Yazoo land fraud, name given to the sale in 1795 by an act of the Georgia legislature of vast holdings in the Yazoo River country to four land companies following the wholesale bribery of the legislators; the territory comprised most of present Alabama and Mississippi. The companies involved were the Georgia, Georgia Mississippi, Upper Mississippi, and Tennessee companies. Spain's acceptance, in the same year, of lat. 31°N as the northern boundary of West Florida (see West Florida Controversy) enhanced the value of the lands, which had formerly been claimed by Spain, and the companies set about reselling them. However, the corruption that accompanied the passage of the act was soon detected, and in 1796 a newly elected legislature rescinded it. Georgia offered to restore the purchase price to the companies, but large numbers of investors declined to accept payment and pressed their land claims. In 1802, Georgia ceded all its lands W of the Chattahoochee River to the United States for $1,250,000. By the terms of the cession agreement the Yazoo claimants were to receive 5,000,000 acres (2,025,000 hectares) or the money received from their sale, an arrangement they rejected. The Yazoo frauds came to be a vexing issue in national politics. Congress, prodded by John Randolph, declined to give the speculators any relief. But in 1810 the U.S. Supreme Court, in Fletcher v. Peck, held that their land claims were valid since the Yazoo act of 1795 constituted a contract binding on Georgia even though it was conceived in fraud. Bolstered by this decision, the speculators were later awarded more than $4,000,000 by Congress.

Yazoo City, city (1990 pop. 12,427), seat of Yazoo co., W central Miss., on the Yazoo River; inc. 1830. It is a trade, processing, and industrial center in a cotton, cattle, and soybean area. There is lumbering and catfish processing, and machinery, transportation equipment, chemicals, clothing, and wire products are manufactured. In the Civil War, the ironclad ram C.S.S. Arkansas was built in a Confederate navy yard there. Union troops occupied the city in May, 1864, and burned many of its buildings.

Yazoo, river, 188 mi (303 km) long, formed in W central Miss. by the confluence of the Tallahatchie and Yalobusha rivers. Prevented by natural levees from joining the Mississippi River sooner, the Yazoo parallels the Mississippi for c.175 mi (280 km), meandering southwest along the eastern edge of the Mississippi's floodplain before entering it near Vicksburg. The Yazoo is navigable for shallow-draft vessels. Although subject to flooding, the fertile plain between the two rivers, called the Delta, is a major cotton growing region. In the spring of 1973 about 2,800 sq mi (7,250 sq km) of the Yazoo basin were inundated by water backed up because of floods on the Mississippi River; parts of the Delta region were saturated for as long as four months, causing a delay in spring plantings. The Yazoo River is exemplary of a stream of deferred junction, and the term yazoo is generally applied to any stream that has a belated confluence with the main river.

(1795–1814) Scheme to sell land in Georgia. After legislators were bribed to sell Georgia's western land claims around the Yazoo River to four land companies for $500,000, public anger forced a newly elected Georgia legislature to rescind the act (1796) and return the money. Much of the land had meanwhile been resold to third parties, who refused the money and maintained their claim to the property. The state ceded its claim to the U.S. in 1802. In 1810 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the 1796 rescinding law was an unconstitutional infringement on a contract. By 1814 the U.S. government assumed possession of the territory and awarded the claimants over $4 million.

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