Matthew Butler - Postbellum

Postbellum

Financially ruined as a result of the war, Butler resumed his career as a lawyer in Edgefield and served in the South Carolina House of Representatives beginning in 1866. He became a member of the Democratic Party and ran unsuccessfully for lieutenant governor in 1870. In 1877, as Reconstruction ended and the Democratic Party regained control of the state, he was elected by the South Carolina state legislature to the United States Senate. He also played a role in the Hamburg Massacre. He served in the U.S. Senate for three terms, from 1877 to 1895, but lost the Democratic primary in 1894 to Benjamin Tillman. He served on the Senate Foreign Relations, Territories, Military Affairs, Naval Affairs, Interstate Commerce, Civil Service and Retrenchment committees.

Butler then practiced law in Washington, D.C., until 1898, when he was appointed major general of U.S. Volunteers during the Spanish-American War, one of a handful of former Confederate officers to serve in the U.S. Army during that campaign. After the American victory that year, he supervised the evacuation of Spanish troops from Cuba. He was honorably discharged from the U.S. Army on April 15, 1899.

In 1903, Butler was elected vice president of the Southern Historical Society, and in 1904 he relocated to Mexico, where he served as president of a mining company. Two years later he married Nannie Whitman, after his wife Maria had died years before. Butler died in 1909 while semi-retired in Washington, D.C. His body was returned to Edgefield, South Carolina, where he was buried in the city's Willow Brook Cemetery.

The Matthew C. Butler Camp #12 of the South Carolina Society of the Military Order of the Stars and Bars is named in his honor.