Their Failure.

When in 1802, Georgia ceded the territory in question, including all of what is now middle and northern Alabama and Mississippi, to the United States for the sum of twelve hundred and fifty thousand dollars, the National Government became heir to these Yazoo difficulties.  It was not until 1814 that the matter was settled by a compromise, after interminable litigation and legislation. [Footnote:  American State Papers, Public Lands, I., pp. 99, 101, 111, 165, 172, 178; Haskin’s “Yazoo Land Companies.”  In Congress, Randolph, on behalf of the ultra states’-rights people led the opposition to the claimants, whose special champions were Madison and the northern democrats.  Chief Justice Marshall in the case of Fletcher vs. Peck, decided that the rescinding act impaired the obligation of contracts, and was therefore in violation of the Constitution of the United States; a decision further amplified in the Dartmouth case, which has determined the national policy in regard to public contracts.  This decision was followed by the passage of the Compromise Act by Congress in 1814, which distributed a large sum of money obtained from the land sales in the territory, in specified proportions among the various claimants.] The land companies were more important to the speculators than to the actual settlers of the Mississippi; nevertheless, they did stimulate settlement, in certain regions, and therefore increased by just so much the western pressure upon Spain.

    Georgian Filibusterers.

Some of the aggressive movements undertaken by the Americans were of so loose a nature that it is hard to know what to call them.  This was true of Elijah dark’s company of Georgia freebooters in 1794.  Accompanied by large bodies of armed men, he on several occasions penetrated into the territory southwest of the Oconee.  He asserted at one time that he was acting for Georgia and in defence of her rights to the lands which the Georgians claimed under the various State treaties with the Indians, but which by the treaty of New York had been confirmed to the Creeks by the United States.  On another occasion he entitled his motley force the Sans Culottes, and masqueraded as a major general of the French army, though the French Consul denied having any connection with him.  He established for the time being a little independent government, with blockhouses and small wooden towns, in the middle of the unceded hunting grounds, and caused great alarm to the Spaniards.  The frontiersmen sympathized with him, and when he was arrested in Wilkes County the Grand Jury of the county ordered his discharge, and solemnly declared that the treaty of New York was inoperative and the proclamation of the Governor of Georgia against Clark, illegal.  This was too much for the patience of the Governor.  He ordered out the State troops to co-operate with the small Federal force, and Clark and his men were ignominiously expelled from their new government and forced to return to Georgia. [Footnote:  Steven’s “Georgia,” II., 401.]