exchange of letters, Dooly did eventually provide the vouchers but he also included new bills for the services of his men that amounted to thirty thousand dollars. The Difficulties of Loneliness Everything went wrong in this Burke County campaign because of Dooly's failure to obtain any cooperation. Colonels John Twiggs and John Baker of the state's militia ignored his call and went on their own raid, alerting the king's garrison to its vulnerability. George Wells refused to recognize Georgia's makeshift government and Dooly's authority. Wells had been elected as the first colonel of the Wilkes County militia and, although he had been a very active officer in 1777, he had lost his position in a subsequent reorganization and election under the new state constitution. He would later win election to colonel in another newly created battalion in neighboring Richmond County. Whether he or Dooly actually held senior rank depended on whom one asked, with no impartial authority available to decide that now critical issue. Dooly had Wells court-martialed. Most of the British forces in South Carolina returned to Savannah before the militia in Augusta could finally march. Despite this news, Dooly insisted on taking those militiamen who had not fallen sick into the military "no man's land" of Burke County. During that time, supplies from Lincoln finally arrived in Augusta but civilians seized even this succor and absconded with it to Wilkes County. Lincoln also failed to authorize a leave for Dooly's brothers, Robert and William, serving under him in the South Carolina continentals, that would have permitted them to visit John and their surviving brother George in Augusta. They would have been together for the first time since the war began. Whatever Dooly's campaign could have been, he and his men accomplished nothing more than a cattle-rustling raid that frightened Sir James Wright, the royal governor now restored to power in British-occupied Savannah.(n47) Finally, in September, Benjamin Lincoln's army united with America's French allies in a campaign to retake Savannah. For the frontiersmen like Dooly, the uniformed professional French army and fleet, the vast artillery, and the sea of tents provided an inspiring spectacle that they never forgot and which must have seemed to guarantee the success of their cause. Loyalists across Georgia now joined in the Revolution as the outcome of the war in the favor of United States seemed assured. Tides of War This campaign should have