Colleton County Courthouse and the Nullification Fire

The Confederate monument on this lawn is one story, but the building behind it carries the older and larger one. The Colleton County Courthouse was built in eighteen twenty to a design by Robert Mills, the South Carolina architect later chosen for the Washington Monument. In June of eighteen twenty-eight, this courthouse hosted the first public meeting on nullification.

Here Robert Barnwell Rhett delivered his fiery Walterboro address, urging the governor to call the legislature into session to openly resist the federal tariff laws. It was an early spark in the long crisis over whether a state could defy the national government, a question that would eventually help carry the South toward secession. The graceful portico you see fronts the building where that argument first caught fire.