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Walter Terry Colquitt was born on December 27, 1799 in Halifax County, Virginia, United States. He was the son of Henry and Nancy S. (Holt) Colquitt. While he was still a small boy he was taken by his father to Georgia, where they settled in Hancock County, later moving to Walton County.
Colquitt attended the College of New Jersey (Princeton) and studied law in Milledgeville, Georgia, then the state capital, and was admitted to the bar.
In 1826 Colquitt entered into politics as a candidate for Congress (1826) on a “Troup Party” ticket; he was defeated by a plurality of thirty-two votes. In the same year he was appointed judge of the Chattahoochee superior court circuit, was reelected in 1829, and returned to the private practise of law in 1832.
After two terms (1834 and 1837) in the state Senate, Colquitt was elected in 1838 to the Twenty-sixth Congress as a state-rights Whig. The Troup party was a state-rights organization controlled by the planter aristocrats. In the early thirties it was merged with the national Whig party, which, in its inception, was a coalition of Andrew Jackson’s enemies. When Calhoun in 1840 returned to the Democratic party, he was followed by Colquitt, who became a leader of the radical wing of the Georgia Democracy, the Union wing being led by Howell Cobb. The Democrats returned Colquitt to Congress in 1842 and shortly thereafter he was elected to the United States Senate. In January 1848, for some reason now unknown, Colquitt resigned his seat in the Senate.
Two years later he was one of a dozen eminent Georgians who participated in the Nashville Convention, in opposition to the pending territorial settlement. Thoroughgoing resolutions were adopted against Clay’s Omnibus Bill, and Colquitt advised the Southern states to prepare for war. After the adjournment of the Nashville Convention the Georgia campaign of 1850 occurred for the election of members to the important convention of that year. It was this convention that was called upon to decide whether Georgia would or would not support the compromise measures. In the campaign Colquitt was a crusader for the Southern rights position. He advocated secession, but after this campaign took no further part in the turbulent politics of the period.
In addition to his political activities, he was a local Methodist preacher and a very impressive speaker.
Colquitt was a member of the Democratic Party. When in the House of Representatives, Colquitt made “an exceedingly eloquent speech of great length” in opposition to the reception of Abolition petitions. He favored the establishment of the Independent Treasury system, incidentally taking occasion to denounce the Second Bank of the United States as “a great moneyed institution for the support of men who were too idle to earn their bread by industry and too proud to work. ” He opposed as an infringement on state rights the bill to district states for the purpose of choosing congressmen. As a senator he favored the annexation of Texas, the Mexican War, and the acquisition of territory from Mexico. He advocated congressional non-interference with slavery in the territories.
Colquitt was three times married: on February 3, 1823, to Nancy Lane; in 1841 to Mrs. Alphia B. (Todd) Fauntleroy, who died a few months later, and in 1842 to Harriet W. Ross. Colquitt had twelve children. Among the six of the first union was Alfred H. Colquitt, governor and United States senator.
