GEORGIA PEACHES Chapter Seven

I suppose you've heard how a group of civic minded men gathered in Philadelphia during the summer of 1787 to create a “more perfect union” (above). Well, they did. Except it would be well to remember they were human beings, not machines and that civics is not a science, but an art form, in which each human expresses a different vision of perfection and hell. 

And in the case of James Wilson (above), opponent to the Bill of Rights and Justice of the Supreme Court under the new constitution and briber in-chief for the Yazoo land fraud, perfection included the right to lie to and steal from his fellow humans.

Remember Robert Morris who created the Bank of North America, which financed the Revolutionary War?  Well, the bank had originally been chartered in Pennsylvania, and after the Revolution patriots who who did not trust the power the bank gave Morris revoked it's charter. But in 1786 the state was sued by a share holder in that bank, who claimed the repeal had violated the rights of an innocent party – i.e. him, James Wilson. And a year later, he was able to replace the Articles of Confederation which he hated, Justice Wilson was one of those civic minded men who gathered in Philadelphia to draw up the new Constitution for the United States.

The state of Pennsylvania had backed down from Wilson's lawsuit, re-charted the bank and put Wilson on the board.  But Wilson was determined his new Federal government would show respect for business. So, in drawing the new constitution for America, James Wilson added what became Section 10 of the first Article of The Constitution, which read in part, “No State shall enter into any Treaty...coin Money...pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility...”. This was to be a capitalist nation, and respect for business was thus written into its constitution. 

All of which brings us back to 1795 when the Georgia Yazoo Company bought 11 million acres of swamp land for 1/4 cent an acre.  In August of 1795,  now bankrupt Georgia Company was bought by morally bankrupt James Greenleaf.  He paid 1 cent an acre. Then in November of 1795  Greenleaf sold the company to yet another group of speculators, for 8 cents an acre, giving Greenleaf a 650% profit in just 3 months. The new owners renamed it the New England-Mississippi Company  But why were these speculators paying so much for a dead company? Hadn't the new owners never heard of Caveat Emptor?

Listed first among the directors of the New England-Mississippi Company was Boston lawyer, Benjamin Hichborn (above), a  cousin to Paul Revere on his mother's side.  And Benjamin's real talent was as a gossip, knowing which ear would be most receptive to which dirt.  In the late 1790's he aligned himself with the  Democrat-Republicans, becoming a trusted and rare confidant for Thomas Jefferson himself in Federalist New England. 

The other company directors were equally well connected. Samuel Brown was a member of the  Providence, Rhode Island Browns,  who had made a fortune insuring slave ships which brought rum to Africa, traded it for black skinned human who were then traded in Barbados for cotton and coffee.

Benjamin Joy was a Massachusetts land speculator. Thomas Winthrop (above) was then a thirty-something son of the iconic Boston family.  George Blake was yet another lawyer-speculator . And finally there was John Peck. 

He was 75 years old in 1800. Most people knew him for what he considered his hobby – he was “The most scientific and most successful naval architect” in the new nation, having designed small and fast privateers (above) for smuggler John Hancock and later the colonial navy. But someone else had to build the ships, because John did not work or play well with others.

As a human being John Peck was secretive, “...Often argumentative and egotistical, tending to alienate those with whom he interacted”. In other words, the people who knew him best, disliked him the most. 

John Peck saw himself as a merchant, starting with a trading post on Crabtree Neck (above), where the Skillings River flows into Frenchman's Bay, not far from Bar Harbor, Maine. It is still labeled Peck's Point on the maps. John invested his profits in land, and there are few communities in today's Maine, which do not list him on their early property rolls. So it was a natural that the wealthy landowner would by shares in the New England-Mississippi Company. 

And it was John Peck who on 14 May, 1803, sold to Robert Fletcher of New Hampshire, 15,000 acres of the New England- Mississippi company holdings, at the inflated price of $5 an acre. If the lawyers are to be believed Robert Fletcher felt cheated by Peck, and later in 1803, just like Mr. Chandler in 1603 - remember him? - sued to get his money back

Robert Fletcher was a lawyer from Amherst, New Hampshire (above).  He was only 42 years old in 1803, and owned extensive properties in the state. He was also a very successful husband, fathering 13 children, but ultimately, an unsuccessful businessman.  His final investment was in timber lands in Montreal, Canada. And when this venture failed in November 1809, Robert Fletcher shot himself. But even after his suicide, the court case he had launched continued all the way to the Supreme Court – just as it was intended to. Which was amazing because it was a set up, a fake case. And everybody knew it.

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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.

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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 Six

I do not doubt state Representative and ex-U.S. Senator James Jackson',when he let it be known that he was prepared to shoot down every man who had voted for the Yazoo Land sale. Jackson was known as a duelist. But 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 what 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 his shares in the 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 somebody would have to build housing for workers, and 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.

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