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Alexander McLean’s birth date and early life are challenging to find in the historical record. He was probably born in Scotland and had connections to Highlander Clans. He was on the North American continent during the French and Indian War (1756-1763) and seems to have been in the ranks of British Army, rather than in a colonial militia. At the end of the conflict, he was placed on half-pay—typical for British officers when not involved in a declared war. 

By 1770, McLean moved to the colony of North Carolina and settled. Tensions from the Regulator War and the continuing taxations from the British Parliament created unrest and passions among the colonists. McLean’s neighbors had no doubt about his loyalty: to King George III. In fact, a Loyalist woman wrote that McLean went too far in his speech and threats, saying “such things as are disagreeable to the people” and she noted that even his friends wished he would depart. 

McLean’s enthusiasm for supporting the British crown took a practical turn by the winter of 1775-1776. By then, shots had been fired in Massachusetts, and British army was surrounded in the siege of Boston. Closer to McLean’s home, committees of safety had formed on the Whig side of politics, and Loyalists were held in suspicion by their Whig neighbors. Provincial congresses (unauthorized by the governor) met and discussed unifying efforts; favorable views toward independence from England rumbled in conversation. The British Royal Governor, Josiah Martin, had been forced to flee from the colonial capital, was burned out of Fort Johnston and took refuge aboard a British warship in the Cape Fear River. Around McLean, Whig supporting militia and minutemen drilled. 

McLean visited Governor Martin. Aboard the Cruizer, they planned for the organization and uprising of Loyal North Carolinians. It is not clear how much McLean knew about Martin’s plans or correspondence with government ministers in England. Promising a Loyalist uprising to coincide with the arrival of British fleet and army in North Carolina, Martin had convinced his superiors that the southern colonies—at least North Carolina—could and should be easily secured, even if the rebels in New England continued their revolution. When McLean left the governor’s ship, he had directives. He also ran into watchful Whig-supporting colonists. Captured, jailed and fined, McLean was eventually allowed to go free after promising “he had not any design of offending the Committee [of Safety]” and declaring that he had only visited the governor to sort out his personal business affairs.

They let him go, but McLean had not told the truth. He had directions to recruit the Scottish Highlanders who had settled near Cross Creek and rally them to the governor’s side before the British military reinforcements arrived. In the following weeks, McLean secretly met with local leaders in the Scottish immigrant communities, asking how many soldiers they could rally and bring to the coast. At Cross Creek, McLean summoned a secret council of Loyalist leaders and revealed their governor’s plans. He sent an encouraging report to Martin, indicating that several thousand Loyalists and Highlanders would rally; this information inspired Martin’s proclamation in January 1776. 

It may have been premature. Frustrated Highlanders confronted McLean, explaining they could not be ready to march as quickly as hoped and they lacked weapons for all their men. Conflict over the rallying and timing caused an inner division among the Highlanders and Loyalists; the rushed timeline limited the number of Scots who joined the forming army. Still, in February, the Loyalist force started its march toward Wilmington. McLean had gathered enough troops for a movement, and with the rank of lieutenant colonel, he went along. 

After outmaneuvering the North Carolina militia near Cross Creek, the Loyalists reached Widow Moore’s Creek and discovered their opponents waiting on the opposite side. In the darkness of the early morning hours of February 27, 1776, McLean found the bridge across Moore’s Creek. Sentries on the opposite side challenged him, and he replied that he was a friend to the King. When he received no reply, he hoped they were Loyalists, but after no response to his next challenge in the Gaelic language, McLean ordered the troops behind him to take cover and fire. The gunshots brought other British-supporting officers and troops to the bridge, and other officers organized a disastrous charge across the bridge and toward entrenched Whig militia. The Loyalists were defeated at the Battle of Moores Creek Bridge that morning, and most of the volunteers that McLean had spent so many weeks rallying disbanded, leaving no significantly strong military force to arrive at the coastline.

Though Alexander McLean is most remembered for his role prior to and during the Battle of Moores Creek Bridge, he continued to support King and Crown through the rest of the Revolutionary War. He led a unit of Loyalist Rangers in North Carolina. When General Cornwallis and a large British army arrived in South Carolina in 1780, McLean and his Rangers joined them, taking part in the southern campaigns. 

It is not clear in the historical record what happened to Alexander McLean after the Revolutionary War. Like other Loyalists, he may have left the United States and resettled in another British colony or perhaps in England or Scotland.