The notorious Yazoo Fraud centered on the 1794 sale by the Georgia legislature of 35,000,000 acres of land along the Yazoo River in what is now Alabama and Mississippi at 1½ cents per acre. James Jackson resigned as U.S. Senator to run for the Georgia legislature and press for repeal of the Yazoo act, succeeding in 1796. The act itself and all records of it were then burned “with fire from heaven” aided by a sunglass. The U.S. Supreme Court later upheld the land sales, Congress paid Georgia $1,250,000 for the Yazoo territory in 1802, and then paid the land buyers $4,000,000 in 1810. The land went into the new states of Alabama and Mississippi.