Part 35

A great lawyer, a cherished and distinguished citizen having fallen in our midst, in obedience to an honored custom, we turn aside from the ordinary pursuits and ambitions to pay this sad tribute to our illustrious brother.

Bartholomew Figures Moore having passed the age allotted to man by the Psalmist, in the midst of his friends and kindred, departed this life in the city of Raleigh, November 27, A. D. 1878. He was the son of a Revolutionary soldier, and born at the family residence near Fishing Creek in Halifax county, January 29, 1801.

Having prepared himself for college, he entered the University of the State in 1818, and in 1820 graduated with honor in a class of recognized ability.

Leaving the University, Mr. Moore read law with Hon. Thomas N. Mann, an able and distinguished lawyer of Nash county. After obtaining his license he entered upon the practice of his profession at the then flourishing village of Nashville, the county seat. His success for some years was not by any means flattering, yet the first five hundred dollars he received from his professional services he expended in traveling and familiarizing himself with his country.

In December, 1828, he married Louisa, a daughter of George Boddie, Esq., of Nash county, who lived only until the 4th of November, 1829. In April, 1835, he married Lucy W., likewise a daughter of George Boddie, who, having witnessed and shared his toils and triumphs, survives him, blessed with a large and estimable family.

He returned, in 1835, to Halifax, his native county, and while pursuing his profession, was elected successively to the House of Commons from 1836 to 1844, with the exception of 1838, when he was defeated in consequence of having voted to give State aid to the Wilmington and Weldon Railroad Company, of which he was a warm friend and an able advocate.

He was appointed Attorney-General of the State in 1848, and, upon the convening of the General Assembly in December, elected to the same position. This office he continued to hold and fill with great acceptability until he resigned it in consequence of being appointed a commissioner to revise the statute law of the State. To him was assigned the principal labor of arranging the matter and superintending the publication of the _Revised Code_.

While ample success crowned his professional career in Halifax county, yet in 1848 he removed to Raleigh, where he resided till the time of his death. Bringing with him his well-established reputation for research and ability, he continued to command an extended and lucrative practice in this and other parts of the State.

Mr. Moore early secured a high reputation as an able and profound lawyer by an elaborate brief in the celebrated case of the _State_ vs. _Will_, a slave (_1 Devereux and Battle's Law_). It was a case that awakened a general and profound interest throughout the country and settled the true relations between master and slave in our State. It recognized the right of the slave to defend himself against the assaults of his master in the preservation of his own life. It is reserved to but few of the profession to so impress their views upon the courts, in advance of public opinion, and to prepare so admirable a collocation of the law and to establish so durable a reputation upon any one case.

Mr. Moore was a close and painstaking student; reluctant to appear in any case without careful preparation; yet when he entered the combat, the rich and fertile resources of his well-stored mind clearly manifested that nothing rusted in his intellectual armory.

His mind was logical, his manner forcible, his ideas, without undue ornamentation, were clothed in strong and graphic language. He seized at once the strong points of his case, and pressed them with skill and sagacity. Possessed of a strong mind and robust constitution, he was a fine exemplification of the _mens sana in corpore sano_.

In politics he was a Whig, and admired a strong and stable government; an ardent lover of civil liberty, he watched with jealousy all legislation tending to encroach upon the guaranteed rights of the citizen.

A bold and avowed Union man, while the States were engaged in an unremitting and unrelenting civil war, his high character and recognized integrity secured him, even amidst the clash of arms, a respectful hearing, for it was known that he sympathized with his own people in their unequal conflict, and that often his hasty expressions were the result of deep convictions. Recognized as a pronounced and outspoken Unionist, it was but natural that he should be sought for and consulted by the President of the United States at the termination of the war.

His respect, however, for the constitutional limitations of the General Government compelled him to oppose the whole reconstruction policy, for he was incapable of yielding to the intrigues of the politician or the subservient traffic of a mere placeman.

He was a leading member of the State convention called by the President, and ably advocated the adoption of all such measures as were proclaimed as indispensably necessary to a rehabilitation of the State, believing that wise statesmanship required an early submission to the demands of the General Government.

Reared in a conservative school of politics, and devotedly attached to his State and the high character of her judiciary, he ever looked with distrust upon the election of judges for short terms and by popular ballot as an alarming inroad.

As a citizen, to the poor he was liberal and unostentatious, to his equals, frank and manly, to all, kind and just.

