John Dooly - Colonial Wranglings

Colonial Wranglings

The backcountry people in Georgia later repaid Wright for this past support. Opposing the largely coastal opposition to British policies in 1774, a delegation from the frontier (that included Dooly) tried to present Georgia's rebel provincial congress with a letter of protest against the growing political discontent in the colony. The backcountry dissenters argued that Georgia had no connection with troubles over taxation, tea, or Boston, and that the province depended upon the king's protection from the neighboring tribes of Indians. Representatives of the growing Revolutionary movement (the Whigs), meeting at Tondee's tavern in the province's capital of Savannah, refused to receive the delegation. As a result, John Dooly, Elijah Clarke, George Wells, Barnard Heard, and many other later Whig leaders, joined hundreds of their neighbors in exercising their rights as Englishmen to sign and publish petitions in support of British rule in the colony's newspaper, the Georgia Gazette.(n21)

Future circumstances would prove that the frontiersmen actually acted, as their protest implied, primarily from their own self interests.(n22) As Dooly and his neighbors knew from the colonial gazettes, the British army could shoot Americans in Massachusetts but it could not be found on the frontier protecting them from the Indians.(n23)

The Whigs also had much to offer to the frontiersmen, starting with local control of their own affairs. Dooly already served as a colonel, with Stephen Heard as lieutenant colonel, and Bernard Heard as major in a vigilante militia created by him and his neighbors.(n24)

As happened in later revolutions, the rebels in Georgia divided the province into districts, in this instance, each with a justice of the peace court, political committee, and a militia company. Dooly served as captain of his local company, with his brother Thomas as a first lieutenant. The former also obtained the positions of justice of the peace and deputy surveyor, and he likely served on his local Chatham District's political committee. On February 11, 1776, Governor Wright fled to a British vessel after frontiersmen fired at but missed the royal official. As those same ships threatened Savannah, Dooly marched his company for four days from the Ceded Lands to reach the threatened town to serve on behalf of the rebellion, at least for pay.(n25)