Pierce Butler Pierce Butler ( July 11 , 1744February 15 , 1822 ) was a soldier , planter , and statesman , recognized as one of United States ' Founding Fathers . He represented South Carolina in the Continental Congress , the 1787 Constitutional Convention , and the U . S . Senate . One of the largest slaveholders in the United States , Butler defended American slavery for both political and personal motives , though he had private misgivings about the institution , and particularly about the African slave trade . He introduced the Fugitive Slave Clause of the U . S . Constitution during the convention , and supported other measures to benefit slaveholders , including counting the full slave population in state totals for the purposes of Congressional apportionment . The compromise measure provided for counting three - fifths of the slave population in state totals , which led to Southern states having disproportionate power . Marriage and family . In January 1771 , Major Pierce Butler married Mary Middleton ( c . 1750 – 1790 ) . She was the orphaned daughter of Thomas Middleton , a South Carolina planter and slave importer . She was heiress to a vast fortune . Butler resigned his commission in the British Army two years later and settled with Mary in South Carolina . The couple had eight children : Sarah ( c . 1772 – 1831 ) , married 1800 , James Mease of Philadelphia Anne Elizabeth ( 1771 – 1845 ) , unmarried Frances ( 1774 – 1836 ) , unmarried Harriot Percy ( c . 1775 – 1815 ) , unmarried Pierce Jr . ( 1777 – 1780 ) Thomas ( 1778 – 1838 ) , married 1812 , Eliza de Mallevault of Paris 3rd son , died young 4th son , died young Soldier . Although bad health prevented Butler from assuming an active combat role , he offered his military talents to his state . In early 1779 Governor John Rutledge asked 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 . He preferred to be addressed as major , his highest combat rank . Britain was shifting its war strategy . By 1778 the King and his ministers faced a new military situation in the colonies . Their forces in the northern and middle colonies had reached a stalemate with Washington ' s Continentals , more adequately supplied and better trained after the hard winter at Valley Forge . There was the risk of France entering the war as a partner of the Americans . The British developed a " southern strategy . " They believed that the many Loyalists in the southern states ( with whom the British had an active trade through cotton , rice and tobacco ) 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 . They launched their new strategy by capturing Savannah in December 1778 . Butler joined to mobilize South Carolina ' s militia to repulse the threatened British invasion . Later he helped prepare the state units used in the counterattack to drive the enemy from Georgia . During the operation , which climaxed with an attempted attack on Savannah , Butler served as a volunteer aide to General Lachlan McIntosh . The hastily raised and poorly prepared militia troops could not compete with the well - trained British regulars , and the Patriots ' effort to relieve Savannah ended in failure . In 1780 the British captured Charleston , South Carolina , and with it most of the colony ' s civil government and military forces . Butler escaped as part of a command group deliberately located outside the city . During the next two years , he developed a counterstrategy to defeat the enemy ' s southern operations . Refusing to surrender , allies in South Carolina , and the occupied portions of Georgia and North Carolina , organized a resistance movement . As adjutant general , Butler worked with former members of the militia and Continental Army veterans such as Francis Marion and Thomas Sumter to integrate the partisan efforts into a unified campaign . They united with the operations of the Southern Army under the command of Horatio Gates and later Nathanael Greene . As a former Royal officer , Butler was a special target for the British occupation forces . Several times he barely avoided capture . Throughout the closing phases of the southern campaign , he personally donated cash and supplies to help sustain the American forces and also assisted in the administration of prisoner - of - war facilities . 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 . Vice President Aaron Burr was Butler ' s guest at his St . Simons plantations in September 1804 . Burr was , at the time , laying low after shooting Alexander Hamilton in the July 1804 duel . The states of New York and New Jersey had each indicted the Vice President for murder in the wake of the post - duel controversy . Burr had traveled during August , to Butler ' s plantation under the pseudonym Roswell King , which was Butler ' s overseer ' s name . During Burr ' s stay in early September , one of the worst hurricanes in history hit the area , and we have Burr ' s first - hand description , documenting both his stay and this event . It is interesting to note that Butler ' s politics and public involvement mirror the political rise and fall of his friend Burr . 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 . Later years , post - politics . Butler retired from politics in 1805 . He spent much time in Philadelphia , where he had previously established a summer home , and where his oldest daughter Sarah lived with her family . She had three surviving sons before her father died , two of whom would become his heirs by irrevocably taking his surname . More than a decade before he died , he disinherited his only surviving son Thomas Butler , together with his French - born wife and children . Continuing his business ventures , Butler became one of the wealthiest men in the United States , with huge land holdings in several states . Like other Founding Fathers from his region , Butler also continued to support the institution of slavery . Some historians claim that he privately opposed slavery , and especially the international slave trade , but he tried to protect the institution as a politician because of its importance to the Soutern economy . But , unlike Washington or Thomas Jefferson , for example , Butler never acknowledged the fundamental inconsistency in simultaneously defending the rights of the poor and supporting slavery . Associates referred to him as " eccentric " and an " enigma . " He followed his own path to produce the maximum of liberty and respect for those individuals whom he classed