Person:Pierce Butler (4)

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Pierce Butler (July 11, 1744February 15, 1822) was a 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.

1. ↑ ^1.0 1.1 Pierce Butler, in Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia.

Signers of the U.S. Constitution

Baldwin • Bassett • Gunning Bedford • Blair • William Blount • Brearley • Jacob Broom • Pierce Butler • Daniel Carroll • George Clymer • Jonathan Dayton • John Dickinson • Few • Thomas Fitzsimons • Ben Franklin • Nicholas Gilman • Nathaniel Gorham • Alexander Hamilton • Ingersoll • William Jackson • Daniel of St.Thomas Jenifer • Johnson • Rufus King • Langdon • William Livingston • James Madison • McHenry • Mifflin • Gouverneur Morris • Robert Morris • William Paterson •Charles Cotesworth Pinckney •Charles Pinckney • George Read • John Rutledge • Roger Sherman • Spaight • George Washington • Hugh Williamson • James Wilson