GEORGIA PEACHES Chapter Six

I do not doubt state Representative and ex-U.S. Senator James Jackson (above) when he said he was prepared to shoot every man who voted for the Yazoo Land sale. Jackson was a well known as a duelist. In fact after the new state legislature convened in Louisville on 11 January, 1796, several of the members were threatened and challenged to duels unless they stopped trying to overturn the sale. Amazingly, they all forged ahead.  These people land speculators were greedy as hell.

First things first; the assembly elected the logical Jared Irwin (above) as the new Governor, a good balance to the emotional Representative Jackson. Then a special committee was created – chaired by Jackson – to take testimony on the great Yazoo Yard Sale, er, land sale.

And it was here, under oath, that the whole sordid tale came out. Jackson's final report seethed with indignation. “The public good was placed entirely out of view, and private interest alone consulted;...the rights of the present generation were violated, and the rights of posterity bartered... and the principles of aristocracy established in their stead.”  Now that is what a class war warrior really sounds like.

The Legislature offered up what became the “Rescinding Act”, which spent a thousand words justifying itself.  And then it declared the Yazoo land sales null and void. The buyers could have their money back (initial payments had been made). But Jackson insisted on going a step further. The act gave the government 3 days to expunge any reference to the sale in public records. Any county officer or court clerk found with a reference to the Yazoo sale on their books, even in an index, was to be fined $1,000 a day until the offending passage was removed. 

It was made illegal for courts to accept any lawsuits mentioning the Yazoo Land sale. Georgia would not even respond to any future Federal lawsuits involving the sale. The Rescinding Act was Orwellian two centuries before George Orwell. The entire Georgia legislature of 1795 had all become “un-persons”.

On 13 February, 1796 both houses of the Georgia state legislature approved the Rescinding Act, by 43 to 3 in the house and in the Senate by 14 to 4. That same day Governor Irwin signed it. Immediately the state house swarmed with men wielding scissors, slicing out all references to the  Yazoo sale from books. newspapers, calendars and advertisements. 

The Act also ordered that three days hence, “A fire shall be made in front of the State House door, and a line to be formed by the members of both branches around the same. The Secretary of State... shall....then produce the ... usurped act... and deliver the same to... the... Messenger of the House, who shall then pronounce “God save the state! And long preserve her rights! And may every attempt to injure them perish as these corrupt acts do now!” And at about four on the afternoon of 15 February, 1796, that is exactly what happened. They actually burned copies of the bill.

The local papers published romanticized accounts of the bonfire.  In the Chronicle it was noted that a magnifying lens had been used to start the fire. Thus, wrote the reporter, “God Almighty is at last brought into the scrape.”  But a Charleston, South Carolina newspaper also observed that the blaze was of  “very little to the satisfaction of the bystanders.” 

It wasn't that they didn't approve of the conflagration, but they had a new worry - the entire world's economy had just dropped into the toilet. And the man who had dropped it there was the Philadelphia speculator, James Greenleaf.

Okay, maybe it wasn't entirely James Greenleaf's fault.  But this silver tonged liar does seem to have been at the center of a lot of the distress in America. Mr. Greenleaf was the partner with Robert Morris (above), John Nicholson and James Gunn in the North America Land Bank. They were buying up as much land , including the Yazoo offerings, as possible to satisfy the anticipated demand from Dutch bankers, with whom young Greenleaf insisted he had intimate connections. 

Greenleaf had originally proven this a decade earlier, when in 1788, within  two weeks of his arrival in Holland, the then  22 year old American con man had met the Baroness Cornelia Elbertine Scholton van Ascht et Oud-Haarlem (above), and impregnated her.  Shortly there after, he not only left town, he fled the continent.

When she turned up pregnant, the reluctant Greenleaf was  convinced, probably with money, to return to Holland, where he wed the Baroness. It was Greenleaf's skill at seduction which convinced Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson to appoint Greenleaf as American envoy to Holland, meaning to their banks. (above). But eventually the Baroness realized her new husband was an amoral sleaze ball, and she attempted suicide. 

When Jefferson recalled Greenleaf, and he returned to the United States, the Baroness remained in Holland, with their son. The now 25 year old Greenleaf convinced a judge in Rhode Island he had been “tricked” into the marriage, and was granted a divorce. James Greenleaf was once again free, still handsome and young enough to be a seducer of women, and it turns out he could also seduce speculators like Morris, John Nicholson (above) and our old villain, James Gunn. Within minutes of the Yazoo land sale being approved by the Georgia assembly, James Greenleaf was bound back for Holland, to offer the wealthy Europeans a “safe” place to invest their money.  

Greenleaf arrived to find everybody in Europe investing their money in cannon and gun powder, as the French Revolution sparked fires all over the place.  The changed political situation, and his new reputation as sleaze encouraged most of his Dutch banking contacts  to give him the cold shoulder. Those willing to deal with him attracted no interest in buying shares in the  American Land Bank,  Defeated, James Greenleaf returned home, deeply in debt. So now, holding worthless shares in four worthless Yazoo land companies, these four conspirators would have to look for their suckers some place else. So Greenleaf was dispatched to buy housing lots in the new Federal City of Washington, D.C.

The government was not supposed to move-in until 1800, but construction of the capital (above, BG) and the President's mansion had already begun. And of course eventually there would have to be buildings for a Post Office,  a State Department and a War Department. 

And after black slaves had built all of those, somebody would have build places for workers in those offices to buy groceries, restaurants to eat in, buy clothing, and 'entertainment' – everything from books to ladies of the evening. A city had to be established where there was no reason for it being, except politics insisted it be there.  And Morris and Nicholson and Gunn leveraged their almost worthless Yazoo shares into property in the new Federal City - Washington, District of Columbia..

At some point Robert Morris gave young James Greenleaf $7,000 in cash to pay for a section of city lots. But the money never made it to the seller. That drove Morris to take a closer look at the company books, where he discovered Greenleaf had signed all of his personal debts over to the  North American Land Company, making Morris and Nicholson and Gunn responsible for repaying them. The young seducer, had seduced 3 more victims. 

Disingenuously, Robert Morris (above) later wrote to Benjamin Harrison, claiming, “Twas he (Greenleaf) that encouraged the very extensive land purchases which were made under a promise that he would procure in Holland the money necessary to support the same...” Suddenly the financial Mozart of the Revolution was claiming the entire Yazoo Swamp-Land Fraud, the wholesale bribery of an entire state legislature, had actually been the dastardly plan of a  28 year old serial Casanova. 

It was ridiculous, but I suppose such whining is a natural reaction when a “master of the universe” gets the shaft - it must be somebody else's petard, never their own that they are hoisted upon.  Blame it on the government regulators, or the greed of a business partner. It is never their greed that is blame for mistakes they make.

- 30 - 

Georgia Peaches - Chapter Six

 

I seemed to have lost track of Patrick Henry in our story, but let me catch you up. After the original 1789 Yazoo Swamp-Land deal fell through, Patrick had sold most of his shares in the now almost worthless Virginia Yazoo Company to Georgia Senator James Gunn and the North American Land Company (Robert Morris, John Nickleson and James Greenleaf). They had renamed it the Northern Mississippi Company, and in 1795 completed the purchase of the same land (and more) from Georgia for 1.4 cents per acre. Patrick seriously considered suing Georgia, claiming he still had a legal claim to the land, but the suit was never filed. In the meantime he had developed stomach troubles, and was popping out children (11 in all) with his second wife, Dorthea Dandridge Henry.

But back to our main story. First of the great speculators to succumb was the young man who had promised so much and delivered so little, James Greenleaf.  Late in 1796, the collapse of his over leveraged lifestyle dropped the silver tongued seducer into Philadelphia's dreaded Prune Street Debtors Prison.

It was part of the larger Walnut Street jail, an imposing structure which housed 300 prisoners, but in the back, in a two story building originally designed as a work house, was the small debtors jail. All the prisoners were expected to pay for their own incarceration. It was a strange system considering the prisoners were in jail because they were broke. Those with wealthy friends willing to pay could receive better food or even a small private apartment. Still, one look at his new dismal surroundings, and a desperate Greenleaf had his lawyers petition for his immediate release. 

But Robert Morris' instructed his lawyers to intervene. They reminded the court that the young seducer had been granted a divorce in Rhode Island, which meant he was an out-of-state debtor, and the law required out of state bums  remain in jail for at least six months. In fact James Greenleaf would remain behind bars much longer than that.  But, at least he would not be lonely.

Morris may have preferred that Greenleaf was skinned alive, but actually, the debt left him and Nicholson by Greenleaf was a mere drop in his own rising tide of unpaid promises.  Morris' mansion in Philadelphia was so heavy besieged by creditors, that he retreated to the country estate he called “The Hills”.

He was most repelled by the idea of sharing a cell with his old partner Greenleaf. He wrote Nicholson, “I do not want to be under the same roof with such a scoundrel.” But at last, on 15 February, 1798, one venal vindictive creditor named George Eddy, aided by a local sheriff, managed to lay hands on the great speculator. The amount owed to Eddy was small (by Morris's standards), but even this pittance the largest private land owner in North America could not pay. Morris wrote to a friend, “George Eddy is the most hardened villain God ever made. I believe if I had bank bills to pay him with he would refuse them on the ground of their not being legal tender. He was positively determined to carry me to Prune Street last night, but the sheriff humanely relieved me from his rascally clutches.” 

It was only an overnight stay of execution. The next day, Robert Morris, signer of the Deceleration of Independence, entered the Prune Street Debtors jail. Now living under the same roof, Morris refused to even acknowledge Greenleaf's presence, studiously avoiding him in all encounters.

John Nicholson held out for another year, until the winter of 1799 when the 43 year old joined his partners behind bars. But Nicholson lost not only his fortune  - creditors squeezed $8 million from his estate, still leaving him $8 million in debt- but his mind as well. He died in the Prune Street Jail, on 5 December, 1800.  Robert Morris survived the humiliation, supported by his wealthy sons, but died four years later, still $12 million in debt and occasionally harassed by creditors. And James Greenleaf, the despised debonair silver tongued seducer of women and money, survived as well.  He  unloaded his shares in the Georgia Mississippi Company for 10 cents an acre to a group of prominent Boston speculators,  headed by Judge William Wetmore. 

Then, shortly after his release, James Greenleaf married Anne Penn Allen, a lovely and wealthy Washington socialite. However before the wedding Ms Penn Allen put her sizable estate in a trust, where James Greenleaf was never able to reach it.  Not that he didn't continually try, until his death in 1843.  It gave him something to occupy his time.

Meanwhile, in 1797, Judge Wetmore's group re-sold the Georgia Yazoo company to yet another group,  headed by a Boston speculator named John Peck, who renamed it the New England Mississippi Company. They also hired a Boston Law firm which offered the legal opinion that the “Rescinding Act” by the Georgia legislature had been unconstitutional. That made it legal to sell shares in their Yazoo lands for 33 cents an acre.  By 1798 the New England Mississippi Company had attracted $2 million, mostly from small investors, all gambling that somehow the courts would re-approve the Yazoo Swamp-Land sale.

Senator James Jackson was determined that would never happen. As Governor of Georgia he oversaw, in 1802,  the sale of all of the Georgia's claims to the Yazoo lands, everything beyond the Apalachicola River to the Mississippi River, to the federal government for $1.3 million. He remained determined that the deal was D-E-A-D, dead, even refusing to pay a printer who published a codification of Georgia laws under the old constitution, because that volume mentioned the Yazoo swamp land sale.

It wasn't as simple as that, of course. The publisher of the codification was Robert Watkins, son of a state Representative in the excommunicated 1795 legislature. Robert had even received land in the heinous deal, so his inclusion of the interdicted laws was no accident. Still, Governor Jackson stubbornly refused to pay him.

One afternoon in 1802, in the new Georgia capital of Augusta, the ex-Governor and newly re-elected U.S. Senator James Jackson was confronted on the street by the infuriated printer. Robert Watkins denounced Jackson as a “pygmy general” and a member of a “damned venal faction which has disgraced Georgia.”  Where upon Jackson whacked Watkins in the face with his cane. Watkins returned the favor by using his waking stick to hit Jackson on the head, drawing blood. Jackson pulled a pistol, but somebody knocked it out of his hand. Watkins leapt upon Jackson, and tried to gouge his eyes out. Jackson bit Watkins finger, causing Watkins to roll away, screaming in pain. And while everybody was trying to catch their breath, Watkins pulled a pistol with a spring loaded bayonet, and stabbed Jackson in the chest. The blade missed his heart by an inch. Friends were finally able to pull the two hot heads apart.

