State

The Fa I I il.v of Biggs For three generations the Iti^'s family lias hold outstanding positions of honor, not only within tho stato but in the affairs off the nation as well. Til К grandfather of James Craw¬ ford Higgs was Judge Asa Biggs, one of the most distinguished lawyers the South has ever produced, fn 1835 in the first flush of his splendid manhood he served as a member of the Constitutional Con¬ vention. where he stood by the side of the great William Gaston in the successful effort to remove the Con¬ stitutional inhibition which debarred Catholics from holding public office; and in later life he also served as a member of the Convention which adopted the Ordinance of Secession. Elected to U. S. Senate He served in the legislature, as a member of Congress, and soon rising to the topmost round in the State's ladder of fame, he was elected to the United States Senate. He resigned this seat because lie preferred service on tho Bench and he served as Federal •Fudge when his district embraced the entire State. This bench he graced until Lincoln’s call upon the State for troops in 1861; but the State was not to lose his illustrious service, for he was promptly named by President Davis to the bench of the Confederacy. In the tumult immediately follow¬ ing the Civil War. political passions became so strained that members of the judiciary, even the Chief Justice, so far forgot the proprieties of the bench as to lend the influence of their office and the weight of their names to political pamphlets, notions which finally aroused such righteous indigna¬ tion that one hundred and seven of the State’s leading lawyers joined in signing a “Solemn Protest’’ against interference by the judiciary in |*oli- tical affairs. This historic document was the product of tho brain and pen of Judge Asa Biggs. The irate Chief Justice forthwith attached for contempt all signers of the protest who practiced before his court, and in the famous opinion handed down by him in Ex Parte Moore, 03 X. C. 397, administered a scolding to the signers and imposed as punishment that none of them could again practice before the high court until they signed a written apology in the form prescribed by the court. By R. C. LAWRENCE And all of those so attached, including such eminent men as Zcbulou B. Vance and Chief Justice Shepherd, swal¬ lowed rlie hitter pill in order that their means of livelihood he not taken from them — all save Judge Asa Biggs, who alone of the hundred and seven refused to "Bend the pregnant hinges of the knee. That thrift might follow fawning." Bather than sign a retraction, this martyr to principle loft the State never to return, going to Norfolk where lie practiced his profession with William N. II. Smith, who later became Chief Justice. Iii my private hall of fame, along with Samuel Johnston and Nathaniel Macon, there i< a heroic statue of Asa Biggs — this man without a State! As might be expected of so stout Judge J. Crawford Biggs hearted a warrior, he sired a heroic son in William Biggs. William was a junior at the University when the “war drums throbbed” in ’61, and ho forthwith proceeded to raise a com¬ pany of infantry of which Iip became Captain, serving with conspicuous gal¬ lantry through Appomattox and being several times wounded. Following the war lie settled at Tarboro, where lie was admitted to the Bar and com¬ bined that profession with another in which he was to become even more distinguished, faking over the editorial chair of the Tarboro Southerner, one of tho oldest and most influential of the “country” news¬ papers of the South. The “havoc of war and the battle’s confusion” was followed by the worse wreck of the raiders of Reconstruction, for these birds of ill oinen perched upon the prostrate carcass of the State and sought to fatten on it. Josiah Turner has been acclaimed (and just¬ ly) for scourging these scullions with “Whips of Scorpions”; but Biggs also pilloried them with pen dipped in gall and dripping vitriol and Turner never rose to loftier editorial heights than Biggs. Another Disbarment Notorious among the infamous Judges of Reconstruction were "Greasy Sam” Watts, and “Jay Bird” Jones, of whose conduct Captain Biggs wrote : “II is charge to the grand jury was almost identical with that delivered here six months since, with this important exception: His honor seems to have somewhat deserted the profane poetical masters and confined most of his quotations to the Holy Scriptures — a happy omen if it is possible to believe anything happy in such a character.” One of the last acts of the notorious Jay Bird before being impeached and driven from the bench was to disbar Captain Biggs for contempt of court, a decision which not even the Re¬ publican Supreme Court could stomach, and which it was compelled to reverse as it did in Ex Parte Biggs, 61 N. 0. 202. Captain Biggs died in his fortieth (Continued on page twenty-five)