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Alfred Moore Scales served in the Confederate army, in the legislature, and in Congress before his election as governor in 1884. The son of Robert and Jane Bethel Scales, he was born on November 26, 1827, at “Ingleside,” the family plantation east of Reidsville in Rockingham County. He attended Caldwell Institute in Greensboro before entering the University of North Carolina in 1845. Scales studied law at the university but never earned enough credits for graduation. He left school, continued private study under Judge William H. Battle, and passed the bar exam in 1852. He established his practice in Madison in western Rockingham County. In the same year, he served as solicitor for the county and, with the Democratic Party's resurgence, won election to the state House. Rockingham County sent him back to the house for the 1856-1857 session, and, at the end of the term, he left for Washington as the Sixth District representative in Congress. At the end of that session in 1859, Scales returned to his law practice in Madison but shortly thereafter became involved in the highly partisan presidential election of 1860. As a southern Democrat he supported John C. Breckinridge and served as a presidential elector on his behalf.
Scales volunteered for state service before North Carolina seceded from the Union, joining a volunteer company dubbed the “Rockingham Guards.” When that unit became Company H of the 3rd Regiment N.C. Volunteers (later the 13th Regiment N.C. Troops), Scales was elected captain. Through promotion and appointment he rose to the rank of brigadier general, seeing action in some of the war’s principal encounters. He received serious wounds at Chancellorsville and Gettysburg. After the war Scales moved to Greensboro to continue his law practice. Politics called again in 1875 when he was elected to the Forty-fourth United States Congress. Re-elected four times, he served through December 1884. One of his particular concerns was the negative treatment afforded the Native American nations, and as chairman of the House Committee on Indian Affairs investigated fraud in the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
Democrats nominated Scales for governor in 1884. His Republican opponent, Tyre York of Wilkes County, hoped to use the heated issue of prohibition against his opponent, but Scales steered clear of the controversy, defeating York by 20,000 votes. No major legislation came forth during Scale’s administration, but neither did major political confrontation. The governor recommended improvements to already functioning facilities, such as repairs to railroads and highways, a greater quantity and quality of schools with a longer school year, and suggested new directions for the Department of Agriculture to assist farmers. Scales persuaded the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey to study the North Carolina oyster beds with a view to improving that industry in the state. Scales returned to Greensboro in 1889 to serve as president of the Piedmont Bank.
Scales married twice, but little is known about his first wife, Margaret Smith of Louisiana, because she refused to move to North Carolina. The legislature finalized Scales’s request for divorce in 1858. In 1862 he married Katherine Henderson, daughter of former state Supreme Court Chief Justice Leonard Henderson, who survived him. They had no children but raised a niece, Kate Lewis Scales, as if she were their daughter. He died on February 9, 1892, and was buried in Green Hill Cemetery in Greensboro.
References:
Biographical Directory of the American Congress, 1771-1971 (1971)
Bettie D. Caldwell, Founders and Builders of Greensboro, 1808-1908 (1925)
Alan C. Downs, “Moore, Alfred Scales,” in William S. Powell, ed., Dictionary of North Carolina Biography, V, 290-291 (1994)
Governors’ Papers: Alfred Moore Scales Papers, State Archives of North Carolina, Raleigh
Prominent People of North Carolina: Brief Biographies of Leading People for Ready Reference Purposes (1906)
Alfred M. Scales Papers, East Carolina University, Greenville
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