It seemed that even five years after the Yazoo Swamp-Land Deal had been “rescinded”, it was still trying to rise from the dead, like any good movie monster would.

                                       - 30 - 

GEORGIA PEACHES Chapter Five

I do not doubt state Representative and ex-U.S. Senator James Jackson' when he said he was prepared to shoot every man who voted for the Yazoo Land sale. Jackson was a well known as a duelist. In fact after the new state legislature convened in Louisville on 11 January, 1796, several of the members were threatened and challenged to duels unless they stopped trying to overturn the sale. Amazingly, they all forged ahead.  These people were ticked off.

First things first; the assembly elected the logical Jared Irwin as the new Governor, a good balance to the emotional Representative Jackson. Then a special committee was created – chaired by Jackson – to take testimony on the great Yazoo Yard Sale, er, land sale.

And it was here, under oath, that the whole sordid tale came out. Jackson's final report seethed with indignation. “The public good was placed entirely out of view, and private interest alone consulted;...the rights of the present generation were violated, and the rights of posterity bartered... and the principles of aristocracy established in their stead.”  Now that is what a class war warrior really sounds like.

The Legislature offered up what became the “Rescinding Act”, which spent a thousand words justifying itself.  And then it declared the Yazoo land sales null and void. The buyers could have their money back (initial payments had been made). But Jackson insisted on going a step further. The act ordered that the government had 3 days to expunge any reference to the sale in public records. Any county officer or court clerk found with a reference to the Yazoo sale on the books, even in an index, was to be fined $1,000 a day until the offending passage was removed. It was made illegal for courts to accept any lawsuits mentioning the Yazoo Land sale. Georgia would not even respond to any future Federal lawsuits involving the sale. The Rescinding Act was Orwellian two centuries before George Orwell. The entire Georgia legislature of 1795 had all become “un-persons”.

On 13 February, 1796 both houses of the Georgia state legislature approved the Rescinding Act, by 43 to 3 in the house and in the Senate by 14 to 4. That same day Governor Irwin signed it. Immediately the state house swarmed with men wielding scissors, slicing out all references to the  Yazoo sale. The Act also ordered that three days hence, “A fire shall be made in front of the State House door, and a line to be formed by the members of both branches around the same. The Secretary of State... shall....then produce the ... usurped act... and deliver the same to... the... Messenger of the House, who shall then pronounce “God save the state! And long preserve her rights! And may every attempt to injure them perish as these corrupt acts do now!” And at about four on the afternoon of 15 February, 1796, that is exactly what happened. They actually burned the bill.

The local papers published romanticized accounts of the bonfire.  In the Chronicle it was noted that a magnifying lens had been used to start the fire. Thus, wrote the reporter, “God Almighty is at last brought into the scrape.”  But a Charleston, South Carolina newspaper also observed that the blaze was of  “very little to the satisfaction of the bystanders.” It wasn't that they didn't approve of the conflagration, but they had a new worry - the entire world's economy had just dropped into the toilet. And the man who had dropped it there was the Philadelphia speculator, James Greenleaf.

Okay, maybe it wasn't entirely his fault. But this silver tonged liar does seem to have been at the center of a lot of the distress in America. Mr. Greenleaf was the partner with Robert Morris, John Nicholson and James Gunn in the North America Land Bank. They were buying up as much land as possible to satisfy the anticipated demand from Dutch bankers, with whom young Greenleaf insisted he had intimate connections, He had originally proven this a decade earlier, when in 1788, within  two weeks of his arrival in Holland, the then  22 year old American con man had met the Baroness Cornelia Elbertine Scholton van Ascht et Oud-Haarlem, and impregnated her.  Shortly there after, he not only left town, he fled the continent.

When she turned up pregnant, the reluctant Greenleaf was  convinced, probably with money, to return to Holland, where he wed the Baroness. It was Greenleaf's skill at seduction which convinced Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson to appoint Greenleaf as American envoy to Holland. But eventually the Baroness realized her new husband was an amoral sleaze ball, and she attempted suicide. When Jefferson recalled Greenleaf, and he returned to the United States, the Baroness remained in Holland, with their son. The now 25 year old Greenleaf convinced a judge in Rhode Island he had been “tricked” into the marriage, and was granted a divorce. James Greenleaf was once again free, still handsome and young enough to be a seducer of women, and it turns out speculators like Morris, Nicholson and Gunn.

