recognized as one of United States' Founding Fathers and was a soldier, planter, and statesman. 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 even though he had private misgivings about the institution, and particularly about the African slave trade.
I am free to acknowledge that His Powers are full great, and greater than I was disposed to make them. Nor, Entre Nous, do I believe they would have been so great had not many of the members cast their eyes towards General Washington as President; and shaped their Ideas of the Powers to be given to a President, by their opinions of his Virtue.
