Judge, born near Northfield, Minnesota, USA. In his private law practice (18971922), he gained prominence as an expert in railroad law. He was appointed by President Harding to the US Supreme Court (192339) and often voted against government interference in business.
Pierce Butler (July 11, 1744 - February 15, 1822) was a soldier, planter, and statesman, recognized as one of United States' Founding Fathers. He represented South Carolina in the Continental Congress and the U.S. Senate.
Introduction
He was born in County Carlow, Ireland and came to America in 1758 as an officer in the British Army. Butler represented South Carolina at the Constitutional Convention, was a man of startling contrasts. But by 1779 Butler, now an officer in South Carolina's militia and a man with a price on his head, was organizing American forces to fight the invading Redcoats. Butler lost his considerable estates and fortune during the British occupation of South Carolina, but at the end of the Revolutionary War he was among the first to call for reconciliation with the Loyalists and a renewal of friendly relations with the former enemy. Although an aristocrat to the manor born, Butler became a leading spokesman for the frontiersmen and impoverished western settlers.
The unifying force in this fascinating career was Butler's strong and enduring sense of nationalism. His own military and political experiences then led him to the conviction that a strong central government, as the bedrock of political and economic security, was essential to protect the rights not only of his own social class and adopted state but also of all classes of citizens and all the states.
Patriot
Pierce Butler was the third son of Sir Richard Butler, the fifth Baronet of Cloughgrenan and a member of the Irish Parliament. Traditionally British gentry directed younger sons into the military or the church, and Butler's father was no exception. Butler demonstrated both military skill and the advantages of powerful and wealthy parents in his subsequent career in the British Army. Butler later transferred to the 29th Foot (today's Worcestershire and Sherwood Foresters Regiment), before returning to Ireland in 1762.
The overwhelming success of the forces of the British Empire and its allies ended French territorial claims in North America and brought about profound changes in the nature of the mother country's relationship with its American colonies. To occupy Canada and other new lands won during the war, Parliament for the first time ordered the permanent stationing of large British garrisons in North America.
Butler's regiment was serving on garrison duty in Nova Scotia at the time, but he could not long escape becoming embroiled in the growing controversy. In 1771, the year after the "Massacre," Butler, now a major, married Mary Polly Middleton on January 10th. He sold his commission and used the proceeds to purchase a plantation in the coastal region of South Carolina, adapting to the lifestyle of a southern landowner with apparent ease.
When war broke out between Great Britain and the colonies in 1775, Butler joined several other former British officers (including the future generals Horatio Gates, Charles Lee, and Richard Montgomery) in casting his lot with the American cause. In Butler's case the success of his business interests as well as the important role played by the Middleton family in the Patriot movement in South Carolina clearly influenced his decision. Butler's father-in-law had been the president of the First Continental Congress, and a brother-in-law would soon sign the Declaration of Independence. Butler himself lost little time in expressing his patriotic sentiments by standing for local election. He began his public service in 1776 when his neighbors elected him to a seat in the South Carolina legislature, a post that he continued to hold until 1789.
Soldier
Although bad health prevented Butler from assuming an active combat role, he offered his military talents to his state, and in early 1779 Governor John Rutledge turned to the former Redcoat to help reorganize South Carolina's defenses. Butler assumed the post of the state's adjutant general, a position that carried the rank of brigadier general, although he continued to prefer to be addressed as major, his highest combat rank.
The decision to reorganize South Carolina's defenses followed in the wake of a shift in Britain's war strategy. Assuming that the many Loyalists in the southern states would rally to the Crown if supported by regular troops, they planned a conquest of the rebellious colonies one at a time, moving north from Georgia.
Butler joined in the effort to mobilize South Carolina's citizen-soldiers to repulse the threatened British invasion and later helped prepare the state units used in the counterattack designed to drive the enemy from Georgia. During the operation, which climaxed with an attempted investiture of Savannah, Butler served as a volunteer aide to General Lachlan McIntosh.
In 1780 the British captured Charleston, and with it most of South Carolina's civil government and military forces. Butler, as part of a command group deliberately left outside the city, escaped. He and his fellow South Carolinians, along with their neighbors in occupied portions of Georgia and North Carolina, refused to submit to London's demand that they surrender. Butler, as adjutant general, worked with former members of the militia and Continental Army veterans such as Francis Marion and Thomas Sumter to integrate their various partisan efforts into a unified campaign, in conjunction with the operations of the Southern Army under the command of Horatio Gates and later Nathanael Greene.
These partisan tactics involved considerable expense and personal risk for Butler who, as a former Royal officer, remained a special target for the British occupation forces. On another occasion, a British regiment, repeatedly denounced by Butler for plundering civilian properties — he called it a "band of jailbirds" — placed a bounty on his head.
Statesman
Military operations in the latter months of the Revolution left Butler a poor man. Betraying a singular tolerance for a foe who had caused him much personal harm, Butler took the occasion to enroll his son in a London school and to engage a new minister from among the British clergy for his church in South Carolina. Testifying to his growing political influence, the South Carolina legislature asked Butler to represent the state at the Constitutional Convention that met in Philadelphia in 1787.
Butler's experiences as a soldier and planter-legislator influenced his forceful support for a strong union of the states at the Convention. As a military leader during the campaigns in the south he had come to appreciate the need for a national approach to defense.
This dual emphasis on national and state concerns puzzled his fellow delegates, just as other apparent inconsistencies would bother associates throughout the rest of his political career. For example, Butler favored ratification of the Constitution, yet absented himself from the South Carolina convention that approved it.
Butler retired from politics in 1805 and spent much time in Philadelphia where he had previously established a summer home. Like other Founding Fathers from his region, Butler also continued to support the institution of slavery. But unlike Washington or Thomas Jefferson, for example, Butler never acknowledged or grasped the fundamental inconsistency in simultaneously defending the rights of the poor and supporting slavery.
The contradictions in this fascinating man led associates to label him an "eccentric" and an "enigma." Butler never wavered from his central emphasis on the role of the common man. Colhoun
|
U.S. Senator (Class 3) from South Carolina November 4, 1802 – November 21, 1804 Served alongside: Thomas Sumter |
Succeeded by: John Gaillard |
User Comments Add a comment…