Home : For The People : Sacred Honor :

Pierce Butler & William Houstoun

Pierce Butler

Pierce Butler was born in County Carlow, Ireland, July 11, 1744. He was the third son of Sir Richard Butler, 5th baronet, and Henrietta Percy Butler of Cloughgrenan. Sir Richard was a Member of Parliament for Carlow from 1729 to 1761. Pierce was commissioned an ensign in the 46th Regiment of Foot or infantry of the British Army on February 2, 1757, about five months before his thirteenth birthday. From March, 1761, for more than a year he served as captain of a company of marines in the 29th Regiment of Foot. He is listed as captain of this regiment July 30, 1762, and was promoted to major about four years later.

The British 29th Regiment was ordered to Boston in 1768, and disembarked at the Long Wharf there on October fifth. Pierce was stationed in that city with his regiment. Strangely enough, in view of Pierce's later efforts in behalf of establishing independent government for the former British North American Colonies, it was soldiers of the 29th Foot who fired upon the crowd gathered on the Boston Common on March 5, 1770, in the engagement known to Americans as the Boston Massacre. In this fateful incident, five colonists lost their lives or were mortally wounded-Samuel Gray; Crispus Attucks, a mulatto and probably the first to fall; James Caldwell; and two others.

On January 10, 1771, Pierce Butler married Mary Middleton, daughter of Thomas Middleton, a planter of Prince Williams's Parish, in South Carolina. Making his home in that state, Pierce retired from the British Army in 1773. Pierce Butler was appointed adjutant general of South Carolina in 1779, and served in the state legislature, 1778-1782 and 1784-1789. Also elected to the Continental Congress in 1784, he declined the appointment. He was again chosen for Congress in March, 1787, and attended very briefly in August and from September 22 to October 13.

In the Federal Convention on May 28, 1787, Butler moved that the house provide against interruption of its business because of absence of members and against unauthorized publication of the proceedings. Additional standing rules for the purposes set forth in his motion were adopted on May 29.

The following day, in place of a substitute offered for the first resolution of the Randolph Plan, Pierce Butler moved and Randolph seconded a resolution proposed by the latter. This was namely: "Resolved that a national government ought to be established consisting of a supreme legislative, judiciary and executive." During the debate, Butler declared that the proposed separation of powers had influenced him.

On the question of the powers for the National Legislature, Butler "repeated his fears that we were running into an extreme in taking away the powers of the States. . . ." In support of the Southern states' interests, on July 12, Butler said again that representation should be "according to the full number of inhabts.," including all the Negro slaves. Later that day, he seconded Ellsworth's motion "that the rule of contribution by direct taxation" to support the national government should be the "number of white inhabitants, and threefifths of every other description...... He did this so that the motion could be committed, according to Madison's Notes.

On August 29, in line with Southern views, Butler moved to insert after Article XV the provision that "If any person bound to service or labor" in any state should escape into another state, he or she should be "delivered up to the person justly claiming their service or labor," which was agreed to without a negative vote. This was the inflammatory fugitive slave clause.

Butler favored a single executive, among other views, and opposed power for Congress to emit bills of credit. "I hope We may succeed," he had written on the first of August. "Our Country expect much of us." To the same correspondent on October 8, he declared he would feel himself "fully recompensed for my share of the trouble, and a Summer's Confinement which injured my health much" if the states approved the new plan. In many instances, he continued, they had used the Constitution of Great Britain, "when in its purity," for a model, and they had tried to avoid the weak parts of ancient and modern republics. The framers had had "Clashing Interests to reconcile-some strong prejudices to encounter, for the same spirit that brought settlers to a certain Quarter of this Country is still alive in it."

In May, 1788, he wrote that he thought the Constitution would be agreed to, although it had "some few opponents.... Pains and attention were not spared to form such a Constitution as woud preserve to the individual as large a share of natural right as coud be left consistent with the good of the whole ...... Apparently, Butler was an early phonetic speller! "The Convention saw, I think justly," Butler concluded, "the Critical Situation of the United States-Slighted from abroad and totering on the brink of Confusion at home; they therefore thought it wise to bring forward such a system as bid fairest for general approbation and adoption so as to be brought soon into operation."

