. The law limiting land grants to a maximum of 1,000 acres per person was circumvented by multiple 1,000 acre grants.

The term Pine Barren Speculation apparently came from a satirical advertisement offering land for sale in 1787:

Halloo, Halloo, Halloo "The subscribers will sell on most moderate terms: Ten millions of acres of valuable pine barren land in the province of Utopia, on which there are several very sumptuous air castles, ready furnished, that would make commodious and desirable habitations for the gentlemen of the speculative class.

"The celebrated island of Atlantis, too well described by the ancient speculator Plato, from whom the subscriber purchased it, to need a description now.

"All his water and wind mills on the River Lethe and on the Mountains of Parnassus and Olympus.

"One hundred millions of acres in the state of Terra Incognita, and elsewhere, too tedious to particularize.

"Also that incomparable and most famous riding horse, Pegasus. He would be an excellent nag for riding express, and for that purpose he is recommended to the purchaser or purchasers of the foregoing.

Herachitus, junior."

Former Governors Walton, Telfair and Irwin were not involved in the Yazoo Land Fraud. Governor Mathews signed the Yazoo Act of 1795 and although the Governor was not accused of profiting from the scam Coulter characterizes Mathews record in land dealings as being on the shady side.

The Yazoo Land Fraud involved the land bounded on the south by thirty-one degrees north latitude, bounded on the west by the middle of the Mississippi River, bounded on the north by 35 degrees north latitude and bounded on the east by the present western boundary of Georgia. In other words the present day States of Alabama and Mississippi.

The Yazoo Land Fraud began in 1785 with the organization of the Combined Society and the creation of Bourbon County Georgia. The Combined Society was a secret society those only purpose was "By means of certain influences brought to bear upon those in authority to obtain from the State (Georgia) large grants of land, either for immigration or for sale, in either case for the end of making a large sum of money out of the transaction."

Bourbon County, Georgia was located on the Mississippi and included the site of the future city of Natchez. Georgia appointed civil and judicial officers for Bourbon County but repealed the Bourbon County Act in 1788. The Combined Society faded away but the evil lingered on.

The second act began on November 20, 1789, when the South Carolina Yazoo Company, the Tennessee Yazoo Company and the Virginia Yazoo Company presented petitions to the Georgia Senate offering to relieve Georgia of the burden of its western lands on certain conditions. On December 21, 1789, Governor Telfair signed into law a bill selling 20,000,000 acres of land to the Yazoo Companies for $207,000 or about one cent per acre.

The Virginia Yazoo Company was headed by Patrick, if you can't give me liberty or death at least give me a big chunk of graft, Henry. The Citizens of Georgia formed The Georgia Yazoo Company in an attempt to get in on the looting but the amendments to consider the offer of the Georgia Yazoo Company kept getting lost as did the amendments to increase the price.

This first land grab failed when the Yazoo Companies attempted to pay for their purchases with token amounts of worthless paper money. A dispute arose over what should be used as money.

The Virginia Yazoo Company even had the unmitigated gall to attempt to pay for their land with worthless Georgia paper. In fact one of the leaders of the South Carolina Yazoo Company Thomas Washington , alias Walsh, was arrested for forging Georgia and South Carolina paper and hanged at Charleston in 1792.

The South Carolina Yazoo Company attempted to sue Georgia in the United States Supreme Court to compel Georgia to deliver the land contracted for but Georgia was saved by the bell when the eleventh amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified on February 7, 1795.

Conspiracies, however, hung over Georgia like early morning fog. General Elijah Clarke crossed the Oconee in May 1794 with the intention of establishing a Transoconee Republic. He began recruiting and erecting fortifications to the alarm of both Georgia and the United States. He also negotiated with the French to mount a joint attack on the Spanish.

The Oconee War and Clarke's Transoconee Republic came to an end on September 28, 1794, when Clarke surrendered to a large force of Georgia and Federal troops even though his men voted to stand their ground and sell their lives dearly. The Federals then burnt Fort Defiance and the other fortifications of the short lived republic.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the South Carolina Yazoo Company was conspiring with the Spanish to establish an independent republic under Spanish protection in old Bourbon County with settlers from Kentucky and for that purpose were in contact with General James Wilkinson who was attempting to separate Kentucky from the Union.

The dust from the 1789 scam had not even settled when efforts were renewed in November 1794 to secure vast fortunes for nothing. As the song goes "money for nothing and chicks for free defrauding the public on the Ogeechee." The High and the Mighty trampled all over each other in an attempt to get at least a snout if not both front trotters in the trough.

Representatives and Senators were openly bought and sold on the floor of the Legislature. A bill selling somewhere between 35,000,000 and 50,000,000 acres of land for $500,000 to the land companies passed the house 19 to 9 on January 2, 1795, and the Senate 10 to 8 the following day and was quickly signed into law by Governor Mathews on January 7, 1795.

The only person voting for the bill gratis was Robert Watkins chairman of the committee in charge of the bill. A bid of $800,000 with a $40,000 deposit in hard money by the Georgia Union Company was of course ignored.