That he had his faults, none will deny; he was impatient of contradiction, at times impetuous and irascible, yet these were but the natural emotions of an ardent and sanguine temperament, and while they tended to obscure, did not infect those true and excellent qualities which lay beneath the surface.

He lived literally within the Augustan age of the profession in our State. With a Gaston, Daniel, and Ruffin on the bench, the logical and versatile Badger, the strong and rugged Saunders, the able, astute Haywood and their illustrious compeers as rivals at the bar, it is praise enough to say that he was ever equal to the emergency of any occasion.

He was the wisest man I ever knew. At his decease and almost for his whole life, though filling only a private station, he had come to be recognized as a distinct and efficient moral power in regulating the social and political welfare of the State. He lived almost to the utmost limit of the span allotted by the Psalmist to man. Satisfied with only some very brief honorable rest in extreme old age, he spent all these years of his life in active, unremitting, assiduous labor, and finished his career without a taint upon his honor or a stain upon his reputation. His life covers many epochs in our State and national history, and among them, the most solemn and imperative political crisis through which State and nation have yet passed. For forty years he was a leader in the legal profession, and for perhaps a quarter of a century he was the very head of the bar--_facile princeps_. Of all the gentlemen who composed the Raleigh bar, when I was first admitted to practice, he was the last relict--Badger, the two Busbees, Husted, Jones, Manly, Mariott, Miller, Rogers, Saunders, Sheppard, are all gone, sunk down--down with the tumult they made!

His thorough and life-long devotion to the enforcement of the laws preserving civil liberty, distinguished him among his fellows. No circumstances of danger--no allurements of ambition--no fear of consequences--no regard for himself, his family, his fortune, his future--no specious arguments of expediency ever tempted him upon any occasion to refrain from boldly and perseveringly, in public and in private, urging and enforcing his objections, whenever, wherever and in whatsoever form the liberty of the humblest citizen was threatened or invaded.

For solid wisdom, penetrating foresight, invariable sagacity, he had no peer, and he has left behind none like him. He had nothing but observation, reason and a sense of duty to guide him, and these he obeyed under trials and temptations which it is to be hoped, for the sake of public virtue, are not to become common. In the presence of such manly, unselfish, heroic virtue, I uncover my head and put the shoes from off my feet and lift up my heart to God in thankfulness for the example of this His faithful soldier and servant. According to his lights he did his duty--a hard and painful duty it was, and the event has proved that his lights were as true as the sun in heaven. Every man is to be judged, so far as human judgment is to be passed upon him at all, by the tenor of the motives which actuated him, and to which the main current of his life responded. Judged by this standard his course with reference to the late social war must command admiration even of those who most earnestly condemned his action.

I do not think Mr. Moore had genius, but his talents were great, his will imperative, his industry unbounded, and his habit of methodical and exhaustive analysis unequaled. He had no great oratorical gifts, except to those cultivated minds to which lucidity of arrangement and logical presentation of a subject are most pleasing and convincing. Even his voice when addressing an audience was harsh and unmusical. But he was the most successful lawyer we had, and I remember watching his mode of managing a cause with admiration and wonder, and studying it, as the most perfect model within my reach. In this respect his professional skill and acumen were, and to the very end continued to be, unapproachable.

On a more favorable occasion it is to be hoped that some person well qualified for the task will lay before the profession a full, critical and careful history and examination of some of the numerous great causes in which he appeared and his arguments therein; in one or the other of which, as I verily believe, is exhibited every variety of intellectual excellence demanded for the elucidation and application of law in the courts of justice. His briefs in the _State_ vs. _Will_, _Moye_ vs. _May_, and _Walton_ vs. _Gatling_ are all models; each one has its distinct method and discloses a special excellence.

During the period I knew him, which extended through a quarter of a century, I never knew him to make a mistake of judgment. I do not mean that he never, upon some passing matter, erred in act or opinion, but in great crises when the waters of revolution were out and the files of political experience furnished no precedent for guidance--when all was on the hazard and he was called upon to use his wisdom in suggesting the best means applicable to the production of the best results, in predicting what results must follow from one course of action or another--he was almost infallible--his predictions were prophecies. His bare opinions had come to have in this community the weight of actual knowledge. "He was a man, take him for all in all, I shall not look upon his like again."

