[Rarebooks] FS: Georgia Land Speculation Unveiled (1797 & 1798), Re: Yazoo Land Fraud

[Ezra Tishman]

Ezra from Aardvark offers this historical example of the triumph of cold-hearted greed, callousness and cynicis  in the matters of state, high court, and nation, and the wholesale disenfranchisement of three Native-American tribes.

Bishop, Abraham. GEORGIA SPECULATION UNVEILED; IN TWO NUMBERS. Hartford, Connecticut: Elisha Babcock, 1797. First Edition. Octavo in brick-red cloth-covered boards (handbound by the late David Comstock of Auburn, Washington) with leather spine label, lettered in bright gilt, to spine. 1" x 3/4" chip from bottom of p. 35. Age-tanning and very light spotting throughout, but not sufficient to distract from, nor obscure text actually includes Georgia Speculation Unveiled No. I (pp. 9-22); Georgia Speculation Unveiled No. II (pp. 22-39). Then, (with New Title Page, date 1798) Georgia Speculation Unveiled SECOND PART comprising The Third and Fourth Numbers; No. III runs from pp. 41-80 (which ends: "Sheer Falshood Marked the Front of This Detestable Transaction") and No. IV, from pp. 81-123. Georgia Speculation Unveiled CONCLUSION runs from pp. 122-144.

"This pamphlet is an actual, though not a literal answer to the 'State of Facts' published by the Georgia Companies (Howes, G126, p,. 225); It contains the outlines of the present state of the Georgia business, and a brief sketch of the arguments on both sides, with such Commentaries as the compass of the work will allow. The general tenor of it, especially that part which treats of the Chancery powers of our Courts, will be found applicable to the eases of all, who have suffered by any kind of Land Speculation.” 

																																						Very Good Plus. Hardcover. (#78929) $500

"The Yazoo land scandal, Yazoo fraud, Yazoo land fraud, or Yazoo land controversy was a massive real-estate fraud perpetrated, in the mid-1790s, by Georgia governor George Mathews and the Georgia General Assembly...In about 1789, a secret society called the Combined Society was formed; the members' sole purpose was to make money by land speculation. This group secured influence in the Georgia legislature to further its aims. In 1789 three companies, The South Carolina Yazoo Company, The Virginia Yazoo Company (which was headed by Patrick Henry), and the Tennessee Company were formed by Combined Society interests to buy land from the Georgia legislature.... Georgia politicians sold large tracts of territory in the Yazoo lands, in what are now portions of the present-day states Alabama and Mississippi, to political insiders at very low prices in 1794. Although the law enabling the sales was overturned by reformers the following year, its ability to do so was challenged in the courts, eventually reaching the US Supreme Court. In the landmark decision in Fletcher v. Peck (1810), the Court ruled that the contracts were binding and the state could not retroactively invalidate the earlier land sales.


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