Lachlan McIntosh

Lachlan McIntosh (March 17, 1725 – February 20, 1806) was a Scottish American military and political leader during the American Revolution and the early United States. In a 1777 duel, he fatally shot Button Gwinnett, who had signed the Declaration of Independence ten months earlier.

Lachlan McIntosh was born near Raits, Badenoch, Scotland. McIntosh's father, John Mòr McIntosh, moved the family to Georgia in 1736 with a group of 100 Scottish settlers; they founded the town of New Inverness (which was later renamed Darien) at the mouth of the Altamaha River. John McIntosh led the colonists as they carved out the new settlement from dense forest. The dangers of frontier life were brought home to Lachlan in 1737 when his younger brother Lewis McIntosh was killed by an alligator while swimming in the river.

Georgia was then governed by James Oglethorpe, who had founded the colony in 1732. It was a highly militarized colony, as clashes with neighboring Spanish Florida and its fortress city of St. Augustine to the south were common. In one of these clashes in 1740, during the War of Jenkins' Ear, Lachlan's father was captured by the Spanish and held prisoner for two years. The elder McIntosh was eventually released, but his health had deteriorated during his captivity, and he died a few years later. Before his death he had supported the Georgia Trustees in their opposition to the introduction of slavery into Georgia, which was demanded by an increasing number of colonists in need of labor. This earned him the gratitude of Oglethorpe. The "Mòr" of his title is Scots Gaelic for "big".

After his father's death, McIntosh was sent to the Bethesda Orphanage in Savannah under the care of the noted evangelist George Whitefield. His elder brother, Colonel William McIntosh, served under Oglethorpe and helped to repulse a Spanish invasion of the colony. Lachlan spent two years at the orphanage before traveling to Fort Frederica to serve as a military cadet. During this time, the Jacobite Rebellion broke out in Scotland. Lachlan and his brother William planned to travel to Scotland and join the rebellion, but General James Oglethorpe, who had become a friend and mentor to the young McIntosh, convinced them to remain in Georgia.

Lachlan's brother William has sometimes been confused with William McIntosh of the Creek Nation, who was their cousin. The Creek William McIntosh was the son of Capt. William McIntosh, a Tory in the Revolutionary War, and a high-status Creek woman. The senior William McIntosh was the son of Capt. John McIntosh, who had immigrated with his brother Roderick, and with John "Mòr" McIntosh from Scotland. Confusion about the names stems from the fact that on their ship The Prince of Wales, at least five males were named John McIntosh in one form or another.

In 1748, McIntosh moved to Charleston, South Carolina, where he took a position as a clerk for Henry Laurens, a wealthy merchant and slave trader. Laurens became a lifelong friend and mentor. In 1756, McIntosh married Sarah Threadcraft. He soon returned with her to Georgia, where he studied surveying. He acquired land in the Altamaha River delta and slaves to work it; he became a prosperous rice planter.

By 1770, McIntosh had become a leader in the resistance movement in Georgia. In January 1775 he helped organize delegates to the Provincial Congress from the Darien District of St. Andrew Parish. On January 7, 1776, McIntosh was commissioned as a colonel in the Georgia Militia. He raised the 1st Georgia Regiment of the Georgia Line, organized the defense of Savannah, and helped repel a British assault at the Battle of the Rice Boats in the Savannah River. He was promoted to the rank of brigadier general in the Continental Army, charged with defense of Georgia's southern flank from British incursions from Florida, by then a British possession. On October 22, 1776, McIntosh ordered his brother William to construct a fort on the Satilla River to protect Georgia from Florida. The fort was the first to be named Fort McIntosh.

During the period of 1776 to 1777, McIntosh became embroiled in a bitter political dispute with Button Gwinnett, the Speaker of the Georgia Provisional Congress and a radical Whig leader. Their bitter personal rivalry began when McIntosh succeeded Gwinnett as commander of Georgia's Continental Battalion in early 1776. The two men represented opposing factions in a deeply divided Patriot movement in Georgia. Gwinnett had been forced to step aside after his election had been called into question by opposing forces within the independence movement. Gwinnett, thwarted in his military ambitions, became a delegate to the Continental Congress and a signer of the United States Declaration of Independence. He returned to Georgia after his allies gained control of the Provisional Congress and succeeded in electing him speaker. Shortly afterward, he was elected president and commander-in-chief of the Committee of Safety.