Under the Constitution, Butler served as United States senator from South Carolina from 1789 to October, 1796, when he resigned. In 1802, to fill a vacancy, he was again elected to the Senate and resigned this seat in November, 1804. In 1822, Pierce Butler died at Philadelphia, where he had moved. His wife had died in 1790, and his daughter Sarah had married Dr. James Mease of Philadelphia in 1800. According to William Pierce, Butler had no pretensions to being a politician or an orator. He was a "Gentleman of fortune, and takes rank among the first in South Carolina."

William Houstoun

William Houstoun was born in 1757, the youngest of Sir Patrick and Lady Priscilla Dunbar Houstoun's six children. Sir Patrick was a councilor under the royal government of Georgia in 1754 and was instrumental in constructing Christ Church, the first Church of England in Savannah. William's brother was John Houstoun, a leader in the movement for independence in Georgia, and twice governor of the state.

Completing his education in England, William entered the Inner Temple in London to study law in mid-1776. He returned to America in early 1782. In June, 1782, William Houstoun bought 2,500 acres of confiscated land, formerly owned by his brother, at £10 per acre. This was located on Cathead Creek, at the junction of the Altamaha River.

His petition to the House of Assembly on August 3, 1782, for permission to practice law in Georgia was granted.... He took his seat in the state legislature the following January as a deputy from Chatham. Houstoun was elected to the Continental Congress in January, 1784. He served on the Committee of States that summer, during the recess of Congress, and in that body at Trenton for November and December.

As told in the account of Abraham Baldwin, Houstoun was a charter trustee of the University of Georgia, which was initiated on February 25, 1784, during his brother's second gubernatorial term. Houstoun served again in Congress in 1785 and 1786.

In a letter to Governor Elbert of Georgia of April 2, 1785, he told about a treaty negotiation to be held with the Southern Indians. When he took the "liberty" to mention that a commissioner should be appointed from Georgia, as his state was "much connected" with the Southern Indians, he was answered severely for his suggestion that the "least countenance ought to be given to so unworthy a State, and one that had not taken a single federal measure."

Houstoun also stated his need for expense money from the state, which was much in arrears. He had exhausted every shilling of his own, and had had to borrow. On September 4, 1786, Houstoun served in Congress as an agent for Georgia in a boundary dispute with South Carolina. While in New York City as a member of this Assembly, he married Mary Bayard, daughter of Nicholas and Catherine Livingston Bayard.

At the Philadelphia Federal Assembly on July 2, 1787, on Oliver Ellsworth's resolution that each state have an equal vote in the Senate, Houstoun voted no, being a large state man, while Baldwin divided the state tally with an aye. As described previously in the Baldwin biography, the tie on this question, five states to five, with Georgia divided, brought the convention to a standstill.

Houstoun opposed the ineligibility of the executive for a second term and favored the appointment of the executive by electors chosen by the state legislatures. Also opposing the guarantee of "a Republican Constitution & its existing laws" to each state, he was afraid of "perpetuating" the existing state constitutions. That of Georgia, he declared, "was a very bad one," which he hoped would be revised and amended.

Mary Bayard Houstoun died in 1808, and her husband only outlived her by four years. William Houstoun died in 1812 at the home of his father-in-law, in Canal Street, New York City. Pierce wrote rather acidly of his fellow delegate from Georgia: "Mr. Houstoun is an Attoney at Law.... He is a gentleman of Family, and was educated in England. As to his legal or political knowledge he has very little to boast of. Nature seems to have done more for his corporeal than mental powers. His person is striking, but his mind very little improved with useful or elegant knowledge. He has none of the talents requisite for the Orator ... is ... of an amiable and sweet character, and of good and honoralle principles."

Dorothy Horton McGee. Framers of the Constitution. . Dodd Mead & Co., NY. 1968.

top of page

back a page