Among the Americans, it was a time of discouragement and the casting of blame for the unexpected defeat. With Augusta now defended by just a handful of Continental troops and General Lincoln’s move of his major forces to Charles Town, rebel resistance within Georgia was almost nonexistent. Fewer than 150 American militia remained in their small pocket of territory in north Georgia, ceding the rest of the state to Tory forces. There were six small forts in the area, which the militia used or abandoned as needed. At each, they paid close attention to the placement of outposts and the ability to use their limited number of armed men to the greatest advantage in repelling incursions. The detachments of roving scouts and several hundred Indian braves under Brown’s command all decided to concentrate their efforts in other areas, largely undefended, where spoils of war were available and weak or more accommodating settlers could be induced to support the Tory cause.

The secluded region of the Hornet’s Nest was the only site where Georgia political leaders could assemble for brief sessions and maintain a revolutionary presence in the state, but their primary efforts were to remain alive and to protect whatever they still owned from Brown’s Rangers and their loyalist neighbors, who were increasing in number as hopes for the revolution had faded. The politicians were bitterly divided into two camps, still based largely on their previous support of either Button Gwinnett or Lachlan McIntosh, resulting in what Aaron Hart called a political comedy.

George Walton and other Gwinnett loyalists forged a letter to the Continental Congress purporting to be from the state assembly demanding that McIntosh be withdrawn from the state and assigned to another area. The forgery was discovered, and Walton was publicly censured by the Georgia assembly—and appointed chief justice the following day by the same body. Dr. George Wells, who had been Button Gwinnett’s second in his duel with McIntosh, was elected by the assembly to be “fully competent to the transaction of all public business, as effectually as though the Governor was in the state.” These political altercations precipitated another fatal duel, this time between McIntosh’s friend Captain James Jackson and acting governor George Wells. After Wells was killed, Stephen Heard was appointed governor. He was the same man who had been sentenced to be executed in Augusta and saved by Mammy Kate, the large house slave who smuggled him out of prison in a clothes basket on her head.

Thomas Brown summarized the events of 1779:

Your Excellency: