Yazoo Land Fraud

Yazoo land fraud, in U.S. history, scheme by which Georgia legislators were bribed in 1795 to sell most of the land now making up the state of Mississippi (then a part of Georgia’s western claims) to four land companies for the sum of $500,000, far below its potential market value. News of the Yazoo Act and the dealing behind it aroused anger throughout the state and resulted in a large turnover of legislators in the 1796 election. The new legislature promptly rescinded the act and returned the money. By this time, however, much of the land had been resold to third parties, who refused the state’s money and maintained their claim to the territory. The dispute between Georgia and the land companies continued into the 1800s. The state of Georgia ceded its claim to the region to the U.S. government in 1802. Finally the issue was reviewed by the U.S. Supreme Court, and in 1810 Chief Justice John Marshall ruled in Fletcher v. Peck that the rescinding law was an unconstitutional infringement on a legal contract. By 1814 the government had taken possession of the territory, and Congress awarded the claimants more than $4,000,000. The fraud was named for the Yazoo River, which runs through most of the region.