The Letters of Pierce Butler, 1790–1794
Nation Building and Enterprise in the
New American Republic
Edited by Terry W. Lipscomb
Enlivened by Irish humor and colorful turns of phrase, this collection of Pierce
Butler’s letters offers a new perspective on the most enigmatic of South Carolina’s
signers of the Constitution and on the formative years of the American republic.
Describing Butler as an intriguing question mark among the founding fathers, Terry
W. Lipscomb presents a cache of correspondence that covers the senator’s service
during the First, Second, and Third Congresses of the United States. In the first
major collection of Butler’s writings to be published in book form, Lipscomb offers a
detailed biographical sketch of the man and explains the value of his letters—including correspondence to such contemporaries as George Washington, John Adams,
George Mason, Richard Henry Lee, Wade Hampton, Andrew Pickens, Charles
Pinckney, James Gunn, and Archibald Maclaine.
Lipscomb recounts Butler’s rise to prominence, from his early days as an Irish-born
officer in the British army to his marriage into the lowcountry’s Middleton family.
More Virginian than Charlestonian in his political views, Butler holds a place of
notoriety as the delegate who pushed for the adoption of an electoral college and who
allegedly wrote the Constitution’s fugitive slave clause. Lipscomb shows Butler to have
been a strict constitutional constructionist, a persistent advocate of religious liberty,
and an admirer of the French Revolution. He also favored making government actions
more transparent and pioneered the tactic of leaking privileged information.
Offering an insider’s view of the early Senate at a time when it conducted its business behind closed doors, these letters present a new resource on the history of the
young republic.
September 2007, 392 pages
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Terry W. Lipscomb has been associated with the South Carolina Department of Archives and History and the
South Caroliniana Library for more
than thirty-five years. His numerous
previous publications include South
Carolina in 1791: George Washington’s
Southern Tour and South Carolina
Revolutionary War Battles: The Carolina Lowcountry, April 1775–June
1776 and the Battle of Fort Moultrie.
Lipscomb was also a longtime editor
of the colonial journals of the South
Carolina General Assembly.
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