After his mother died when he was nine years old, Lachlan McIntosh had come to Georgia with his father, Captain John McIntosh, an officer in the Highland Scots Regiment. Just four years later, when the regiment was fighting the Spaniards near St. Augustine, Captain McIntosh was captured and taken as a prisoner of war to be confined in Spain. Now without parents, Lachlan was put in Bethesda Orphan House, an institution near Savannah that was run by Reverend George Whitefield. The good reverend believed that the best way to mold young men was with strict discipline and severe punishment, which young Lachlan suffered for two years before running away and joining the regiment of his father. Almost immediately after being assigned to an inferior post, he proved to be a hero at the decisive Battle of Bloody Marsh, which solidified Georgia’s hold on the southern part of the territory. Lachlan served well as a cadet and then an officer, and showed extraordinary courage and a talent for military tactics.

Although they served General Oglethorpe well against the Spaniards, it was commonly known that the Scots felt little affection or loyalty toward the British government in London. Even before crossing the Atlantic to start a new life, both in the early days of Georgia’s founding and during the later decades, the Scotsmen’s relations with England had been strained because of opposition to the forced union of the two countries, the breakup of the clan system, and the forced change in their customs. The Highland Dress Act had prohibited the wearing of distinctive kilts, and many families could not afford to rent land after Parliament forbade their making payments by giving military service to the clan chief. Tenant families were forced from the homes of their ancestors, and independence of the clans was diminished. The British encouraged the more militant Scots to move to Ireland, where many of them became prosperous in the woolen trade. Parliament soon passed the Woolen Act to protect the industry in England, and the resulting depression in Ireland caused another wave of emigration to America, mostly to the southern colonies, where homesteads were plentiful.

August 1774

It was not surprising that the Scotsmen at St. Andrews were the first Georgians to condemn British violation of what they considered their basic rights. Overwhelmingly, they opposed taxes levied without representation, the blockade of Boston Harbor, colonial families being forced to provide housing for British troops in America, and the trial of colonists in British courts.