Georgians were proud of their newly claimed freedoms and not prepared to accept any further dominance from London. The state congress sent additional instructions to their delegates in Philadelphia that the colonies should be treated on a continental basis and not as individual provinces, and declared that all government actions would be in the name of the people of Georgia and not of the king. Colonel McIntosh was praised for his forthright stand against the British ships and was further honored when he was directed by General Washington to report to General Lee in Charles Town on the status of military forces in the region.

The colonel took John Houstoun with him, a friend who had been a delegate to the Second Continental Congress in July 1775 and was known to both Washington and Lee. Riding side by side up the coastal trail, they discussed the impending meeting. In order to supplement his own knowledge, Lachlan asked, “John, what do you know about the general?”

Houstoun replied, “Lee is the most interesting leader in the Continental army. He’s an Englishman, and no relation to the Lees of Virginia. As a young British officer, he was captured in the French and Indian War, and while being held as a prisoner near the Canadian border he fell in love with a Seneca princess and married her. Later, he was wounded at Fort Ticonderoga and returned to London as a hero. His reward was a large plantation in Florida and he moved there a few years ago. He began to condemn actions of the British Parliament and wrote some pamphlets strongly supporting the American side, so when he resigned from the British army last year and bought land in Virginia, the Continental Congress commissioned him as a major general, second in command only to Washington. He knows the British, the culture of the Indians, and he knows how to fight.”

Houstoun paused and then asked, “What do you intend to tell him about Georgia?”

Lachlan said, “Here are my notes for the report.”

He handed John a sheet of parchment on which he had written a very discouraging assessment:

Ga. is just a narrow settled strip about 40 miles wide just west of the Savannah River and 100 miles along the seacoast. 8 rivers separate about the same no. of islands; there are not more than 3000 Ga. men able to bear arms (most still loyal to the crown), and the Creeks alone have more warriors than this, not counting at least an equal number of Choctaws and Cherokees. The Indians are inclined to support the British, who now have 580 regulars at Saint Augustine and an unchallenged fleet making constant raids on our shores. 15,000 sometimes restless slaves along the coast produce 35,000 tierces [barrels] of valuable rice. There is plenty of food in Georgia, but never enough ammunition.

After discussing this information, they decided that Lee already knew a lot about Georgia, at least from a Florida perspective, and that their verbal presentation could be relatively brief.