Alfred Moore Scales

Alfred Moore Scales (November 26, 1827 – February 9, 1892) was a North Carolina state legislator, Confederate general in the American Civil War, and the 45th Governor of North Carolina from 1885 to 1889.

Scales was born at Reidsville, in Rockingham County, North Carolina. He lived on Mulberry Island Plantation. After attending a Presbyterian school, the Caldwell institute and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Scales entered teaching for a time. Later, he studied law with Judge William H. Battle and Judge Settle and then opened a law office in Madison, North Carolina. While at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, he was a member of the Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies.

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.

All of Alfred Scales's Civil War service was with Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. Soon after the call for troops from Washington he volunteered as a private in the North Carolina service, but was at once elected captain of his company, H of the 13th North Carolina Infantry Regiment, and was elected to succeed General William Dorsey Pender as colonel on November 14, 1862. He was engaged at Yorktown and the Battle of Williamsburg in the Peninsula Campaign, and in the Seven Days Battles near Richmond. After Malvern Hill, he collapsed from exhaustion and came near to death. His superior, Brig. Gen. Samuel Garland, Jr., said in his report that Scales was "conspicuous for his fine bearing. Seizing the colors of his regiment at a critical moment at Cold Harbor and advancing to the front, he called on the 13th to stand to them, thus restoring confidence and keeping his men in position." It took him until November to recuperate so he missed the battles of both Second Manassas and Antietam, but returned in time for the battles of Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville.

During the winter of 1862–63, the 35-year-old colonel married 18-year-old Kate Henderson. She was the daughter of a prominent family from Gaston County, North Carolina.

At Fredericksburg, in December 1862, Scales temporarily took command of the brigade after General Pender fell wounded. Pender turned over the command during a federal assault, saying to him, "Drive those scoundrels out". Scales promptly ordered Major C. C. Cole of the 22nd North Carolina to dislodge the enemy, which A.P. Hill reported was "handsomely done."

Scales again served with distinction during the Battle of Chancellorsville in May 1863, where he was wounded in the thigh, continuing on the field until loss of blood forced him to leave. It was to his regiment that General Pender said, "I have nothing to say to you but to hold you all up as models in duty, courage and daring." In his official report Pender referred to Colonel Scales as "a man as gallant as is to be found in the service."

While at home recovering from his wound, he was promoted to brigadier general on June 13, 1863, and upon his return was assigned to the command of Pender's old brigade when Pender was promoted to the command of A.P. Hill's Light Division. In the first day's fight at Gettysburg with Pender's Division, it was the attack of his brigade that helped pave the way for Abner M. Perrin's brigade to break through the Union line on Seminary Ridge and force the enemy to retreat toward Cemetery Hill.