A Fire Storm descended on the faithless legislators when news of the theft became known. Many of the Yazooists fled the state, some with an angry mob nipping at their heels. General James Jackson denounced the Yazoo Act in the U.S. Senate, resigned his seat and rode hell bent for Georgia with murder in his heart, a brace of pistols by his side and Fire, Hemp and Sword as his traveling companions. According to some sources he vowed to repeal the Yazoo Act if it cost him his life and he was prepared to call out and personally shoot every person involved in passing the act.

Quite a number of the faithless did find themselves under the smoking muzzles of the Generals avenging dueling pistols. Robert Watkins had to face the business end of the Generals guns three times. On the first occasion Watkins in mortal fear of his life not only used a pistol but missing his shot tried to stab the General with a dagger and failing in that enterprise then attempted to gouge out the Generals eyes.

Eye gouging was a popular pastime with all classes of society in Georgia in the Family Value Days of Yore. An Englishman passing through Georgia about this time reported that almost every man in Georgia had either an eye gouged out or an ear or nose bitten off if not all three. Great Britain actually fought a war with Spain when a drunken sailor named Jenkins complained that the Spanish had cut off his ear.

When the war was over and the dead being tallied it was discovered that Jenkins ear had actually been bitten off in a barroom brawl, probably somewhere in Georgia.

United States Senator James Gunn also served as a target for the Generals guns for his part in passing the Yazoo Act.

The Yazoo Act was rescinded on February 18, 1796, and every reference to the Yazoo Act was expunged from the records of Georgia. The records were collected and heaped in a pile in front of the Capital on February 21, 1796, and according to legend consumed by Holy Fire from Heaven summoned with the aid of a magnifying glass.

A fine of $1,000 and permanent disbarment from any office of trust or profit in the State of Georgia was prescribed for any state official who should take notice of the Yazoo Act in any way. In 1797 someone discovered a mortgage book containing nineteen pages relating to the Yazoo Fraud. These pages were torn out, consigned to the fire and replaced by a page explaining their absence.

Georgia refunded sixty per cent of the monies paid in to the purchasers even though the principal thieves had bailed out by reselling their shares to third parties. The only surviving copy of the Yazoo Act is George Washington's personal copy which is now a part of the National Archives. The rescission of the Yazoo Act led to the celebrated case of Fletcher vs. Peck. The Supreme Court did not intervene in 1810. The Supreme Court has no power of intervention. The Justices merely decide cases that come before them if they so choose.

Fletcher vs. Peck came before the court in 1809. Fletcher had purchased shares from Peck, who had purchased from Phelps, who had purchased from Prime, who had purchased from Greenleaf, who had purchased from the Georgia Company, to whom the State of Georgia had sold the land in 1795. Fletcher contended that the rescinding act of 1796 invalidated his title and he was entitled to the return of his $3000 purchase money. The Supreme Court ruled in an opinion handed down on March 16, 1810, that Fletcher's title was valid and that he was not entitled to a refund of his money. In effect the Rescinding Act of 1796 was invalid.

By the time the Supreme Court handed down their ruling the whole matter was more or less academic as far as Georgia was concerned since Georgia had ceded the disputed land along with the associated problems to the United States on April 26, 1802, for $1,250,000 and removal of the Cherokees from Georgia at Federal expense.

Article II of the 1802 Act of Cession contained a thorn. When stripped of the legalese Article II required Georgia to take responsibility for an outlaw and desperado infested strip of land known as the Orphan Strip. North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia had all previously refused this honour. Article II led to war between Georgia and North Carolina in 1811. The Walton War as it is known was a little one sided but a war it was nevertheless.

The Orphan Strip included the upper French Broad River valley of what is now Transylvania County North Carolina. Georgia established the first Walton County in the Orphan Strip in 1803 and appointed Sheriffs, Judges and the usual lot of Bureaucratic Parasites.

Elections were held and John Nicholson and John Aiken served as representatives of Walton County in the Georgia Legislature at Milledgeville. Walton County was a Georgia county until some time in 1811. As Georgia cleaned up the Orphan Strip it began to look more attractive to North Carolina who began advancing a claim to the Strip.

Georgia protested North Carolina's actions to the United States without success.Some time in late December 1810 a North Carolina Militia Unit was posted to the upper French Broad River with orders to remove the Walton County Government.Georgia's first Walton County died in a hail of North Carolina musket fire in January of 1811.

The major engagement was fought at McGaha Branch about one mile south of present day Brevard near the Wilson Bridge on U.S. Highway 276. The North Carolina Militia killed an unknown number of the Georgians and took about twenty-five prisoners. A second stand was made by the survivors of McGaha Branch at Selica Hill some three miles southwest of Brevard. The Georgians were either shot or taken prisoner. The fate of the prisoners is still uncertain. Sporadic snipping continued for some weeks but the main engagements were over. The Georgia Legislature was still prioritizing its options in the matter in 1971.

RICHARD E. IRBY, JR.