Pierce Butler

Pierce Butler (July 11, 1744February 15, 1822) was an Irish-born American politician who was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. Born in the Kingdom of Ireland, Butler emigrated to the British North American colonies, where he fought in the American Revolutionary War. After the war, he served as a state legislator and was a member of the Congress of the Confederation. In 1787, he served as a delegate to the 1787 Constitutional Convention, where Butler signed the Constitution of the United States; he was also 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. He introduced the Fugitive Slave Clause into a draft of the Constitution, which gave a federal guarantee to the property rights of slaveholders. Butler also supported counting the entire slave population in state totals for Congressional apportionment. The Constitution's Three-fifths Compromise counted only three-fifths of the enslaved population in state totals but still led to white voters in Southern United States having disproportionate power in the United States Congress. Early life Butler was born on July 11, 1744, in Garryhundon, County Carlow, Ireland. He was born into the Anglo-Irish Protestant Ascendancy. He was an Anglican until after the American Revolution when he became a member of the Episcopal Church alongside many of America's Founding Fathers. He was the third son of Sir Richard Butler, 5th Baronet, of Cloughgrenan (1699–1771), and his wife, Henrietta Percy. He resigned from a commission in the British Army in 1773 and settled with his wife, Mary, in South Carolina. Revolutionary war soldier In early 1779, Governor John Rutledge asked Butler 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. He preferred to be addressed as major, his highest combat rank.