At a young age, Butler aligned himself with the Whig Party.William Horatio Barnes, "Roderick R. Butler," Biographies of Members of the House of Representatives of the Forty-third Congress (W.H. and O.H. Morrison, 1874), pp. 77-80. He was appointed postmaster of Taylorsville by President Millard Fillmore, and was elected to a county judgeship in 1855. He was also a major of the First Battalion of the Tennessee Militia, having been elected to the rank around 1850.