And in this connection let me say one word of a single episode in Mr. Moore's career, with which I have heard some thoughtless persons find fault. I speak of his well known hostility to secession and the Confederate cause. Surely those who impute blame to him have not considered his motives, his opinions, his conduct. Mr. Moore was by conviction a Federalist, both in politics and in the construction which, as a lawyer, he gave to the Constitution of the United States; he denied always, from first to last, the right of secession; he thought the only safety for his people, for the State, for the nation, for civil liberty even, was in the perpetuation of the Union; with his far-seeing intellect he knew and foretold the fierce struggle to come, the bloodshed, the evil passions, the crime, the suffering which would accompany it, its failure, the dreadful consequences, the perils to all civil liberty and all rights of person and property which would result, many of which are not yet past. He made no secret of his opinions and his feelings at any time--he was constant, in season and out of season, in proclaiming them from the housetops, and in endeavoring to convert others to his views; to him the result--the failure--was always present in all its shocking and useless reality; and when the good opinion of his neighbors and friends (which he cherished as much as any man) was at stake, and his liberty, his future, his reputation, his very life, was on the hazard of a die--he yet stood steadfast as the Northern Star--"Of whose true, fixed and resting quality there is no fellow in the firmament."

Which of his faultfinders would have done as much under like circumstances? Which one of us, I pray you, oh! hot-blooded secessionists, Hebrew of the Hebrews, if we had had his prevision, would have obeyed the dictates of our convictions and have exhibited such courageous virtue?

But, in my opinion, the _Revised Code_ is the greatest monument he has left of the excellent and rare endowments of his mind; especially does it illustrate his profound knowledge of the written law of North Carolina at the date of its preparation. Lord Coke said of Littleton's treatise on _tenures_, "I affirm, and take upon me to maintain, against all opposites whatsoever, that it is a work of as absolute perfection in its kind, and as free from error, as any book that I have ever known to be written of any human learning"; and I venture to adopt his language as applicable to the _Revised Code_. Its great and surpassing excellence can only be fully perceived and appreciated by those who have studied it, and have long had occasion to apply it practically. They will have seen that it is far more than a bare compilation of statutes--far more than a codification of existing acts of Assembly, but that it has amended and perfected every such act in those particulars in which it has been proved by experience to be imperfect. It indicates a profound and exact knowledge of every principle which had been established, and every decision which had then been made by our courts, and an exhaustive, methodical analysis of the fundamental principles of the common law.

Having carefully arranged his affairs, and provided for the wife and children whom he loved, and disposed of his great estate, he retired to his chamber and folded his mantle about him to die as he had lived, with decency. Weary and worn, perhaps disappointed, certainly disenchanted, disillusioned of all the bright dreams of his green manhood--let us follow him there: be ye sure that sacred chamber was not haunted by memories of evil deeds, of sins that had sorrowfully come home at nightfall--with hopes that had borne no fruit, with resolves abandoned almost as soon as formed. His strength failed him more and more; painlessly he sinks into the lethargy of approaching death, while his children gather around his couch. What are the last feeble syllables which they hear from the dying lips of this gray-haired veteran--"I am tired now. I am going to my mother in Heaven."

Perhaps he knew that there were some heavy items underscored against him, but he also knew that the mercy of God can even outdo the hope He gives us for token and keepsake. A greater and a grander end, after a life of mark and power, might, to his early aspirations and self-conscious strength, have seemed the bourne intended. If it had befallen him--as but for himself it would have done--to appear more actively in official life, where men are moved by ambition and bold decision, his name would have been more famous in history--but perhaps also better known to the devil. As it was, he lay there dying, and was well content. The turbulence of his life was past, the torrent and the eddy, the attempt at fore-reaching upon his age, and the sense of impossibility, the strain of his mental muscles to stir the "great dead trunks of orthodoxy"--and then, the self-doubt, the chill, the depression which follow such attempts, as surely as ague tracks the pioneer--thank God, all this was over now--the violence gone--and the dark despair. Of all the good and evil things which he had known and felt, but two yet dwelt in the feeble heart--only two still showed their presence in his dying eyes and words. Each of these two were good--if two indeed they were--faith in the Heavenly Father, and love of the earthly children.

