tive body by the speculators. The companies were
sometimes formed by men who wished themselves to lead emigrants into the
longed-for region, but more often they were purely speculative in
character, and those who founded them wished only to dispose of them at
an advantage to third parties. Their history is inextricably mixed with
the history of the intrigues with and against the Spaniards and British
in the West. The men who organized them wished to make money. Their
object was to obtain title to or possession of the lands, and it was
quite a secondary matter with them whether their title came from the
United States, England, or Spain. They were willing to form colonies on
Spanish or British territory, and they were even willing to work for the
dismemberment of the Western Territory from the Union, if by so doing
they could increase the value of the lands which they sought to acquire.
American adventurers had been in correspondence with Lord Dorchester,
the Governor General of Canada, looking to the possibility of securing
British aid for those desirous of embarking in great land speculations
in the West. These men proposed to try to get the Westerners to join
with the British in an attack upon Louisiana, or even to conduct this
attack themselves in the British interests, believing that with New
Orleans in British hands the entire province would be thrown open to
trade with the outside world and to settlement; with the result that the
lands would increase enormously in value, and the speculators and
organizers of the companies, and of the movements generally, grow rich
in consequence. [Footnote: Canadian Archives, Dorchester to Sydney, June
7, 1789; Grenville to Dorchester, May 6, 1790; Dorchester to Beckwith,
June 17, 1790; Dorchester to Grenville, Sept. 25, 1790. See Brown's
"Political Beginnings," 187.] They assured the British agents that the
Western country would speedily separate from the eastern States, and
would have to put itself under the protection of some foreign state.
Dorchester considered these plans of sufficient weight to warrant
inquiry by his agents, but nothing ever came of them.

The Yazoo Land Companies.

Much the most famous, or, it would be more correct to say, infamous, of
these companies were those organized in connection with the Yazoo
lands. [Footnote: The best and most thorough account of these is to be
found in Charles H. Haskin's "The Yazoo Land Companies."] The country in
what is no