To Thomas Jefferson from Gideon Granger, 19 December 1804
From Gideon Granger
Dec: 19. 1804.
G Granger presents his respectful Compliments to the President & submits to his perusal a vindication of the rights of Innocent Purchasers under the Georgia Grants of 1795
Having submitted to the public this view founded on the Constitution and Laws of the Nation he is determined to wait in Silence, the issue of this business.
Whatever his opinions and feelings may be he shall studiously avoid taken any active part.
RC (DLC); endorsed by TJ as received 19 Dec. and so recorded in SJL. Enclosure: probably A Vindication of the Rights of the New England Mississippi Land Company, by the Agents of Said Company (Washington, D.C., 1804).
Georgia Grants of 1795: in 1804, the speculators of the New England Mississippi Land Company began a concerted effort to persuade Congress to approve a compensation bill for their extensive Yazoo land claims. After the bill was postponed in March 1804, the company’s allies in Congress proposed a similar measure in the current session, which received substantial debate in the House (C. Peter Magrath, Yazoo: Law and Politics in the New Republic; The Case of Fletcher v. Peck [Providence, R.I., 1966], 37-49).