He became an advocate of the Patriot cause, was elected secretary of the Georgia Provincial Congress, and became president of the Council of Safety.

On July 2, 1776, he voted in favor of the Declaration of Independence for Georgia, along with Button Gwinnett and Lyman Hall.

Appointed to fill the vacant seat, a feud erupted between Jackson and Walton over the sale of land to speculators.

That led Governor Walton to worry that "our prospects of peace have been obliged to yield to the impressions of war.

"[5] Walton wrote to Colonel Jared Irwin and expressed both his concern and his surprise at the recent Indian depredations near the Oconee River.

He was elected as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention in 1787, but he declined since his commitments at the state level occupied his time to the exclusion of all else.

During his term, Georgians adopted the new Georgia Constitution, moved the capital to Augusta, and concentrated on settling the western frontier.

He was a founder and trustee of the Academy of Richmond County in Augusta and of Franklin College (now the University of Georgia) in Athens.

The offices he held were: During his second term as governor, he built Meadow Garden, a cottage constructed on confiscated Tory land outside of Augusta, where he died.

He was initially buried at Rosney, home of his nephew Robert Watkins; he was re-interred in 1848 beneath the Signers Monument in front of the courthouse on Greene Street in Augusta.

[11] His great nephew Thomas George Walton built Creekside near Morganton, North Carolina.