GEORGIA PEACHES Chapter Six

I do not doubt state Representative and ex-U.S. Senator James Jackson's 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.

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, 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 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.

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 called Greenleaf home, 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.

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 when a “master of the universe” gets the shaft - it must be somebody else's petard, never their own. 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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GEORGIA PEACHES Chapter Five

I think the villain of our story is now Senator James Gunn. He was a big man, and a vulgar bully with a quick temper, who cheated the citizens of George out millions of dollars, when a million was the equivalent of today's 12 billions. And when Gunn complained about “dishonorable interference of some of my associates”, the associate he was referring to was his fellow Senator from Georgia, James Jackson. That makes Jackson the hero of this story. But if the truth be told – and that is my goal, here – the personalities of Senator Jackson and Senator Gunn were not all that different. They were both rich and arrogant white supremacist. And they were both hotheads, known to fight duels over issues of “honor”. In fact the only real difference between Jackson and Gunn, was that Jackson was nominally fighting for the white people of Georgia, and Gunn was fighting for himself. 

Gunn started off by offering Senator Jackson a bribe. The ever dutiful Supreme Court justice James Wilson approached Senator Jackson with the promise of half a million acres of prime Yazoo lands, in exchange for his support, or at least his silence on the Yazoo swamp-land sale. Senator Jackson replied that he had fought the Revolution for the people of Georgia, and “the land was theirs, and the property of future generations” At least that was what Senator Jackson said he said. But Jackson knew what he was facing. 

In February of 1795 President George Washington sent a copy of the Yazoo land sale to Congress, and suggested it violated a treaty his administration had signed with the Indians. Not that Washington was looking to protect native Americans. Washington just wanted the Federal government to be responsible for stealing their land. And he didn't want to start a war until he was ready for it.  And Senator Jackson helpfully authored a bill authorizing Washington to negotiate a treaty to do just that.  Like I said, the good guys and the bad guys in most situations, are not all that different, personality wise.

But...as word of the bribery and the low sale price for the Yazoo swamp lands leaked out, the public outrage exploded. On 28 March, 1795,  the Augusta Chronicle newspaper called the sale “a hellish fraud”.  Inspired, an organized mob marched the 30 miles from Augusta  to the capital of Louisville, intent upon lynching the Yazoo Gang - those members of the legislature who had voted for the sale. All of the gang still in Louisville ran for the hills, and the 'Augustinians' were reduced to hanging them in effigy.  In fact every member of the Yazoo Gang state wide was forced into hiding. Some had their homes burned. A few who were caught were beaten, a few tared and feathered and run out of town on fence rails. Some were shot at. One legislator, so the story goes, was even tracked down hiding in Virginia, where he was lynched - and not in effigy.

Jackson thought about resigning his seat in the U.S. Senate to fight the sale, but Gunn's rehearsed process preceded so quickly that it was over before Jackson could move. The depressed Jackson wrote to a friend, “I have really a good mind to...turn speculator...There is a damn sight more to be got by it”  But after being encouraged by the uproar in Georgia, he took heart again, resigned from the Federal Senate, returned home and began writing anonymous letters to the newspapers attacking the sale.

“The enormous gain of the speculator,” wrote Senator Jackson, “and the magical conversion of funds of the state into the funds of the individual” were destroying peoples' faith in their government. He told the citizens of Georgia that “It remains to you to decide whether you will nip this aristocratic influence in the bud, or leave it to be torn up by your children...thus rendering them subservient to the base and servile passions of a few Nabobs…Patience and moderation are no longer virtues, but the most infamous offices, and will be detested, with their owners, as the sycophants of a venal day.”

Grand juries were convened throughout Georgia to investigate the bribery and attempted bribery of their local representatives. Most towns held public meetings to denounce the sale. The general population was up in arms because since 1780 Georgia had followed the “head rights rule”, under which each head of a family had the right to 200 acres of unclaimed land, plus fifty acres per family member. With land ownership came the right to vote, and a rise in social status. Now a huge chunk of western lands were no longer "unclaimed". 

The citizens of Georgia had already decided they needed a new Constitution, to match the new Federal one, but the delegates to their constitutional convention -  which began on 3 May, 1795 - were apoplectic over the Yazoo sale. The delegates could do little more than move the state capital to Augusta, demand an investigation into the Yazoo sale, and then exhausted, adjourned. Senator Jackson won election to the Georgia Assembly in the fall of 1795.  In fact, in that election, all but two of the Yazoo Gang were voted out of office. The voters had spoken. In fact, the Yazoo Gang greatly strengthened the argument for universal suffrage. It turned out property owners were just as venal and greedy and stupid as as people who did not own property.

It was a spirit loose in the air, even in the heart of English minister and poet like Christopher Anstey. Ten years earlier this gentle man had been moved to write a long poem he called “Speculation”. “Whatever wild fantastic Dreams, Give Birth to Man's outrageous Schemes, Pursu'd without the least Pretence, To Virtue, Honesty, or Sense, Whate'er the wretched basely dare, From Pride, Ambition, or Despair, Fraud, Luxury, or Dissipation, Assumes the Name of—Speculation.” There was very little in Dr. Anstey's poem, written a decade before the French revolution, which does not apply to today's To-Big-Too-Fail bankers and hedge fund speculators.

Once in office, the new “Reform” Georgia Assembly would waste little time in dealing with the Yazoo gang. And that would open a whole new box of trouble, greed and lawyers.

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GEORGIA PEACHES Chapter Four

I hope that on election day, Tuesday, 10 November, 1794, the members of the Georgia legislature did not realize the evil they were unleashing when they voted to return James Gunn to a second six year term in the U.S. Senate. The distinguished members of the Georgia legislature were supposed to be the best of the best, brightest of the brightest, far more qualified to pick a Senator than the "hoi polli" – a word from the ancient Greek democracies, defining the general populace. So the majority of the Georgia legislature must have been naive idiots, otherwise their willingness to return this amoral selfish bully to power was a conscious decision to sell their reputations to him - which they promptly did.

In the flunkies defense, it must be pointed out that Senator Gunn and his co-conspirators had been preparing for this immoral yard sale for at least three years. Having bought up the Virginia Yazoo Company in late 1791, Gunn and his “Yankee” partners - Pennsylvanians Robert Morris, John Nicholson and James Greenleaf - had renamed it the "Upper Mississippi Company", to avoid the impression they were “foreign invaders”. Wade Hampton and his South Carolina Yazoo Company had gone even further, renaming their land grab "The Georgia-Mississippi Company". The Tennessee Company felt no such compunction to verbally pander for approval. But members of all three companies agreed to act as one, and cross traded in each others stocks. And as a joint committee of the Georgia legislature began to consider their bids, it was seen as politically expedient to form a fourth company, to be called "The Georgia Yazoo Company", from which land bribes might be more palatable to the locals. But the bylaws for this new bidder were written by Georgia judge Nathaniel Pendleton, who was a shareholder in the new "Upper Mississippi Company" with Senator Gunn.

The partners even put it down on paper, agreeing in writing that it was “expedient to dispose of a considerable quantity” of the land they were offering to buy “to diverse persons...to effect the purchase”. In other words, the men behind all four Yazoo companies were willing bribe the Georgia legislature, and said so in writing.  And at the very center of this web of graft loomed the hulking frame of James Gunn.

After he was safely re-elected, Gunn warned Supreme Court Justice James Wilson, who owned 25,000 shares of the Upper Mississippi Company, “We have taken measures which will ensure Success. But...they are to be executed by men whose want of talents may ruin every thing.” And by talents he meant a willingness to be bought, and by a want of talent he meant a shred of integrity. Senator Gunn had already been handing out options worth 1,000 British pounds - called 'money shares' -  to merchants in Savannah, including Mayor Thomas Gibbons, who was supposed to be the richest man in Georgia. The printer of the Augusta Southern Centinial newspaper, Alexander McMillan, was given 28,000 acres of land in the Georgia Company grant, to ensure at least one favorable newspaper. The Treasurer for the state of Georgia, Philip Clayton, was given 112,000 acres, and two of Governor George Mathews' personal secretaries got options on even more land. Even Governor Mathew's son-in-law received a land donation, although he kept suffering integrity relapses. In fact, Gunn warned every politician in Georgia they would not share in the bounty if they “did not vote for the bill.”

Gunn offered the Columbia County representative, James Simm, 50,000 acres for every fellow legislator he could convince to vote for the sale. He offered state Representative Robert Flournoy and state Senator Henry Mitchell 75,000 acres each in the Georgia Company's grant. Once the joint committee recommended accepting the primary bids on Friday 28 November, 1794, and the matter went before the entire state Assembly and Senate, legislators were treated to the image of United States Supreme Court Justice James Wilson, standing in the lobby of the Georgia State Capital with “$25,000 in his hands as a ready cash payment.”

Richmond County Representative Robert Watkins received no shares for his support. But his younger brother Thomas got shares in the Upper Mississippi Company, and his other brother Anderson got shares in the Tennessee Company.  Representative Peter Van Allen opposed the sale, and Treasurer Clayton offered him 75 British pounds to just go home until the vote was over. That offer, Clayton told Van Allen, came from “General Gunn”.  A similar offer was made to Georgia state Senators John Sheppered and Henry Mitchell.  Another state Senator was offered $2,000 cash for his vote. And when he had the temerity to ask where the cash was coming from, Treasurer Clayton told him, “It is nothing to you.” Yet another state Senator was offered ten slaves for his vote. Representative Thomas Raburn was offered $600 for his - and he took it – and state Senator Robert Thomas received shares in the Georgia Company, which he later sold for $5,000 cash.

After a lot of behind the scenes pushing and shoving, the bill, nobly titled "An Act for appropriating a part of the un-allocated territory of this state for the payment of the late state troops, and...for the protection and support of the frontiers of this State, and for other purposes, " passed the Georgia Assembly by 19 to 9 on 2 January, 1795, and the Senate on 3 January by a vote of 18 to 10. Governor Mathews signed it into law on 7 January, 1795.   Senator James Gunn and his conspirators had just bought 35 million acres of land, an area far larger then the original Yazoo Land grants. And where the old grants had offered Georgia 24 cents an acre, these new grants promised to pay just 1 ½ cents an acre. It was a steal.  In every way you looked at it.

And there was more. Among other "goodies" hidden in the bill was the clause that “the lands....shall be free from taxation, until the inhabitants thereof are represented in the legislature...”  Translation; the speculators were not responsible for property taxes,  and thus they produced no income to the state until they were sold to the suckers,...er, farmers. That made the grants easier to resell, which had been the goal from day one. And who was going to farm a swamp? Three months after the bill was signed,  Wade Hampton sold the Upper Mississippi Company to three Boston speculators for $120,000 ($1.5 million today). However Senator Gunn was not so fortunate. The day after the sale became law, Senator Gunn was on his way back to Washington, D.C., Within two weeks Senator Gunn  resold his lands for a measly $25,000 profit ($300,000 today) .  The buyer was his own partner, James Greenleaf.

What drove Senator Gunn to hurry back to Washington was that he was already being hanged and burned in effigy in several parts of Georgia. It was the already humbled David Ross who had warned him of this. The open bribery used in the Georgia legislature, Ross counseled, “will not a little embarrass the members, and, I fear, increase your difficulties.”

Ah, how true that would prove to be. If this had been a monster movie, the villagers were about to show up with their pitchforks and flaming torches.

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GEORGIA PEACHES Chapter Three

I think it is unfair to judge Patrick Henry by 21^st century standards. He was an 18^th century man. He was a slave owner, who measured his wealth largely by how many other human beings he owned. But  the hypocrisy of speaking for freedom while holding humans in bondage, was not completely lost on him. But it was lost on the pugnacious and ambitious and very un-humble Senator James Gunn. Which may be why American history books rarely mention him.

