Pierce Butler: A Comeback Story for the South

Story and photo courtesy of Turtle Creek Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR)

WARREN COUNTY, OH -- Pierce Butler was an American politician who was considered to be one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. Born in Ireland, Butler emigrated to America and fought in the American Revolutionary War.

Military operations in the final months of the Revolutionary War left Butler poor. Many of his plantations and ships were destroyed, and the international trade on which most of his income depended was in shambles. To secure loans and establish new markets, he traveled to Europe when the war ended.

In late 1785, Butler returned to the United States. He became an outspoken advocate of reconciliation with former Loyalists and of equal representation for the back country residents. Attesting to his growing political influence, the South Carolina legislature asked Butler to represent the state. He served as a delegate to the 1787 Constitutional Convention, where he signed the Constitution of the United States, and became a member of the United States Senate.

As one of the largest slaveholders in the United States, he frequently defended American slavery for both political and personal motives, even though he had private misgivings about the institution and particularly about the Atlantic slave trade. Butler's experiences as a soldier and planter-legislator led to his forceful support for a strong union of the states. At the same time, he looked to the special interests of his region. He introduced the Fugitive Slave Clause (Article 4, Section 2), which established protection for slavery in the Constitution.

In addition, while privately criticizing the international trade in enslaved Africans, he supported the passage in the Constitution that prohibited regulation of the trade for 20 years. He advocated counting the entire slave population in the states' totals for Congressional apportionment but compromised to count three-fifths of the enslaved people toward that end.[6] It ensured that wealthy Southern planters exerted a strong influence in national politics for decades.

Butler retired from politics in 1805 and spent much of his time in Philadelphia. Through his business ventures, he became one of the wealthiest men in the nation, with substantial land holdings in several states. Like other Founding Fathers from his region, Butler also continued to support the institution of slavery. But unlike Washington or Thomas Jefferson, Butler never acknowledged the fundamental inconsistency in simultaneously defending the people's freedom and supporting slavery.

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