Bartholomew Figures Moore (1801-1878) Papers, PC.775

Papers of Moore, Raleigh lawyer, legislator, and commissioner for revision of statute laws of the state (1854), including his Halifax Co. militia commission (1835); and his copy of the first-draft printing of the revised law code as presented to the legislature, amended in his hand. Additional materials include correspondence, genealogical information, and miscellaneous papers pertaining to his father James Moore, son Van Boddie Moore and great-granddaughter Elizabeth Moore Ruffin. Also typed extracts from his letters to daughter in Mississippi about folly of secession (1860-1861), conflict between the N.C. Supreme Court and the Raleigh bar in which he took a leading part (1869), and Gov. W. W. Holden's impeachment (1870). Papers scan the period of 1779-2010. See also Mf.P. 142.

Chronological

B. F. Moore was born January 29, 1801, in Halifax County, to James and Sally Lewis Lowe Moore. He received an A.B. degree from the University of North Carolina in 1820 and studied law under Thomas Mann. He started practicing law in Nash County in 1823. In 1828, he married Louisa Boddie, but she died less than a year later. In 1835, he married her sister Lucy, with whom he had eleven children. He was a member of the 1835 constitutional convention and served in the House of Commons in 1836, 1840, 1842, and 1844. Moore moved to Raleigh in 1848. That same year, he was named attorney general by Governor William Graham, but he resigned in 1851 to work on a statute law revision commission. This commission, with Asa Biggs and R. M. Saunders, led to the 1854 Revised Code of North Carolina.

Throughout his career, Moore had fairly liberal beliefs. Prior to the Civil War, he opposed secession and the prospect of war, calling it "madness," and, when asked to take a Confederate oath of allegiance in court, he famously walked out of the room. In an 1834 case, he argued for slaves' right to protect themselves from unnecessary violence, and his 1866 law code draft regarding freed slaves was the most liberal in the South (though it did not allow them to vote or have equal legal rights).

In May 1865, he and two other North Carolina men met with President Johnson to discuss a reconstruction plan that Moore thought was unconstitutional. Johnson brought in another North Carolina delegation and asked them collectively to nominate a governor; Moore and his colleagues walked out, and William Holden was nominated. (He was impeached in 1870.) B. F. Moore represented Wake County in an 1865 convention that declared the secession void and wrote a code of laws regarding freed slaves, which passed the General Assembly but was rejected by constituents. After the war, he practiced mostly in federal courts, and in 1871 he and his son-in-law, John Gatling, established a law firm together. Moore died on November 27, 1878, after months of failing health. He is buried in Oakwood Cemetery, in Raleigh.

Moore, Bartholomew Figures

Moore family

Holden, W. W. (William Woods), 1818-1892

North Carolina. Supreme Court

North Carolina. General Assembly

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