The Civil War in North Carolina



Reminiscences and Memoirs of North Carolina and Eminent North Carolinians

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opposed by Governor Worth, who alleged some damaging evidence against him, but his career as a judge, in spite of abundant calumny, redowned to his credit. His literary gifts are of a high order, and much respected.

        He had for some time previous been chairman of the republican central committee of the state, and is now secretary of the national republican committee, and ardent and active in support of the republican party. Perhaps few men have been more soundly berated by his political opponents, and none who seemed to care less for such abuse.

        Governor Worth, in a letter to General Canby protesting against the appointment of JudgJudge Tourgee said:

        "I do not know Tourgee personally, but know that he was a delegate to a political convention held in Philadelphia, in 1866, and his speech reported in the New York Herald, enlightening the north as to the temper of the people among whom he had settled, speaking of the loyal men selling everything they had at a nominal value, and that twelve hundred of these men have been driven from the state."


        "I was told," said Tourgee, "by a quaker in North Carolina, as I was coming here, that he had seen the bodies of 1,500 murdered negroes taken from one pond." Moore says in his history (II., 323) "that time has not changed the drift of his feelings, as his late work of fiction, 'the Fool's Errand,' is conceived in the same spirit of misrepresentation of the people of North Carolina."

        Junius Irwing Scales resided in Greensboro, but is a native of Rockingham County. He was born June 1, 1832; educated at Chapel Hill, and graduated in 1853, in the same class with Vine A. Allen, William H. Battle, B. A. Capeheart, DeBrutz Cutlar, John W. Holmes, Alexander McIver, Walker Meares, John Wheeler Moore, J. L. Morehead, Solomon Pool, and others.

        He read law with Judge Pearson; Married Effic, daughter of Colonel A.family Henderson; represented Alamance County in 1857; removed to Mississippi in 1861, and entered the army from that state; was elected colonel of the 30th Mississippi; was wounded at Chicamauga, and imprisoned at Johnson Island until 1865. This family did yeoman's service in the war, for there were six brothers, and three brothers-in-law in the field, and of these the most fell by wounds and exposure. He returned to North Carolina after the war, and was elected a member of the state senate in 1876. He died of heart disease on July 11, 1880, in the Presbyterian Hospital, New York. His last hours were soothed by the attention of kind friends and relatives; among them was his affectionate brother, Honorable A. M. Scales.

        John Norman Staples resides in Greensboro. He is a native of Virginia, born in Patrick County, June 13, 1846. He was educated at the Franklin Institute, Montgomery County, Alabama, and at Trinity College. He left college to join Cumming's battery, 13th North Carolina, and served in it until the end of the civil war. He then studied law and was licensed to practice in 1868.

        He was elected to the House of Commons in 1875,-'76, and acquired prominence. He was chairman of committee on the insane asylum; active in the advocacy of the Morganton and colored asylum. He has been an energetic and useful member of every district and state democratic convention since 1870, and has gathered laurels in the literary as well as the political field. His addresses before the Methodist centennial in 1876, and on educational, and other topics, have won for him an enduring reputation as an orator and scholar.

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