NCSB Journal Spring 2026

STATE BAR OUTLOOK

The Living Ledger: Lessons from a 128-Year-Old Bequest B Y P E T E R G . B O L A C

A few weeks ago, an unex pected package arrived at my office from a 92-year old woman named Nancy Cobb Peele. Inside was an original edition of an 1898 book, Lives of Distinguished North Carolinians . Nancy wanted the book to be in safe hands when she passed away, and nobody in her family wanted to keep it. The author (and Nancy’s great-uncle) was William Jefferson (W.J.) Peele. W.J. Peele was a prominent member of the Raleigh Bar and an architect of our state’s historical memory. As a founder of the North Carolina Historical Commission, he understood that if we do not preserve the records of our own time, we allow the future to reinvent us in their own image. Reading this volume, compiled nearly 130 years ago, was a reminder that those of us in positions of leadership are merely writing the opening arguments for a case that history will eventu ally decide. The names in Peele’s book—William R. Davie, Nathaniel Macon, William Gaston, Thomas Ruffin, and David Swain, among others—are ubiquitous today. We see them on street signs and county maps. The value of a record like Peele’s is that it was com piled when the memories of its subjects were still warm. It includes personal stories and professional nuances that haven't yet been scrubbed away by the generalizations of a century. However, we must also read such a book with clear eyes. Written in 1898, it is deeply embedded in the “Lost Cause” narrative of its era. It often views the defense of slavery through a lens of romanticized chivalry that we, with the benefit of a century of progress, recognize as a profound moral blind spot. As we drift further from the events of the

past, history tends to flatten people into car icatures. Prominent people from the past become either venerated icons or convenient villains. But the reality is more challenging: history is full of leaders who were personally brilliant, professionally ethical, and yet often held views that are rightfully condemned by the judgment of time. Take, for instance, William R. Davie. Most of us know his name from the county or the “Davie Poplar” at Chapel Hill. In these pages, however, we see the living man: a Revolutionary War soldier who exhausted his personal fortune to equip his troops and the visionary statesman who founded the first public university in the nation. Davie represents the ambitious, foundational spirit of North Carolina. He was a leader who looked 50 years ahead to the intellectual needs of a young state, yet he was also a man of his time, operating within a social struc ture that he could not, or would not, foresee the endof. Peele’s pages remind us that leadership is tested in different ways. If William R. Davie represents the foresight required for a state’s growth, Bartholomew Moore represents the prescience and integrity required to survive its most perilous hour. Widely considered the “Father of the Bar,” Bartholomew Moore’s life offers a pro found lesson for today’s lawyer-leaders regarding the difference between popularity and integrity. A staunch Unionist in a state hurtling toward secession, Moore was often a solitary voice. Many of the state’s leaders at the time found his politics deeply unpalat able, yet they could not find a crack in his character. He was a man who arrived at his opinions through exhaustive study and clung to them with a tenacity that defied the passions of the moment. Moore proved to be remarkably

prescient, foreseeing the devastation that secession would bring to the state he loved. He was respected nonetheless because he was a man whose North Star was the rule of law. His peers may have disliked his stance, but they never doubted his devotion to the truth. In fact, the author of his memorial tribute in Peele’s book was a Confederate colonel who fought at Antietam. Nowhere was Moore’s commitment to the integrity of the law more evident than in his famous “Protest of the Bar” in 1869. When he felt the North Carolina Supreme Court had become dangerously politicized during the Reconstruction era, Moore draft ed a public protest signed by over 100 prominent lawyers. It was an act of extreme civil courage that resulted in him and others being temporarily disbarred and summoned for contempt. To Moore, the independence of the judiciary was more sacred than his

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SPRING 2026

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