McIntosh, John

McINTOSH, JOHN. (1755–1826). Continental officer. Georgia. A nephew of Lachlan McIntosh and born in McIntosh County, Georgia, John McIntosh was an officer of the Georgia Line in 1775 and on 7 January 1776 became a captain in the First Georgia Regiment. On 1 April 1778 he was promoted to lieutenant colonel and commandant of the Third Georgia Regiment. In his Historical Register of the Continental Army (1893), the military historian Francis B. Heitman identifies McIntosh by the nickname "Come and take it," a phrase included in his reply of 25 November 1778 to the demand of Colonel Lewis V. Fuser that McIntosh surrender Fort Morris (Georgia, near Sunbury) with the honors of war. He was not present at the British capture of Sunbury on 9 January 1779, but was taken prisoner at Briar Creek, 3 March 1779, and was exchanged in the fall of 1780 (possibly early September) for John Harris Cruger, who had been captured in June 1780. After returning from captivity, McIntosh served to the end of the war.

Moving to Florida after the war, McIntosh settled on St. Johns River. There he was suddenly arrested by Spanish troops and imprisoned at St. Augustine on suspicion of illegal activities against the government. He then was held for a year in Morro Castle, Havana. After his release, McIntosh is credited with further acts against the Spanish in Florida, including his participation in a successful attack on a fort near Jacksonville, on the shores of the St. John's River. Some historians also suggest that, during the last months of the War of 1812, he was a major general of militia at Mobile, Alabama, but this is not confirmed in Heitman's Register.

SEE ALSO Fort Morris, Georgia; McIntosh, Lachlan.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Dederer, John Morgan. Making Bricks Without Straw: Nathanael Greene's Southern Campaign and Mao Tse-Tung's Mobile War. Manhattan, Kan.: Sunflower University Press, 1983.

Heitman, Francis B. Historical Register of Officers of the Continental Army during the War of Revolution, April 1775 to December 1783. Baltimore: Genealogical Pub. Co.: 1967.

Searcy, Martha Condray. The Georgia—Florida Contest in the American Revolution, 1776–1778. Tuscaloosa, Fla.: University of Alabama Press, 1985.

                              revised by Leslie Hall