Louisiana and Aaron Burr 221 



they could increase the value of the lands which they 

 sought to acquire. American adventurers had been 

 in correspondence with Lord Dorchester, the Gov- 

 ernor-General of Canada, looking to the possibility 

 of securing British aid for those desirous of embark- 

 ing in great land speculations in the West. These 

 men proposed to try to get the Westerners to join 

 with the British in an attack upon Louisiana, or even 

 to conduct this attack themselves in the British in- 

 terests, believing that with New Orleans in British 

 hands the entire province would be thrown open to 

 trade with the outside world and to settlement ; with 

 the result that the lands would increase enormously 

 in value, and the speculators and organizers of the 

 companies, and of the movements generally, grow 

 rich in consequence. 16 They assured the British 

 agents that the Western country would speedily sep- 

 arate from the Eastern States, and would have to 

 put itself under the protection of some foreign State. 

 Dorchester considered these plans of sufficient 

 weight to warrant inquiry by his agents, but noth- 

 ing ever came of them. 



Much the most famous, or, it would be more cor- 

 rect to say, infamous, of these companies were those 

 organized in connection with the Yazoo lands. 17 The 

 country in what is now middle and northern Missis- 



16 Canadian Archives, Dorchester to Sydney, June 7, 1789; 

 Grenville to Dorchester, May 6, 1790; Dorchester to Beck- 

 with, June 17, 1790; Dorchester to Grenville, Sept. 25, 1790. 

 See Brown's "Political Beginnings," 187. 



11 The best and most thorough account of these is to be 

 found in Charles H. Haskin's"The Yazoo Land Companies." 



