Pierce Butler
United States Founding Father
Died when: 77 years 219 days (931 months)Star Sign: Cancer
Pierce Butler (July 11, 1744 – February 15, 1822) was an Irish-American South Carolina rice planter, slaveholder, politician, an officer in the Revolutionary War, and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States.
He served as a state legislator, a member of the Congress of the Confederation, a delegate to the 1787 Constitutional Convention, and a member of the United States Senate.
As one of the largest slaveholders in the United States, he defended American slavery for both political and personal motives, even though he had private misgivings about the institution and particularly about the African slave trade.
He introduced the Fugitive Slave Clause into a draft of the U.S. Constitution, which gave a federal guarantee to the property rights of slaveholders.
He supported counting the full slave population in state totals for the purposes of Congressional apportionment. The Constitution's Three-fifths Compromise counted only three-fifths of the slave population in state totals but still led to Southern states having disproportionate power in the U.S.
Congress.