Georgia Historical Society

 
A man given to duels and bloody brawls, James Jackson made his resounding mark in Georgia politics, especially in regard to the Yazoo land fraud of 1795.  A native of Devonshire, England, Jackson arrived in Savannah in 1772 and took part in the failed defense of Savannah in 1779.  He went on to be elected to the United States Senate in 1793, a seat he would resign to return to Georgia to overturn the Yazoo Act which had granted 35 million acres in present-day Mississippi and Alabama to four companies for $500,000.  The deal had been conducted with bribery and corruption, and Jackson and his supporters were successful in rescinding the act.


Jackson was also responsible for ushering in Georgia’s first real political party.  Since most of those involved in the debauched Yazoo land deal were Federalists, Jackson found it relatively easy to include Georgia in the Jeffersonian Republican Party.  By 1802, Jeffersonians controlled the federal government.  


Adapted from New Georgia Encyclopedia article on James Jackson.

 

From the GHS Collection:

 

Manuscript: James Jackson papers, MS 422; C.H. Warren illustration of the burning of the Yazoo Act, ca. 1914, MS 1675; Edward Telfair papers, MS 791; Georgia Commission to Attend a Treaty with the Creek Indians journal, MS 280; Georgia Executive Council papers, MS 284