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Show CASH SALES, 1820-1840 151 paying $10.50 an acre for one piece of 155 acres. John Coffee, who had surveyed the land and was an associate of Jackson, bought 22,887 acres.18 At the same time another public sale was under way at the St. Stephen's office. Here there was little frantic bidding, as a result of an agreement among buyers not to bid against each other. This was at first unnoticed, so the officers said, but after a time they woke up to the fact that a full-fledged combination of buyers was in control of the sales about which they could do little. In their report they said: By the exertion of a few speculating Gentlemen a coalition was formed with all the men of any tolerable capital and who were disposed to purchase lands. Each deposited a given sum and became pledged to act in concert a few were appointed to manage the funds, and in this manner Competition was in a considerable degree silenced. Many of the lands were in consequence purchased at low rates and after several Townships were offered public Resales were held by this association attended with the gain of Considerable profit. In a few cases a conflict between this Company and actual settlers has produced the Government extraordinary prices; This has resulted in Compromises in subsequent instances. . . . No mode of resisting its [the combination's] effects were in their power but exercising their private right of bidding up for the lands. Where the prices were known to be greatly inadequate; this was exercised in some cases by one of the superintendents. Thus, to combat a major evil, the government official employed a doubtful and illegal procedure, to little good effect.19 Franklin E. Plummer later told much the same story of practices he had observed at land offices in the South but he was more severe in his criticism of the speculators who organized these buyers' combinations and refused credit to settlers unless they joined the combination and permitted it to buy their 18 Territorial Papers, XVIII, 264, 300, 585; American State Papers, Public Lands, III, 552-60. 19 Israel Pickens and William Crawford, Register and Receiver of the St. Stephens Land Office, May 2, 1819, to Josiah Meigs, Territorial Papers, XVIII, 617-18. tracts, which were to be reconveyed to them at a stiff advance. Thus, said Plummer, the combination "grinds down and oppresses] the citizens and defraudfs] the treasury of its just dues." Plummer, who was no admirer of the planter aristocracy, said this "is a species of swindling practices by those who profess to be gentlemen, and frequently on a fictitious capital. . . ."20 The pattern established in 1818 at the Alabama sales, where speculators organized to suppress competition, was followed in sales at the Columbus and Chocchuma land offices in 1833 in another period of inflation and rising cotton prices. Settlers whose improved land was being offered were forced to join the companies created there. Individualisti-cally minded investors who did not at the outset cooperate with the company and tried to go it alone, found they had to pay higher prices and that it was cheaper to forfeit the lands on which they had been the successful bidders and to let the company buy them the next day at the $1.25 price. Though there was competition for some tracts, the Columbus and Chocchuma Companies effectively controlled sales on the bulk of the land. The officers in charge of the Mississippi and Alabama sales were subsequently accused of showing gross partiality and favoritism by marking lands on the tract books with an "S" and holding them for favored buyers. Here was introduced a practice that was to be used increasingly by corrupt land officers. In other cases land was sold on credit but was not entered. After partial payments had been made and the land officers had been changed, the buyers found that all they had invested in the land was lost. The Chocchuma and Columbus sales were among the most exciting in early American land history. Between 300 and 600 persons were generally in attendance, including members of Congress and of the Federal judiciary, and speculators from the East as well as from Georgia and South Carolina. 20 Register of Debates, 22d Cong., 2d sess., March 27, 1832, p. 2262. |