Not realizing that there were also great issues at stake among the Europeans, people in the former colonies were amazed when the British agreed to surrender Florida to Spain. In June 1784, Colonel Brown and Governor Tonyn welcomed Spanish Governor Vicente Manuel de Zespedes to St. Augustine. There was almost inevitable tension between the two political leaders, but the new governor extended every courtesy to Brown, who became a personal friend and confidant of the Zespedes family. It is likely that the Ranger commander made his most damaging blow to Georgia’s progress during those final months of 1785 when he was the last British warrior to leave America. During their long conversations and through direct intercession, he convinced Spanish officials that they should give full support to the Creeks and Cherokees in Georgia in resisting the western movement of the newly independent Americans. The most effective Indian leader was a mixed-breed chief of the Upper Creeks named Alexander McGillivray, who despised the white Georgians and had proven to be a master at forming strong alliances with the British.

Thomas Brown helped arrange binding trade and military agreements between the Indians and Spain, overcoming the best efforts of American leaders to take advantage of this economic opportunity. He also discouraged Spain from granting free navigation of the Mississippi River to anyone doing business with the state. Part of his motivation was the knowledge that Elijah Clarke had become one of the business partners of Georgia’s governor, Samuel Elbert. The government of Georgia issued an official complaint to London about these activities of Brown, but this only intensified his efforts to align Chief McGillivray and his other Indian friends with Spain against any cooperation or agreement with the new nation that called itself America.

The Spaniards gave the British a gracious eighteen months to leave Florida, but Tonyn and Brown only moved from St. Augustine to St. Marys when the deadline came in July 1785, and they didn’t leave America until November of the same year. It was now ten years since the Sons of Liberty had tarred and feathered Brown in Augusta. The British government had earlier granted Thomas Brown title to ten tracts of Florida land totaling 100,000 acres, which he never saw or claimed. He also received an annual pension of £500 for the rest of his life, and a large plantation on the island of St. Vincent, eighty miles west of Barbados. It is quite likely that Brown smiled with pleasure in 1812 when another war erupted between America and Great Britain.

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Having suffered through continuing warfare since before the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776, and with almost complete control of the state changing three times, Georgia was devastated. The governor reported to the Continental Congress that Augusta was completely destroyed and the formerly thriving Savannah was left with only eight hundred inhabitants.