But where law was insufficient or non-existent, new laws were created either to aggrandize the powers of landlordship, or to seize hold of land or enchance its value, or to get extraordinary special privileges in the form of banking charters. And here it is necessary to digress from the narrative of Astor's land transactions and advert to his banking activities, for it was by reason of these subordinately, as well as by his greater trade revenues, that he was enabled so successfully to pursue his career of wealth-gathering. The circumstances as to the origin of certain powerful banks in which he and other landholders and traders were large stockholders, the methods and powers of those banks, and their effect upon the great body of the people, are component parts of the analytic account of his operations. Not a single one of Astor's biographers has mentioned his banking connections. Yet it is of the greatest importance to describe them, inasmuch as they were closely intertwined with his trade, on the one hand, and with his land acquisitions, on the other. FOOTNOTES: [90] Doc. No. 13, State Papers, Second Session, 18th Congress, Vol. ii. [91] "Stole on a monstrous scale." The land frauds, by which many of the Southern planters obtained estates in Louisiana, Mississippi and other States were a national scandal. Benjamin F. Linton, United States Attorney for Western Louisiana, reported to President Andrew Jackson on August 27, 1835, that in seizing possession of Government land in that region "the most shameful frauds, impositions and perjuries had been committed in Louisiana." Sent to investigate, V. M. Garesche, an agent of the Government Land Office, complained that he could get no one to testify. "Is it surprising," he wrote to the Secretary of the Treasury, "when you consider that those engaged in this business belong to every class of society from the member of the Legislature (if I am informed correctly) down to the quarter quarter-section settler!" Up to that time the Government held title to immense tracts of land in the South and had thrown it open to settlers. Few of these were able to get it, however. Southern plantation men and Northern capitalists and speculators obtained possession by fraud. "A large company," Garesche reported, "was formed in New York for the purpose, and have an agent who is continually scouring the country." The final report was a whitewashing one; hence, none of the frauds was sent to jail.--Doc. No. 168, Twenty-fourth Congress, 2d Session, ii:4-25, also Doc. No. 213, Ibid.