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.