Page:Historic towns of the southern states (1900).djvu/483

 Georgia, claiming that her colonial limits by the charter of 1735 extended by parallel lines westward to the Mississippi River, in 1785 organized in southwest Mississippi a county called Bourbon, and appointed justices of the peace, who, however, never attempted to exercise their functions. In 1795, the year the treaty was made with Spain, Georgia sold to four of the speculation land companies enormous acreages of land in what is now Alabama and Mississippi.

The first relief, permanent and secure, from all the discouragements to emigration was furnished when the Congress of the United States, in 1798, organized a territorial government for Mississippi and applied to it all the benefits, advantages and privileges of the Ordinance of 1787 for the government of the territory northwest of the river Ohio, except the clause of the sixth article, which prohibited slavery. Georgia in turn promptly yielded up her territorial and political claims to the United States for pecuniary and other considerations.

From the date of organized authority, population rapidly poured in. The Bayou, Pearl and the Big Black ceased to be the outer