|
North Carolina's Governors
Jonathan Worth (1802-1869) found his Quaker upbringing and temperament tested by the trials of Reconstruction. Born in Randolph County, he received a basic education at Greensborough Male Academy and studied law under Archibald D. Murphey, moving in 1824 to Asheboro to establish his practice. Worth entered a race for state House in 1830 and was elected. During the 1830s, he became a member of the Whig Party, viewing Democratic doctrine as subversive to good government based on the federal Constitution. He spent three terms in the state Senate between 1840 and 1861 denouncing Democratic policies. Twice he ran for Congress but was defeated. Worth opposed secession and refused to be a delegate to the May 1861 convention. Worth frequently disagreed with the Confederate administration but, despite his hatred of war, never became associated with peace movements. He was elected state treasurer in 1862. At the close of the war he was asked by Governor William W. Holden to continue in that office as part of the provisional government. He resigned on November 15, 1865, to run against Holden for governor. Worth was victorious. The new governor faced major obstacles: quarreling factions within the state that needed to be reconciled; a president in Washington whose skepticism of North Carolina's sincerity had to be assuaged; and a hostile Congress demanding satisfaction from increasingly stringent rules and regulations. He had barely taken the oath of office for his second term when Congress passed the first of the Reconstruction Acts that imposed military rule upon the South. Worth found himself working simultaneously to restore North Carolina to the Union while trying to fend off military encroachments upon civil authority. With new elections ordered for 1868, Worth refused to run against Holden, now a Republican, who was certain to win. In failing health, Worth retired to his home in Raleigh where he died in September 1869. He was buried in Raleigh's Oakwood Cemetery.
|
