Colquitt, Alfred Holt

Life Span
to
Full name
Alfred Holt Colquitt
Place of Birth
Burial Place
Birth Date Certainty
Exact
Death Date Certainty
Exact
Gender
Male
Race
White
Sectional choice
South
Origins
Slave State
Family
Walter T. Colquitt (father)
Education
Princeton (College of New Jersey)
Occupation
Politician
Military
Attorney or Judge
Church or Religious Denomination
Methodist
Political Parties
Democratic
Other Affiliations
Fire-Eaters (Secessionists)
Government
US Senate
US House of Representatives
Governor
State legislature
Military
US military (Pre-Civil War)
Confederate Army

Alfred Holt Colquitt (American National Biography)

Scholarship
Colquitt reentered politics in 1859, when he was elected to the Georgia legislature. A strong secessionist, he served as a presidential elector for the ticket of John C. Breckinridge and Joseph Lane in the 1860 election, representing the southern wing of the Democratic party that demanded an unequivocal endorsement of slavery. The following year Colquitt was elected as a delegate to the Georgia secession convention, which voted to break from the Union in January 1861. When war was declared in April, he enlisted in the Confederate army as a captain of infantry and rose quickly in the ranks to major general. His greatest military success came in 1864 when he commanded infantry at the battle of Olustee, Florida, a humiliating though strategically insignificant defeat for the larger and better-equipped Union army.

After the Civil War Colquitt returned to his Baker County plantation, one of the largest in postbellum Georgia, and resumed his law practice. He was also an industrial promoter of railroads and other industries and invested in the Georgia Pacific Syndicate. Again active in the Georgia Democratic party, he stridently opposed congressional Reconstruction policies. In 1870 he served as president of the Democratic State Convention and later that year was elected president of the state agricultural society.
Thaddeus Russell, "Colquitt, Alfred Holt," American National Biography Online, February 2000, http://www.anb.org/articles/05/05-00148.html.
How to Cite This Page: "Colquitt, Alfred Holt," House Divided: The Civil War Research Engine at Dickinson College, https://hd.housedivided.dickinson.edu/node/5444.