Appointed to this position in 1849 by the incoming Zachary Taylor administration, he is best known for having faced down, and defeated, another Whig candidate for the same job, Abraham Lincoln.

He was also one of the foremost Gentile defenders of the rights of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in Illinois during the final period of Joseph Smith's leadership at Nauvoo.

He entered Williams College at age seventeen; a work-study student, he simultaneously studied college-level courses and served as a schoolteacher, as was allowed by the laws of that day.

In 1835 the now middle-aged lawyer visited and established a practice with James H. Collins in the fast-growing frontier village of Chicago, and by 1837 he completed his casework in upstate New York.

"[3][4] Butterfield became one of the pioneer attorneys of Chicago at a time when the village at the foot of Lake Michigan was beginning to establish its supremacy over all of the other settlements of the American Midwest.

Although Illinois taxpayers achieved a less-than-optimal resolution of the state's difficulties, the deal helped Butterfield establish enduring connections with New York bankers.

In summer 1843, Joseph Smith, the head of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, asked Butterfield to defend him in federal court.

The Nauvoo leader had been arrested by Missouri peace officers on a variety of charges related to the Mormons' time in that state some years earlier; in order to avoid extradition and possible lynching, Butterfield asked a federal court sitting in Illinois to grant habeas corpus to Smith.

When Judge Nathaniel Pope granted this motion, Smith and his lawyer made a spectacular appearance in a Springfield, Illinois courtroom.

In addition, the position of the General Land Office at the fulcrum of what was then the American real estate business meant that its commissioner had the opportunity of developing many ties with East Coast banking interests that could serve each public servant well when the time came for him to retire to private life.

Taylor's choice for Interior Secretary, Ohio's Thomas Ewing, aggressively favored Butterfield for the position, and his wishes prevailed.

Although Butterfield was a Whig officeholder nominally opposed to Douglas, his cross-party ties made it possible for the political appointee to develop a subterranean alliance with the Democratic senator.

[1] The negative side of these transactions was that the public purse received minimal recompense for the transfer of real estate that could soon see sharp increases in value.

Butterfield's banking connections had helped make it possible to craft a deal that would enable the fledgling venture to monetize the land grants and raise the necessary capital;[1] the railroad's construction was swift, with rail-laying starting December 1851 and the work concluding in September 1856.

[1][8] Ironically, only six years after Butterfield's death the railroad he helped to organize, the Illinois Central, played a key role in the mobilization of Union forces against Southern Confederate armies stationed in western Kentucky and Tennessee.

Mr. Lincoln also signed a series of bills, starting in July 1862, that utilized the checkerboard land-grant system invented by his two political adversaries, Butterfield and Douglas, to construct the First transcontinental railroad.

The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library announced plans in July 2013 to hold a Springfield, Illinois re-enactment of the trial on September 24, 2013, with a discussion of the habeas corpus principles Butterfield had defended in court.