John Dooly - Tough Times

Tough Times

Dooly's problems came at a time when his neighbors debated related issues. Dr. George Wells, the protégé of the pioneer Georgia populist politician Button Gwinnett, organized a clique in the Ceded Lands that petitioned the American commander of the southern forces to invade and seize the Creek lands. Both Wells and Gwinnett had controversial pasts as perennial failures and misfits, the type of characters who often lead, if not create, radical factions in revolutions. Wells spearheaded a petition drive to have the Continental Congress remove Georgia's continental commander, Lachlan McIntosh, on the grounds that he was incompetent, the "murderer" of Gwinnett in a duel, and connected by blood with pro-British Indian leaders. John Dooly had every reason to have supported, or even assumed a leadership position in Wells's movement. Nonetheless, he, Clarke, and other Whig leaders in the Ceded Lands did not sign Wells's petition. John Coleman, formerly of Virginia and a wealthy leader in the Ceded Lands, also opposed the petition and even wrote to McIntosh complaining that "Gentlemen of Abilities, whose characters are well established, are the only persons objected to, to govern and manage in State affairs with us. The Consiquence of which I fear, we too soon will see to our sorrow."(n32)

Within a year, John Dooly did make a comeback. Progress in local government moved quickly in the new state of Georgia and Dooly took advantage of it. He sought bounty land for building a mill and for the military service of himself and his deceased brother. What had been the Ceded Lands became, under Georgia's constitution of 1777, Wilkes County, the state's first county. Dooly served as its representative in the new one-house state legislature, which eventually gave him and fellow legislator John Coleman turns on the Executive Council that supervised the actions of the governor. Coleman and Dooly received orders from the council to qualify Thomas Waters and Isaac Herbert as justices of the peace in Wilkes County. For reasons not given, they instead gave the commissions to Edward Keating and Jacob Coleson, an action that the council ordered suspended. No further information on this matter appears in the council minutes but, a few months later, Thomas Waters came before the council to take an oath under the act for the expulsion of enemies from the state. John and George Dooly made payments to Georgia for grants of new land in 1778. With the death of Coleman from disease that summer, John Dooly rose to command his county's militia. In this position, he led his neighbors against Creek raiders and won a victory against the Indians at Newsome's Ponds. At almost the same time, Dooly also became the county's first sheriff and, as such, had suspected Loyalists arrested, searched, and confined in chains. In late December, the local electorate voted him as their colonel, with battle-scarred veteran Elijah Clarke as his lieutenant colonel and Burwell Smith as major. Clarke, an illiterate frontiersman of modest means, had been on the rise in the Revolution from his abilities as an almost fatally courageous military leader. Smith, formerly of Virginia, had received an appointment to Thomas Dooly's command in the Georgia Continentals following the latter's death.(n33)

For John Dooly this success as a popularly elected leader came at a price. That December, a British land and naval force captured Savannah. Redcoats overran Georgia, except for Wilkes County, and occupied nearby Augusta by the end of January 1779. Fourteen hundred Georgians came forward to sign oaths accepting British protection and acknowledging an obligation to serve in the king's militia. A man named Freeman, apparently accompanying a party of local Baptists, arrived at Augusta to offer the surrender of the county's forts and civilians. Eighty Loyalist horsemen under Scottish captains John Hamilton and Dugald Campbell then set out to receive those submissions. As he later related to a British writer, however, Hamilton discovered that "although many of the people came in to take the oath of allegiance, the professions of a considerable number were not to be depended upon; and that some came in only for the purpose of gaining information on his strength and future designs. In various quarters, he met with opposition and all their places of strength held out until they were reduced. The reduction of most of these was not, however, a work of great difficulty, as they consisted only of stockade forts, calculated for defense against the Indians."(n34) Dooly, and whatever men would follow him, withdrew to South Carolina to seek help.

Dooly, now a militia colonel without a state, faced a particular problem in finding allies in South Carolina. During the previous summer's Indian troubles, more than five hundred South Carolina militiamen had come to Wilkes County's aid under Gen. Andrew Williamson, originally an illiterate cattle driver from near Dooly's former home at Ninety Six who had risen to wealth and prominence before the war. The South Carolinians failed to discover any hostile Creeks, or even Dooly and his Georgia militiamen; they only found local people who overcharged them for provisions. Williamson wrote to his subordinates that Dooly could not be trusted and to avoid having any future dealings with him. Now, Dooly needed help from those same men.(n35)

Dooly made an appeal to Andrew Pickens, colonel of the Upper Ninety Six Regiment and Williamson's long time subordinate. Pickens and his command were guarding the Carolina frontier against the Cherokees while Williamson and the rest of his brigade were trying to block the British forces at Augusta from entering South Carolina. Pickens brought two hundred men to Dooly's aid but, once in Georgia, he insisted upon and received command of all of their forces. Together they pursued Hamilton's and Campbell's horsemen across Wilkes County, northeast to southwest, from Thomas Waters's plantation, near the mouth of the Broad River, to Heard's Fort. They finally caught up with and besieged their prey at Robert Carr's Fort, near the Little River and the last outpost in Wilkes County that the horsemen intended to visit.

After an attempt to entrap the Loyalists between the fort and his men failed, Pickens had the fort's water supply cut off as he prepared to use a burning wagon and even cannons to force the besieged into surrendering. He then received news that hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Loyalists from North and South Carolina were en route to Georgia with the clear intention of joining the British in Augusta. Pickens chose to give up the siege of Carr's Fort and withdrew his forces in the night on February 12.(n36) He made a decision to intercept the new threat despite the fact that, in doing so, he gave up a certain victory in hopes of finding and defeating an enemy much larger in numbers than his own command. Pickens also abandoned any advantage he might have held if the approaching enemy force passed near Carr's Fort en route to sympathizers at the nearby Wrightsborough settlement. Dooly had a deposition taken by justice of the peace Stephen Heard wherein a William Millen had described meeting a Loyalist leader identified as James Boyd, when the latter had recently been at Wrightsborough seeking guides to South Carolina. Boyd had carried a proclamation from the British commander now in Augusta that called for Americans to join the king's army.(n37) Dooly must have understood that the Redcoats at Augusta expected the arrival of Boyd with a significant force of Loyalists from the Carolinas, guided in the last of their journey by the horsemen under Hamilton and Campbell. He also knew that to follow Pickens in returning to South Carolina to intercept the otherwise largely unknown enemy risked a great deal.