as citizens . He wanted to maintain a strong central government , but a government that could never ride roughshod over the rights of the private citizen . He opposed the policies of the Federalists under Alexander Hamilton because he believed they had sacrificed the interests of westerners and had sought to force their policies on the opposition . He later split with Jefferson and the Democrats for the same reason . Butler emphasized his belief in the role of the common man . Late in life he summarized his view : " Our System is little better than [ a ] matter of Experiment . . . much must depend on the morals and manners of the people at large . " Legacy . Following his wife ' s death in 1790 , Major Pierce Butler sold off the last of their South Carolina holdings and invested in Georgia Sea Island plantations . Major Pierce Butler hired Roswell King as the manager of his two plantations on the Georgia Sea Islands . They had some conflicts as Butler wanted more moderate treatment of his slaves than was King ' s style . King left in 1820 to operate his own plantation near Darien . He also pursued plans in the 1830s to develop cotton mills in the Piedmont of Georgia , where he founded what became Roswell , Georgia in 1839 . Butler disinherited his only surviving son , Thomas Butler , along with his French - born wife and children . He initially planned to leave his whole fortune to Pierce Butler Mease , the eldest son of his daughter Sarah Butler Mease , the only one of his daughters to marry and have children . The boy died in 1810 at age 9 . Butler told Sarah he would leave his estate in equal parts to her surviving three sons ( including one born that year ) , provided they irrevocably adopted Butler as their surname . Two of her sons , John and Pierce Butler Mease ( born 1810 and named after the grandfather and the brother who died ) , did change their surnames after they came of age in order to inherit portions of the estate . Until they came of age , Butler ' s daughters Fraunces and Eliza inherited the most productive lands . In 1820 Major Butler hired Roswell King , Jr . as the manager of the plantations , which continued to be enormously profitable . After Butler died in 1822 , King Jr . continued as manager on behalf of the estate , staying until 1838 . He moved on to his own plantation in Alabama after the two Mease grandsons came of age , adopted the surname Butler , and inherited their portions . Descendants . John ( Mease ) Butler and Pierce ( Mease ) Butler Marriage and family . In 1834 the grandson Pierce ( Mease ) Butler married the notable English actress Frances ( " Fanny " ) Kemble , who had been touring in the United States for two years with her father . They had two daughters , Sarah and Frances . After Butler inherited his portion of the major ' s plantations on Butler and St . Simons islands , he took his family there for the winter of 1838 - 1839 . Kemble was shocked at the living and working conditions for the slaves , and complained to him of their overwork and of the manager Roswell King , Jr . ' s treatment of them . She noted that King Jr . was credited with having had several mixed - race children with slave women , whom he sometimes took away from their husbands for periods of time . The firsthand experiences of the winter residence contributed to Kemble ' s growing abolitionism . The couple had increasing tensions over this and their basic incompatibility . Butler threatened to deny Kemble access to their daughters if she published anything of her observations about the plantation conditions , which she had often complained about to him . When they divorced in 1849 , Butler kept custody of their two daughters . Kemble waited until 1863 , after the American Civil War had started and her daughters had come of age , to publish her " Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838 - 1839 . " Her eye - witness indictment of slavery included an account of King Jr ' s mixed - race children with slave women . The book was published in both the US and England . Slave sale . By mid - century , Pierce ( Mease ) Butler was one of the richest men in the United States , but he squandered a fortune estimated at $ 700 , 000 . He was saved from bankruptcy by his sale on March 2 – 3 , 1859 of his 436 slaves at Ten Broeck Racetrack , outside Savannah , Georgia . It was the largest single slave auction in United States history and was covered by national newspapers . He was briefly imprisoned for treason , August – September 1861 , and sat out the Civil War in Philadelphia , a refuge for numerous Southerners . Death of John ( Mease ) Butler . Union forces occupied all the Butler plantations beginning in February 1862 . By the January 1 , 1863 Emancipation Proclamation , his brother John ( Mease ) Butler lost nearly 500 slaves to freedom . Later in 1863 John died , and Pierce ( Mease ) Butler inherited his half of the Butler estate . In the social and economic disruption of the postwar years , Butler was unsuccessful in adapting to the free labor market amid a general agricultural depression ; he was unable to gain a profit from the Sea Island plantations . Fourth and later generations . After ( Mease ) Butler ' s death , his second daughter Frances Butler Leigh and her husband James Leigh , a minister , tried to restore to productivity and operate the combined plantations , but were also unsuccessful in generating a profit . They left Georgia in 1877 and moved permanently to England , where Leigh had been born . Frances Butler Leigh defended her father ' s actions as a slaveholder in her book , " Ten Years on a Georgian Plantation since the War " ( 1883 ) , intended as a rebuttal to her mother ' s critique of slavery twenty years before . Butler ' s eldest daughter , Sarah Butler Wister , had married a wealthy doctor , Owen Jones Wister of the Germantown area of Philadelphia . They had a son , Owen Wister , who became a popular American novelist and author of the 1902 western novel , " ' The Virginian , " now considered a classic of the western migration . Wister was the last Butler descendant to inherit the plantations acquired by Major Butler . He wrote about the post - Civil War South in his novel , " Lady Baltimore " ( 1906 ) . It glorified " the lost aristocrats of antebellum Charleston " and , as the historian Marian McKenna notes , was strongly criticized by his friend Theodore Roosevelt for making nearly all the devils Northerners and the angels Southerners .