Perhaps the most important legislation of the year was an Act approved April 30, which authorized the people of Ohio to form a Constitution and enter the Union; for not only was the admission of Ohio a formidable increase of power to the Northern democracy, but Gallatin inserted into the law a contract, which bound the State and nation to set aside the proceeds of a certain portion of the public lands for the use of schools and for the construction of roads between the new State and the seaboard. This principle, by which education and internal improvements were taken under the protection of Congress, was a violation of State-rights theories, against which, in after years, the strict constructionists protested; but in this first year of their sway Gallatin and the Northern democrats were allowed to manage their own affairs without interference. John Randolph would not vote for the admission of a new State, but Giles and Nicholson gave their votes for the bill, which passed without a murmur. Gallatin’s influence carried another point, more annoying to the Southern Republicans, although less serious. After years of wrangling, Georgia surrendered to the United States government all right and title to the territory which was afterward to become the States of Alabama and Mississippi. This immense region, shut from the Gulf of Mexico by the Spaniards, who owned every river-mouth, was inhabited by powerful Indian tribes, of whom the Georgians stood in terror. The Creeks and Cherokees, Choctaws and Chickasaws, owned the land, and were wards of the United States government. No one could say what was the value of Georgia’s title, for it depended on her power to dispossess the Indians; but however good the title might be, the State would have been fortunate to make it a free gift to any authority strong enough to deal with the Creeks and Cherokees alone. In the year 1795, ignoring the claims of the national government, the Georgia Legislature sold its rights over twenty million acres of Indian land to four land-companies for the gross sum of five hundred thousand dollars. With one exception, every member of the Legislature appeared to have a pecuniary interest in the transaction; yet no one could say with certainty that the title was worth more than half a million dollars, or indeed was worth anything to the purchasers, unless backed by the power of the United States government, which was not yet the case. Nevertheless, the people of Georgia, like the people of Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, being at the moment in the fever of land-speculation, partly because they thought the land too cheap, partly because they believed their representatives to have been bribed, rose in anger against their Legislature and elected a new one, which declared the sales “null and void,” burned the Yazoo Act, as it was called, in the public square of Louisville, and called a State Convention which made the repealing Act a part of the Constitution.