Within minutes of the Yazoo land sale being approved by the Georgia assembly, James Greenleaf was bound back for Holland, to offer the wealthy Europeans a “safe” place to invest their money.  He arrived to find everybody in Europe investing their money in cannon and gun powder.  His old Dutch banking contacts gave him the cold shoulder. The only two banks that were willing to offer to sale  shares in his American Land Bank, Elsevier and Beelde-maker, did so halfheartedly, and attracted no buyers. There was no money coming from Holland to profit from the Yazoo land scheme. Defeated, James Greenleaf returned home, and the conspirators had to find their suckers some place else. So they sent  Greenleaf out to buy and sell housing lots in the new Federal City of Washington, D.C.

The government was not supposed to move-in until 1800, but construction of the capital and the President's mansion had already begun. And of course there had to be buildings for a Post Office,  a State Department and a War Department. And after black slaves built all those, somebody would have establish places for them to buy groceries, restaurants to eat in, buy clothing, and 'entertainment' – everything from books to ladies of the evening. A city had to be established where there was no reason for it being, except politics insisted it be there.  And Morris and Nicholson and Gunn leveraged their almost worthless Yazoo shares into property in the new Washington, District of Columbia..

At some point Robert Morris gave young James Greenleaf $7,000 in cash to pay for a section of city lots. But the money never made it to the seller. That drove Morris to take a closer look at the company books, where he discovered Greenleaf had signed all of his personal debts over to the  North American Land Company, making Morris and Nicholson and Gunn responsible for repaying them. The young seducer, had seduced 3 more victims. 

Disingenuously, Morris later wrote to Benjamin Harrison, claiming, “Twas he (Greenleaf) that encouraged the very extensive land purchases which were made under a promise that he would procure in Holland the money necessary to support the same...” Suddenly the financial Mozart of the Revolution was claiming the entire Yazoo Swamp-Land Fraud, the wholesale bribery of an entire state legislature, had actually been the dastardly plan of a  28 year old serial Casanova. It was ridiculous, but I suppose such whining is a natural reaction when a “master of the universe” gets the shaft - it must be somebody else's petard, never their own that they are hoisted upon.  Blame it on the government regulators, or the greed of a business partner. It is never their greed that is blame.

- 30 - 

Georgia Peaches - Chapter Seven

I seemed to have lost track of Patrick Henry in our story, but let me catch you up. After the original 1789 Yazoo Swamp-Land deal fell through, Patrick had sold most of his shares in the now almost worthless Virginia Yazoo Company to Georgia Senator James Gunn and the North American Land Company (Robert Morris, John Nickleson and James Greenleaf). They had renamed it the Northern Mississippi Company, and in 1795 completed the purchase of the same land (and more) from Georgia for 1.4 cents per acre. Patrick seriously considered suing Georgia, claiming he still had a legal claim to the land, but the suit was never filed. In the meantime he had developed stomach troubles, and was popping out children (11 in all) with his second wife, Dorthea Dandridge Henry.

But back to our main story. First of the great speculators to succumb was the young man who had promised so much and delivered so little, James Greenleaf.  Late in 1796, the collapse of his over leveraged lifestyle dropped the silver tongued seducer into Philadelphia's dreaded Prune Street Debtors Prison.

It was part of the larger Walnut Street jail, an imposing structure which housed 300 prisoners, but in the back, in a two story building originally designed as a work house, was the small debtors jail. All the prisoners were expected to pay for their own incarceration. It was a strange system considering the prisoners were in jail because they were broke. Those with wealthy friends willing to pay could receive better food or even a small private apartment. Still, one look at his new dismal surroundings, and a desperate Greenleaf had his lawyers petition for his immediate release. But Robert Morris' instructed his lawyers to intervene. They reminded the court that the young seducer had been granted a divorce in Rhode Island, which meant he was an out-of-state debtor, and the law required out of state bums  remain in jail for at least six months. In fact James Greenleaf would remain behind bars much longer than that.  But, at least he would not be lonely.

Morris may have preferred that Greenleaf was skinned alive, but actually, the debt left him and Nicholson by Greenleaf was a mere drop in his own rising tide of unpaid promises.  Morris' mansion in Philadelphia was so heavy besieged by creditors, that he retreated to the country estate he called “The Hills”.