"When the young are stricken down, and their roses nipped in an hour by the destroying blight, even the stranger can sympathize, who counts the scant years on the gravestone, or reads the notice in the newspaper corner. The contrast forces itself upon you. A fair young creature, bright and blooming yesterday, distributing smiles, levying homage, inspiring desire, conscious of her power to charm, and gay with the natural enjoyment of her conquests--who, in his walk through the world has not looked on many such a one; and, at the notion of her sudden call away from beauty, triumph, pleasure, her helpless outcries during her short pain, her vain pleas for a little respite, her sentence and its execution, has not felt a shock of pity? When the days of a long life come to their close, and a white head sinks to rise no more, we bow our own with respect as the mourning train passes, and salute the heraldry and devices of yonder pomp, as symbols of age, wisdom, deserved respect, merited honor--long experience of suffering and action. The wealth he has achieved is the harvest he has sowed; the title on his hearse, fruits of the field he bravely and laboriously wrought in. Around his grave are unseen troops of mourners waiting; many and many a poor pensioner trooping to the place; many weeping charities; many kind actions; many dear friends beloved and deplored, rising up at the toll of that bell to follow the honored hearse; dead parents waiting above, and calling 'come son,' lost children, heaven's foundlings, hovering around like cherubim, and whispering 'welcome, father.'"

"Here lies one who reposes after a long feast, where much love has been; here slumbers, in patience and peace, a veteran, with all his wounds in front, and not a blot on his scutcheon after fourscore years of duty well done in the fierce and ceaseless campaign of life."

"Oh, yet we trust that somehow good Will be the final goal of ill, To pangs of nature, sins of will, Defects of doubt, and taints of blood;

"That nothing walks with aimless feet; That no one life shall be destroy'd, Or cast as rubbish to the void, When God hath made the pile complete;

"That not a worm is cloven in vain; That not a moth with vain desire Is shrivel'd in a fruitless fire, Or but subserves another's gain.

"Behold, we know not anything; I can but trust that good shall fall At last--far off--at last, to all, And every winter change to spring.

"So runs my dream; but what am I? An infant crying in the night; An infant crying for the light; And with no language but a cry."

* * * * *

This sketch is the best part of Mr. Haywood's address to the bench and bar of Wake county, delivered shortly after Mr. Moore's death. If he presents the character of his subject correctly, as far as he goes, he does not make a complete sketch.

Mr. Haywood had the reputation of having more learning than judgment, and his reading in law was very wide; he was not the man to go into details and marshal the facts requisite for a perfect sketch.

Mr. Moore feared lest his fellow-countrymen should misjudge the motives which made him a Union man during the war. He therefore inserted in his will an _item_ which explains his views. No great man is ever careless of what his people and their posterity may think of his conduct. The records of his adopted county will safely keep his eloquent words, and the originality of _his_ method of preserving them will cause them to be republished from time to time.

Item 39 of Mr. Moore's will reads as follows:

"Prior to the late civil war I had been for more than thirty years much devoted to investigating the nature and principles of our Federal and State governments, and during that period, having been several times profoundly exercised as to the true and lawful powers of each--not as a politician, but as a citizen truly devoted to my country--I was unable, under my conviction of the solomn duties of patriotism, to give any excuse for or countenance to the Civil War of 1861 without sacrificing all self-respect. My judgment was the instructor of my conscience, and no man suffered greater misery than did I as the scenes of battle unfolded the bloody carnage of war in the midst of our homes. I had been taught under the deep conviction of my judgment that there could be no reliable liberty of my State without the union of the States, and being devoted to my State, I felt that I should desert her whenever I should aid to destroy the Union. I could not imagine a more terrible spectacle than that of beholding the sun shining upon the broken and dishonored fragments of States dissolved, discordant and belligerent, and on a land rent with civil feuds and drenched in fraternal blood. With this horrible picture of anarchy and blood looming up before my eyes, I could not, as a patriot, consent to welcome its approach to my own native land, and truly was I happy when I saw the sun of peace rising with the glorious promise to shine once more on States equal and free, honored and united. And although the promise has been long delayed by an unwise policy, and I myself may never see the full-orbed sun of liberty shine on my country and every part of it as once it did, yet I have strong hopes that my countrymen will yet be blessed with that glorious light."

The argument of Mr. Moore, or _brief_, as it is called, in the _State_ vs. _Will_, is the best thing of the kind in the law books of this State. I cannot prophesy much of a future in any field of public service for that young man who shall fail to be impressed and interested by this powerful production. I therefore give it entire.

ARGUMENT IN THE STATE _vs._ WILL.

BY B. F. MOORE.

The defendant was indicted for the murder of one Richard Baxter, and on the trial before Judge Donnell, at Edgecombe, on the last Circuit, the jury returned the following special verdict, viz.: