Later Years
Butler turned down the governorship of the Nebraska Territory in 1855.
Politically, Butler was a moderate. Although a slaveholder, he was opposed to the extension of slavery and favored gradual legal emancipation. He stood firmly for the preservation of the Union and was a Union Democrat during the Civil War.
He was present at the peace conference of 1861, a gathering of political leaders that met in Washington, D.C. in an attempt to avert the impending American Civil War. Butler returned to his home in Carrolton where he remained until his death. He died in 1880 aged 89 of natural causes. His remains were interred in the Butler family cemetery.
Butler County, Iowa, and Butler County, Missouri, were named for General Butler, as well as General Butler State Resort Park near Carrollton, Kentucky. Butler Township, County of Schuylkill, Pennsylvania, is also named for him.
Read more about this topic: William Orlando Butler
Famous quotes containing the word years:
“Flood-tide below me! I see you face to face!
Clouds of the west—sun there half an hour
high—I see you also face to face.
Crowds of men and women attired in the usual costumes, how curious you are to me!
On the ferry-boats the hundreds and hundreds that cross, returning
home, are more curious to me than you suppose,
And you that shall cross from shore to shore years hence are more to me, and more in my meditations, than you might suppose.”
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892)
“Narcissus does not fall in love with his reflection because it is beautiful, but because it is his. If it were his beauty that enthralled him, he would be set free in a few years by its fading.”
—W.H. (Wystan Hugh)