Land sales during this period were made under the act of 1800, as extended and amended in 1803 and 1804." It was provided that the public domain should be surveyed by marking it off into townships six miles square, and the townships subdivided into thirty-six square miles or sectiors. A Quartersection, or one hundred and sixty acres, was the smallest tract which could be sold.

Having been surveyed, the land was advertised for sale at public auctions which were held at the offices established in the various land districts. Tracts were sold to the highest bidder, and those remaining unsold might be entered privately at the minimum price of two dollars an acre. In either case, one-fourth of the purchase money had to be paid at the time of the sale, and the remaining three-fourths in annual installments of one-fourth each.

Alabama is divided, from an agricultural point of view, into three principal regions : the Tennessee Valley, the Alabama-Tombigbee basin, and the central hilly region which separates these two. Fed by streams which drain the country as far north as the Tennessee Valley, the Alabama and Tombigbee Rivers traverse the central and southwestern portions of the area, and empty their united waters into Mobile Bay. In the early days of Alabama, these streams furnished the only good commercial highway into the State.

The surveys in the Creek cession were begun in 1816, and speculators at once began making investigations. . A. P. Hayne made a tour of the lands to be put upon the market and wrote to Andrew Jackson giving a favorable account of the rich river and prairie tracts. Companies were formed for participation at the auctions,and Hayne wrote that "speculation in land is superior to Law or Physic."

The first sale took place at Milledgeville, Georgia, in August, 1817, and comprised a tract lying along the headwaters of the Alabama River in the neighborhood of the present city of Montgomery. Only the best river bottom tracts were disposed of at this time, and these were taken up by speculators from various places. The men who had moved into the region were generally too poor to make their way to the place of sale, and they had little hope of being able to compete with the wealthier purchasers. Sales during this year amounted to nearly $800,000, and the new tracts in the same region which were offered in 1818 brought the sales of that year up to nearly a million dollars. Almost nothing but river bottom lands were sold at Milledgevile during these two years, and there were few actual settlers among the purchasers.

The most coveted bit of land that was disposed of at this time lay within a wide bend of the Alabama River and upon a bluff which formed the opposite bank. The soil in the bend was of the best quality, and the bluff afforded an excellent site for a town. Members of the Bibb family were anxious to purchase here, and so was A. P. Hayne, who wrote to Jackson concerning the matter. A land company, of which William Wyatt Bibb was a member, secured the tracts, and the town of Montgomery was founded upon the bluff in 1819.

Though these sales were the most extensive that had taken place up to that time, they were small in comparison with those which were held in Huntsville in 1818. All the lands lying west of Madison County, on both sides of the Tennessee River, were offered for sale in that year,  and the amount sold reached a value of seven million dollars. Out of the sum of about one and a half million which was paid down upon the purchases, over a million was in Yazoo scrip, or "Mississippi stock," as it was called.

A speculating company, composed of men from Virginia, Georgia, Kentucky, and Madison County was formed. Prominent Tennesseeans bid against this combine and prices were run up to figures ranging between fifty and a hundred dollars an acre. Average cotton land sold at prices between twenty and thirty dollars.

The excitement caused by the sales was nation-wide. Men came from every part of the country to participate in them. A company was formed in Charleston, South Carolina, for the purpose of buying acreage in Alabama, and Stephen Elliott was sent out to make the purchases. Much swindling went on during the sales. A company of speculators would combine, and, by a show of force, intimidate their competitors and bid off large tracts of desirable land at low prices. They would then sell out at a considerable gain to those who had not been able to compete with them. It is stated on good authority that one such association of swindlers cleared $1,980 each on a transaction of this kind. The situation became so notorious that the Government authorized its agents to bid against the combinations when they thought it advisable.

No such extent of fine lands was ever again offered for sale in Alabama during a single year, but in 1819 large areas along the Alabama River below Montgomery County were put upon the market.

The land office for this district had now been moved from Milledgeville to Cahawba, and the sales here amounted to nearly three million dollars during the year.