Initially, the actions of the towns and tribes of Clay County were overshadowed by another set of events in Western Georgia. Governor George Mathews, egged on by his base of land speculators and plantation owners, who each wanted a piece of the Western-pie, signed The Yazoo Land Act in 1795. The Yazoo Act authorized the sale of nearly 35 million acres of Creek and Cherokee land in Western Georgia for $500,000. The four major companies who were to buy land would then be able to deal with the Creeks and Cherokee in the area and open it up to settlement. The deal faced significant push back from the people of Georgia as well as many Jeffersonian politicians fueled by the Federalist-Jeffersonian rivalry that had spread across the country in the late 1700s.