John Dooly - New Government

New Government

Any such ambitions for a restored British rule in America represented the "past;" John Dooly and his allies had become the powers of the "present." In what remained of Whig Georgia, he subsequently would simultaneously hold the state's highest positions in the military, government, and judiciary. As the highest ranking officer left in the state militia, he became the colonel commandant. Retreating elected officials finally created an extralegal executive council at Augusta to act as a civil government (with Dooly as a member). Historian Robert M. Weir has pointed out that the Regulator rebellion had taught the frontiersmen that leaders who failed to act against persons perceived as public enemies risked losing credibility with their followers. Faced with mortal threats from external enemies, the new council appointed Dooly as state's attorney to prosecute, in cases of treason, the most active local British collaborators. At a court held at Jacob McClendon's house in August 1779, Dooly prosecuted several of his neighbors. Nine of these "Tories" were condemned to die for treason but the ad hoc state government granted reprieves to all but two of them.(n42) North and South Carolina also held trials that condemned and hanged seven participants of Boyd's uprising as civil criminals.(n43)

Georgia's first state government would leave more than that legacy, including the creation of county government, as a part of the broader history of progress on the frontier. Courts had been held in Wilkes County as early as 1778, with John Dooly as at least a plaintiff. In 1780, Wilkes had a permanent courthouse in Washington, a town laid out specifically as the county seat and with Dooly as one of its original commissioners.(n44) Simultaneously, John Dooly and his neighbors affirmed that they, when cooperating, could do almost anything that they wanted in their own affairs. Dooly, Pickens, Williamson, and their comrades had thwarted their enemy's plans to create a counterrevolution and invasions by Indian war parties. The continental and state military establishments in the South, by contrast, often failed the frontiersmen. The situation in Wilkes County remained grave, however. Much of Georgia had become a no-man's land between the opposing factions where guerrillas and apolitical gangs acted as destructive brigands who took advantage of the vacuum of civil law, much like South Carolina's frontier had been before the Regulators. British general Augustin Prevost in Savannah, seeking to protect the frontier Loyalists, wrote to Williamson in early April 1779 requesting a truce for the northwest frontier that he refused to refer to as Wilkes County. Gov. John Rutledge of South Carolina adamantly declined the offer. Williamson did send sixty men to bolster Dooly's command. He sought to discourage the people of the county from moving to the safety of North Carolina and Virginia while encouraging other frontier families to flee with them. Maj. Burwell Smith arrived in the camp of Gen. Benjamin Lincoln, commander of the southern department, to present John Dooly's pleas for money for the Georgia militia. The general advanced $8,295.70 to cover the expenses of the Georgia militiamen from January 1 to March 1, 1779, and $1,000 to Dooly, although he demanded the return of notarized vouchers justifying the disbursement of the money. The situation had not improved by August, however, when General McIntosh wrote to Lincoln from the Georgia frontier that "the few Militia in this area to stick yet to their Integrity & have not Joined the Enemy or Shamefully left us altogether to ourselves do not exceed Six hundred men, are much scattered & chiefly pinned up in little Forts to Secure their Families from the Savages to whom they are exposed & harass them continually, Loath to Leave them upon any Emergency, are now almost tired out & despairing to see any effective assistance come to them, are Selling off, and leaving us also."(n45)