M. C. Butler's expectations and extent of involvement in the later events have not been proven. He was not conclusively placed in the "Dead Ring", but his association with the massacre damaged his later career in the U. S. Senate. However, during the 1894 Senatorial campaign, Butler faced Benjamin Ryan Tillman, who led an Edgefield County "Rifle Club" which was part of the Red Shirts and whom had been indicted by the coroner's jury for his involvement, for the Democratic nomination. Tillman had become recognized in the area for his role in the Hamburg Massacre and continued to boast of the "stirring events" of 1876, referring to this more than a decade later during his 1890 campaign for governor of South Carolina. As he put it on the floor of the U.S. Senate: