Pierce Butler - Politician

Politician

Military operations in the latter months of the Revolution left Butler a poor man. Many of his plantations and ships were destroyed, and the international trade on which the majority of his income depended was in shambles. He traveled to Europe when the war ended in an effort to secure loans and establish new markets. Butler enrolled his son in a London school and engaged a new minister from among the British clergy for his Episcopal church in South Carolina.

In late 1785 he returned to the United States. He became an outspoken advocate of reconciliation with former Loyalists and of equal representation for the residents of the backcountry. 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 led to his forceful support for a strong union of the states. He had come to appreciate the need for a national approach to defense. As a planter and merchant, he understood that economic growth and the international respect to support trade depended upon a strong central government. At the same time, he energetically supported 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 African slaves, he supported the passage in the Constitution that prohibited regulation of the trade for 20 years. By the time of the Constitutional Convention, some northern states had already abolished slavery, and others soon did so, leaving the new country largely divided between the slaveholding South and the free labor North. Similarly, Butler supported counting the full slave population in the states' totals for the purposes of Congressional apportionment, but had to be satisfied with the compromise to count three-fifths of the slaves toward that end. This gave the Southern whites (and states) representation out of proportion to their population, ensuring that the Southern planter elite would exert strong influence in national politics for decades.

While supporting an institution integral to the Southern economy, Butler displayed inconsistencies that would bother associates throughout the rest of his political career. For example, Butler favored ratification of the Constitution, yet did not attend the South Carolina convention that ratified it. Later, he was elected by the Georgia state legislature to three separate terms in the United States Senate, but made abrupt changes in party allegiances during this period. Beginning as a Federalist, he switched to the Jeffersonian party in 1795. In 1804 he declared himself a political independent.

After these successive changes, voters did not elect him again to national office. They elected him three more times to the state legislature as an easterner who spoke on behalf of the west.