Roderick R. Butler

Roderick Randum Butler ( born April 9, 1827 in Wytheville, Wythe County, Virginia; † August 18, 1902 in Mountain City, Tennessee ) was an American politician. Between 1867 and 1875, and again from 1887 to 1889, he represented the state of Tennessee in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Career

Roderick Butler learned the trade of tailor, and then moved to Taylorsville, who later became Mountain City, Tenn., where he further formed with courses at night school. After studying law and its made ​​in 1853 admitted to the bar he began to work in his new profession. He was also postmaster in Taylorsville and major in the state militia. Between 1859 and 1863 he sat in the Senate from Tennessee.

During the Civil War he was in the years 1863 and 1864 lieutenant colonel in a coming from Tennessee unit, which was attached to the Union army. Politically, Butler joined the Republican Party, its first chairman, he was in Tennessee. In the years 1864, 1872 and 1876 he was a delegate to the Republican National Conventions respective upon which Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant and Rutherford B. Hayes finally been nominated as a presidential candidate. In 1865, Butler was also a delegate to a meeting on the revision of the Constitution of Tennessee. At that time he was also a judge for the first judicial district of his state. In the years 1869 and 1882, Butler led the regional Republican party conventions in Tennessee.

In the congressional elections of 1866 Butler in the first electoral district of Tennessee was in the U.S. House of Representatives in Washington DC chosen, where he became the successor of Nathaniel Green Taylor on March 4, 1867. After three re- elections, he was able to complete in Congress until March 3, 1875 four legislative sessions. These were characterized by the tensions between the radical Republicans and President Andrew Johnson, which culminated in a narrowly failed impeachment. While Butler's time in Congress and Alaska was purchased from Russia and the U.S. territory connected as a territory. In the years 1868 and 1870, the 14th and the 15th Amendment to the Constitution were adopted. From 1873 to 1875 Butler was chairman of the militia committee. In 1870 he was reprimanded by the Congress government because of corruption in the awarding of scholarships for the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.

In the elections of 1874 Butler was defeated by Democrat William McFarland. Between 1879 and 1885 he was a delegate in the House of Representatives from Tennessee; 1893 to 1901 he was again in the state Senate. In 1886, Roderick Butler was again elected to Congress, where he 1887 Augustus Herman Pettibone replaced on March 4. Until March 3, 1889, he was able to spend another term in the U.S. House of Representatives. In 1888 he gave up another candidacy. In addition to his political activity Butler was still working as a lawyer. He died on August 18, 1902 in Mountain City.

Roderick Butler was with Emeline Jane Donnelly, the daughter of a wealthy farmer, married, with whom he had eleven children. He was the grandfather of Robert R. Butler (1881-1933), who represented 1928-1933 the state of Oregon in Congress.