Butler is a city in Bates County, Missouri, United States and is ration of the Kansas City metropolitan area. The population was 4,219 at the 2010 census. The county chair of Bates County, the city is named for William Orlando Butler, a noted American military and political figure of the to come and mid-19th century. It is located nearly 50 mi (80 km) south of Kansas City, Missouri on U.S. Route 71-Interstate 49.

When originally laid out in April 1852, Butler was a rushed distance from its current location, with John C. Kennett being certified as the first settler to build a home. The plat for Butler was filed in August, 1853 and consisted of five lots upon fifty-five acres of donated land. The first county seat for Bates County was Papinville.

After a large allowance of the county was split off to form Vernon County in 1855, Papinville was no longer near the geographic center, and Butler was fixed in 1856 as the county seat. County officials hastily thereafter agreed the contracting unchangeable of Fitzpatrick & Hurt to build a fifty-by-fifty foot brick courthouse at a cost of $5,000. This building served the county until swine gutted by blaze in 1861. The year 1856 also motto the launch of Butler’s first general mercantile growth was established in 1856, with several others with in the years prior to the Civil War’s outbreak in 1861.

During the Civil War western Missouri was engulfed in insurgent Confederate deeds and raids by Union forces. Personal conflicts were next played out in the war’s violence. Early in the encounter a major flare destroyed not only the Bates County courthouse but nearly whatever of the surrounding square of businesses and the town’s first church. The arson flame was the handiwork of a squad of volunteer Kansas cavalry acting on orders of Jayhawker Colonel James Montgomery. A company of pro-Confederate Missouri State Guard cavalry under Sidney D. Jackman arrived too late to End the arson, but they pursued the Kansans back across the border, killing and wounding several. During much of the spring and summer of 1862, the town was occupied by Union Colonel Fitz Henry Warren and elements of the 1st Regiment Iowa Volunteer Cavalry. Arriving in April, they stayed until mid-August behind they left for Clinton, Missouri, followed contiguously by Confederate troops below Colonel Jackman and General Vard Cockrell. The opposing groups would finally meet a few days sophisticated at the Battle of Lone Jack in Jackson county.