Louisiana and Aaron Burr 225 



possession of the Yazoo territory, again sprang into 

 life. In that year four, the Georgia, the Georgia- 

 Mississippi, the Tennessee, and the Upper Missis- 

 sippi, companies obtained grants from the Georgia 

 Legislature to a territory of over thirty millions of 

 acres, for which they paid but five hundred thousand 

 dollars, or less than two cents an acre. Among the 

 grantees were many men of note, Congressmen, Sen- 

 ators, even judges. The grants were secured by the 

 grossest corruption, every member of the Legisla- 

 ture who voted for them, with one exception, being 

 a stockholder in some one of the companies, while 

 the procuring of the cessions was undertaken by 

 James Gunn, one of the two Georgia Senators. The 

 outcry against the transaction was so universal 

 throughout the State that at the next session of the 

 Legislature, in 1796, the acts were repealed and the 

 grants rescinded. This caused great confusion, as 

 most of the original grantees had hastily sold out 

 to third parties ; the purchases being largely made in 

 South Carolina and Massachusetts. Efforts were 

 made by the original South Carolina Yazoo Com- 

 pany to sue Georgia in the Federal Courts, which led 

 to the adoption of the Constitutional provision for- 

 bidding such action. 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 com- 