Born in Virginia, the “arrogant (and) ambitious” Gunn had risen to the rank of Captain during the revolution, but his career had faltered after he stole a horse from a South Carolina widow, and used it to “fix” a race.  After the end of the war Captain Gunn moved to Savannah, Georgia, where people didn't know him so well. He became a lawyer.  In the spring of 1786 Captain Gunn lead a handful of local militia in putting down a slave “revolt”.  In fact they had just run away, and were hiding in the Black Creek Swamp.  Gunn's brave militia proceeded to butcher most of them. And from that day forward, Gunn was known derisively as “General Gunn”.

The next year James Gunn was appointed to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. However he could not be bothered to actually show up.  And after being appointed a United States Senator in 1789, the now 36 year old bully's only legislative achievement was to be the first Senator to block a presidential appointment. It seems a certain naval officer, Bennamin Fishbourn, had refused to kick back Charleston tariff duties to Gunn.  That may have been the political highlight for the rapacious and arrogant James Gunn, had not the French revolution expanded his horizons.

When the mob stormed the Bastille in July of 1789, it set set off a seemingly endless series of wars, as the royal houses of Europe sought to suppress the revolutionaries, and failed. This chaos inspired all the spare cash in Europe to start looking for safer pockets. Senator Gunn figured American land speculation, like that old forgotten Yazoo swamp-land scheme, would look safe by comparison.

Remember the Bank of North America, the financial institution which had saved the revolution? It had been the invention of Robert Morris, the “Mozart of American finance”, a Philadelphia land and stock speculator, and a friend of Senator James Gunn.  Another like minded friend and business partner was the trusted Comptroller for the state of Pennsylvania, John Nicholson. He was responsible for collecting that state's taxes, and liquidating the estates of absentee loyalists. He and Morris quietly got rich doing that, and they shared many of these opportunities with Senator Gunn. These three vultures now combined to resurrect the Yazoo land fraud. Their first hire was the young James Greenleaf, the U.S. Counsel to the Netherlands, who boasted he could snap his fingers and produce a million dollars of gold and silver from his dutch banker friends.

To discourage any legal challenges Gunn hired James Wilson, a Supreme Court Justice who oversaw the Federal courts in Georgia. And as a silent partner they chose Nathaniel Pendleton,  another Federal judge.  Now all Senator Gunn needed was to get his hands on the old Virginia Yazoo company.

Remember Patrick Henry's partner, David Ross? Back in 1787, Ross had been one of the wealthiest men in Virginia. But when Georgia rejected his payment on the Virginia Yazoo lands, his empire fell apart like a row of dominoes. Creditors were now nipping at his heels. In 1791, Ross sold most of his shares in the Virginia Company to the rapacious Senator from Georgia, James Gunn.

Now, remember, the Federal Government had been trying to take the Yazoo lands off Georgia's hands for a decade and more. But the Peach State's politicians had refused every offer. They were convinced there was money in 'them-there' swamps – somehow. The problem was, if they were going to find a profit in the place, they were going to have to defend it.  In 1793 the arrogant red faced fire-plug, Governor George Mathews had been elected to his second non-consecutive term, partly on a platform of defending Georgia's western border against all challengers.  But Georgia didn't have the money for soldiers or forts. The only choice was for the legislature to resurrect the Yazoo land deal. Suddenly everything was coming together rather nicely. 

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GEORGIA PEACHES Chapter Two

I don't think we should judge Patrick Henry too harshly. Shortly after the birth of her sixth child Patrick's  beloved Sarah went mad and in 1771 the doctors diagnosed her as being possessed by demons. Two centuries later it seems likely she suffered from post patrum psychosis. Over the next 4 years Sarah was kept locked in a cellar “apartment” beneath her own home and cared for by her eldest daughter Martha, and her slaves. The standard treatment – exorcisms, restraints, regular enemas and laxatives, bleedings and beatings – all probably hastened her death in 1775. 

