Pre-War Public Service
Scales was elected county solicitor in 1852. He was elected four times to the North Carolina state legislature and served as chairman of the Finance Committee. In 1854 he ran a close but unsuccessful race as the Democratic candidate for United States Congress in a Whig district. In 1857 he was elected to Congress but was defeated for re-election two years later. From 1858 until the spring of 1861 he held the office of clerk and master of the court of equity of Rockingham County. In 1860 he was an elector for the Breckinridge ticket and subsequently involved in the debate over North Carolina's secession.
Read more about this topic: Alfred Moore Scales
Famous quotes containing the words public and/or service:
“[Rutherford B. Hayes] was a patriotic citizen, a lover of the flag and of our free institutions, an industrious and conscientious civil officer, a soldier of dauntless courage, a loyal comrade and friend, a sympathetic and helpful neighbor, and the honored head of a happy Christian home. He has steadily grown in the public esteem, and the impartial historian will not fail to recognize the conscientiousness, the manliness, and the courage that so strongly characterized his whole public career.”
—Benjamin Harrison (1833–1901)
“The ability to think straight, some knowledge of the past, some vision of the future, some skill to do useful service, some urge to fit that service into the well-being of the community,—these are the most vital things education must try to produce.”
—Virginia Crocheron Gildersleeve (1877–1965)