52 YAZOO FRAUD. 



to General Twiggs. It was supported by the respectable 

 names, among others, of James Sims, James McNeil, Peter 

 Crawford, and Moses Waddel ; and represented that, at that 

 alarming crisis, " having no confidence in the civil authority," 

 they conceived themselves under a military government. The 

 honest old veteran declined doing what he conceived he had 

 no power to do, and the people remained remediless. General 

 Jackson, called by the voice of an indignant country, had re- 

 signed his seat in Congress. Letters had been written to him 

 from various parts of Georgia, urging him to become a candi- 

 date for the Legislature from Chatham county. His opposi- 

 tion to the " usurped act " had been well understood. In the 

 presence of General Gunn, Georgia's faithless senator, he had 

 taken occasion to pronounce, in full Senate, on the last day of 

 the session of Congress in the spring of 1795, the speculation, 

 as it was, " a conspiracy of the darkest character and of de- 

 liberate villainy." He published upon his arrival, a series of 

 letters under the name of Sicilius, in which he strove to ex- 

 hibit the impolicy, illegality, and unconstitutionality of the act. 

 Other patriots stepped forward and addressed the people. 

 The elections eventuated prosperously for the virtuous cause. 

 Every where anti-Yazoo men were elected. The General 

 Assembly met at Louisville in January, 1796. Their first 

 object was an attack upon the infamous speculation. The 

 people had given instructions to annul the abominable act, 

 to restore their rights to them, and their posterity, and to pro- 

 claim to the world their abhorrence of the stupendous fraud 

 which had bartered away their estate. Petitions on petitions, 

 remonstrances on remonstrances, resolutions, and present- 

 ments, again poured in from every quarter. A day was as- 

 signed to consider the state of the Republic, when after de- 

 bate, these petitions, remonstrances, resolutions, and present- 

 ments, were submitted to a Committee, of which General 

 James Jackson was appointed Chairman. On the 22d of 

 January, 1796, the Committee reported, "that there were suf- 

 iicient grounds, as well with respect to the constitutionality of 

 the act, as from the testimony before them of the fraud prac- 

 tised to obtain it, to pronounce that the same is a nullity, and 

 not binding or obhgatory on the people of this State." A bill 



