Background
Maurice Moore, II was born in 1735, in New Hanover County, North Carolina, the son of Maurice Moore, I and Mary Porter, and the brother of James Moore.
Maurice Moore, II was born in 1735, in New Hanover County, North Carolina, the son of Maurice Moore, I and Mary Porter, and the brother of James Moore.
Moore, II was educated in New England.
He was an influential representative of the borough of Brunswick in the North Carolina House of Commons, serving 1757 - 1760, 1762, 1764 - 1771, and 1773 - 1774. His early "disposition to support his Majesty's Interest" elevated him to the governor's council from 1760 to 1761.
Appointed to an associate judgeship of the province, Moore, II wrote a pamphlet, in 1765 after the passage of the Stamp Act, entitled The Justice and Policy of Taxing the American Colonies in Great Britain, Considered, maintaining that there could be no rightful taxation of the American colonies by a Parliament in which they had neither actual nor virtual representation, and he was suspended by Governor Tryon for his intemperate zeal and conduct in preventing the enforcement of the Stamp Act.
Reinstated in 1768, Moore, II held the judgeship until the court ceased to function in 1773 because of a deadlock between the governor and Assembly over the new court law. He was appointed a commissioner to hold the courts established by royal prerogative in 1773, but the Assembly refused to defray their expenses.
He was prominent in the Regulator movement. At first Moore, II sympathized with the distressed Regulators and was accused of having encouraged the movement, though he denied the charge. He was a colonel in Governor Tryon's first armed expedition, a judge at the Hillsboro trial of 1768, an advocate of a drastic policy that culminated in the Johnston or Riot Act of 1771, and a judge at the special court in Hillsboro in June 1771 after the battle of Alamance that sentenced twelve Regulators to death on the charge of treason. Bitterly hated by the insurgents, he was attacked in 1770 in a public letter whose reputed author, Hermon Husbands, was expelled from the House of Commons. Yet after the Hillsboro trial of 1771 he became lenient and sympathetic to the Regulators. The public letter of "Atticus" in 1771, severely criticizing Tryon's policy toward the Regulators, was attributed to him (published Colonial Records, post, VIII, 718-27); and in 1772 he held in an opinion as judge that there could be no further prosecutions under the Riot Act, which he interpreted liberally, and he actively promoted a policy of leniency toward the leaders.
The Third Provincial Congress on August 21, 1775, appointed him on the committee to try to induce the Regulators to support the patriot cause. Representing the borough of Brunswick in this Third Provincial Congress, he served on important committees in the interest of the patriot cause; but he was too conservative to approve actual separation from Great Britain.
On January 9, 1776, in a letter to Governor Martin he expressed his belief that North Carolina, if there were opportunity, would renounce every desire of independence and accept reconciliation on the basis of the political conditions of 1763, but the Moore's Creek campaign made negotiations impossible. Though elected a delegate from Brunswick County Moore, II did not attend the Fifth Provincial Congress of November 1776. He died some time before April 20, 1777.
Governor Martin characterized him as a man of "considerable influence, " but a "visionary in politicks" and "a zealous votary of the bubble popularity, " whose political conduct had been fickle and undecided.
Maurice Moore, II was married to Anne Grange, by whom he had three children.
Alfred Moore was a North Carolina judge who became a justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.
James Moore was a Continental Army general during the American Revolutionary War.
