After hearing that his plan had been unanimously rejected, Drayton continued the unification effort in some Georgia settlements by condemning the state’s leaders, comparing them with the worst of the Stuart kings in their despotic rule over an oppressed people. He accused the Georgians of wanting to abandon their colonial government altogether and return to direct British rule. Several months later, after Georgia had adopted a new constitution and elected John Adam Treutlen as the state’s first governor, Georgia officials finally issued a warrant for Drayton’s arrest and put a £100 bounty on his head. Protected by Elijah Clarke’s militiamen and South Carolina friends, Drayton was never caught, and he returned to South Carolina as the primary leader in promoting the rebel cause.

•  •  •

Almost a year after the thirteen colonies had declared their independence, Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Brown was lying in his hammock in a small room, formerly one of the prison cells of Fort Matanzas, completed about thirty-five years earlier on the banks of the Tolomato River to protect St. Augustine from any possible sea attack. He should have been enjoying the slight breeze from the Atlantic Ocean, but he was restless and ill-tempered. Despite having been on horseback for almost twenty hours the preceding day at the end of a 450-mile trip from Pensacola, he had slept little during the night. His scouts had been waiting for him when he returned to St. Augustine to report that the American cavalry of General McIntosh were again active south of the Altamaha. They were apparently planning another of the endless military excursions of Continentals into what Brown considered to be Ranger territory. With almost six hundred British troops now stationed in St. Augustine, any predictable foray into Florida could be repulsed, but he was still rankled and embarrassed because combined Continental and militia forces had crossed the St. Johns River in September and threatened British installations in the south. It was ironic that the successful repulsion of the invaders had caused increased tension in St. Augustine between British troops and the Rangers, with Governor Tonyn congratulating Brown’s forces and the general giving full credit to regular troops serving under his brother, Major James Mark Prevost.