He was most repelled by the idea of sharing a cell with his old partner Greenleaf. He wrote Nicholson, “I do not want to be under the same roof with such a scoundrel.” But at last, on 15 February, 1798, one venal vindictive creditor named George Eddy, aided by a local sheriff, managed to lay hands on the great speculator. The amount owed to Eddy was small (by Morris's standards), but even this pittance the largest private land owner in North America could not pay. Morris wrote to a friend, “George Eddy is the most hardened villain God ever made. I believe if I had bank bills to pay him with he would refuse them on the ground of their not being legal tender. He was positively determined to carry me to Prune Street last night, but the sheriff humanely relieved me from his rascally clutches.” It was only an overnight stay of execution. The next day, Robert Morris, signer of the Deceleration of Independence, entered the Prune Street Debtors jail. Now living under the same roof, Morris refused to even acknowledge Greenleaf's presence, studiously avoiding him in all encounters.

John Nicholson held out for another year, until the winter of 1799 when the 43 year old joined his partners behind bars. But Nicholson lost not only his fortune  - creditors squeezed $8 million from his estate, still leaving him $8 million in debt- but his mind as well. He died in the Prune Street Jail, on 5 December, 1800.  Robert Morris survived the humiliation, supported by his wealthy sons, but died four years later, still $12 million in debt and occasionally harassed by creditors. And James Greenleaf, the despised debonair silver tongued seducer of women and money, survived as well.  He  unloaded his shares in the Georgia Mississippi Company for 10 cents an acre to a group of prominent Boston speculators,  headed by Judge William Wetmore. Then, shortly after his release, James Greenleaf married Anne Penn Allen, a lovely and wealthy Washington socialite. However before the wedding Ms Penn Allen put her sizable estate in a trust, where James Greenleaf was never able to reach it.  Not that he didn't continually try, until his death in 1843.  It gave him something to occupy his time.

Meanwhile, in 1797, Judge Wetmore's group re-sold the Georgia Yazoo company to yet another group,  headed by a Boston speculator named John Peck, who renamed it the New England Mississippi Company. They also hired a Boston Law firm which offered the legal opinion that the “Rescinding Act” by the Georgia legislature had been unconstitutional. That made it legal to sell shares in their Yazoo lands for 33 cents an acre.  By 1798 the New England Mississippi Company had attracted $2 million, mostly from small investors, all gambling that somehow the courts would re-approve the Yazoo Swamp-Land sale.

Senator James Jackson was determined that would never happen. As Governor of Georgia he oversaw, in 1802,  the sale of all of the Georgia's claims to the Yazoo lands, everything beyond the Apalachicola River to the Mississippi River, to the federal government for $1.3 million. He remained determined that the deal was D-E-A-D, dead, even refusing to pay a printer who published a codification of Georgia laws under the old constitution, because the volume mentioned the Yazoo swamp land sale.

It wasn't as simple as that, of course. The publisher of the codification was Robert Watkins, son of a state Representative in the excommunicated 1795 legislature. Robert had even received land in the heinous deal, so his inclusion of the interdicted laws was no accident. Still, Governor Jackson stubbornly refused to pay him.

One afternoon in 1802, in the new Georgia capital of Augusta, the ex-Governor and newly elected U.S. Senator James Jackson was confronted on the street by the infuriated printer. Robert Watkins denounced Jackson as a “pygmy general” and a member of a “damned venal faction which has disgraced Georgia.”  Where upon Jackson whacked Watkins in the face with his cane. Watkins returned the favor by using his waking stick to hit Jackson on the head, drawing blood. Jackson pulled a pistol, but somebody knocked it out of his hand. Watkins leapt upon Jackson, and tried to gouge his eyes out. Jackson bit Watkins finger, causing Watkins to roll away, screaming in pain. And while everybody was trying to catch their breath, Watkins pulled a pistol with a spring loaded bayonet, and stabbed Jackson in the chest. The blade missed his heart by an inch. Friends were finally able to pull the two hot heads apart.

It seemed that even five years after the Yazoo Swamp-Land Deal had been “rescinded”, it was still trying to rise from the dead, like any good movie monster would.

                                       - 30 -