significant fact of this suspicion, and also of the great unpopularity
of the Act, that to this day every effort to that end has failed. No
act of Governor Mathews ever justified any such suspicion. As Governor
of the State, and believing the sovereign power of the State was in
the Legislature, and consequently the power to dispose of the public
domain, he only approved the Act as the State's Executive, and
fulfilled the duties assigned to him by the law. But suspicion
fastened upon him, and its effects remain to this day.

The pertinacious discussions between the parties purchasing and those
opposed to the State's selling and her authority to sell, created
immense excitement, and pervaded the entire State. The decision of the
Supreme Court of the United States was invoked in the case of Fletcher
_versus_ Peck, which settled the question of the power of the
State to sell the public domain, and the validity of the sale made by
the State to the Georgia Company. In the meantime the Legislature of
Georgia had repealed the law authorizing the Governor to sell. This
decision of the Supreme Court brought about an amicable adjustment of
the difficulties between the Company and the State, with the
Government of the United States as a third party.

The excitement was not so much on account of the sale, though this was
bitter, as of the corruption which procured it. The test of public
confidence and social respect was opposition to the Yazoo fraud. Every
candidate at the ensuing election for members of the Legislature was
compelled to declare his position on the subject of repealing this
Act, and, almost to a man, every one who believed in the power of the
State to sell, and that rights had vested in the purchasers and their
assigns, was defeated.