On 15 July, 1788, Federal Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton suggested that Georgia cede her “vacant territories” west of the Apalachicola River to the Federal government.  In exchange the Federal government would assume Georgia's entire war debt. But Georgia politicians said “no thanks”. Instead, on 21 December, 1789, Georgia governor Edward Telfair, signed grants of five million acres between the Apalachicola River and the Mississippi River, to the Virginia, Tennessee and Carolina Yazoo companies.  In exchange, within two years, the Yazoo companies were to pay Georgia $207,000 – or about 24 cents per acre. The first payment was to be made in six months. A disinterested observer might ask, when land claims in the region were certain to be disputed by local Indians and the Spanish,   and since undisputed claims elsewhere were selling for two pennies an acre, how could the investors in the Yazoo swamp – er, Yazoo lands – hope to make a profit?  Well, there was the golden rule of business - Caveat Emptor

The concept has officially been a part of English law since 1603, when a goldsmith named Lopus sold what turned out not to have been the magical gallstone of a wild goat to a Mr Chandler, for 100 pounds. When Chandler realized he had bought a useless rock, he sued, and a court ordered Lopus to give Chandler his money back. But on appeal the case was thrown out, because the higher court said it didn't matter what the seller's sales pitch had been - “for everyone in selling his wares will affirm that his wares are good...(yet) the warranty ought to be made at the same time of the sale.” In other words, without a written guaranty, there was no legal promise. That was quite a barrier to justice when the vast majority of the population could neither read or write. And in Georgia in 1790, buyer beware was the business model for all three of the Yazoo companies, never mind that the buyers were Georgia taxpayers.

But again, how do you make a profit buying swamp land for 24 cents an acre, when adjacent dry land was selling for 2 cents an acre? The answer is simple - you pay in play money. And in 1789 there was a lot of it around.

At America's lowest point in the revolution, a desperate Continental Congress had created the Bank of North America, and it had furnished the financial framework to support Washington's army. The BNA was the great unsung hero of the revolution. But in 1785 the new Confederation Congress withdrew the bank's charter, leaving the Federal government $11 million in debt to France and Spain, and the states about $48 million in debt to their own citizens. In exchange the moneyed class got “free market” banking.  And it was utopia. Right?

Within 2 years bonds issued by the American government were selling for ten to fifteen cents on the dollar, and most state bonds were selling for less than that. State legislatures were reduced to borrowing money just to pay the interest on earlier loans. There were more than fifty currencies in circulation, including English pounds and Spanish “pieces of eights”.  Individual cities were chartering banks, which then issued their own money. And in the woods of western Pennsylvania, where their were no banks, the standard medium of exchange was home brewed whiskey. The collapse of the American economic system was the major reason the Articles of Confederation were scrapped in 1787.

Under the new Constitution, establishing a stable economy was the job of President Washington's bright-eyed boy, Alexander Hamilton. Having been orphaned twice while growing up (even his adoptive parent had died), the new Secretary of the Treasury had an aversion to chaos. Hamilton's imposition of economic order was simple, brilliant and realistic. And he had a little help when reality kicked the Virginia money class right in their pocket books.

That summer, when agents for the Virginia Yazoo Company showed up in Georgia to make their first payment for the Yazoo land grants, they were carrying a huge pile of paper money.  Some of it was Federal bonds, and the rest was cash issued by various state banks, all bought at a discount. None of it was gold or silver and Patrick Henry and friends expected their payment to be accepted at "face value".  But the state of Georgia refused to fall for that.  They deemed the offer insufficent and canceled grants to all three Yazoo companies – No sale.

That left Patrick Henry David Ross and Thomas Jefferson, et al, holding huge piles of paper which had just been officially declared worthless. Which is when Alexander Hamilton offered to exchange their “worthless” paper “at par”, meaning at the best rate offered in the open market - for new U.S. government bonds. In other words, he was offering something of nothing. And all they had to do was convince the state of Virginia to allow the Federal government to take over their entire debt, and give up claims to any western lands.  Oh, and Hamilton also wanted to set up a new Bank of North America - this time to be called The First Bank of the United States.

It was the deal which saved the Virginia speculators' collective behinds, but it was a bitter pill for the aristocracy to swallow. Thomas Jefferson, a life long land speculator, would later say bitterly that Hamilton had fooled him. But he still cashed the check.

So the Yazoo swamp land deals were dead and buried. Except they weren't. Like movie zombies the land speculators would rise again. It is the nature of capitalism that its keeps ripping open its scars.. Have I mentioned that greed makes you stupid?

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