The Biographical Dictionary of America/Battle, Kemp Plummer

​BATTLE, Kemp Plummer, educator, was born near Louisburg, Franklin county, N.C., Dec. 19, 1831, son of William Horn and Lucy (Plummer) Battle. He was graduated at the university of North Carolina in 1849, with first honors in a class of distinguished graduates. Immediately thereafter he was elected tutor in the university, but, on being admitted to the bar in 1854, he resigned, and soon acquired an extensive legal practice. In politics he was an old-line Whig, and a decided friend of the union, and in consequence of his powerful presentation of the dangers and disasters which would attend secession, he came, in 1860, within only three votes of an election to the legislature in a strong Democratic county. A campaign document prepared by him was so highly approved by the Whig executive committee, that fifty thousand copies of it were printed and circulated; but when President Lincoln, in April, 1861, called upon North Carolina for her quota of the seventy-five thousand men to assist in coercing the seceding states, Dr. Battle, in common with nearly all the Whig leaders, cast his lot with the southern Confederacy. He was elected to the secession convention of North Carolina, and signed the ordinance just below the name of George E. Badger. In 1866 he was elected treasurer of the state, and again in 1867; and in 1876 he was chosen president of the University of North Carolina, filling the office with great ability until June, 1891, when he resigned it to take the more congenial position of professor of history. In 1870 he was appointed state superintendent of public instruction. He also filled the office of director of the insane asylum and president of the state agricultural society. As a delegate to the general convention of the Episcopal church in 1865, he aided in reuniting that denomination throughout the United States. He was for many years treasurer and trustee of the St. Augustine normal school for the colored race. The degree of LL.D. was awarded him by Davidson college. N.C. Dr. Battle is the author of various historical monographs, among which are: "History of the Supreme Court of North Carolina" (1883); "History of the City of Raleigh" (1893); "History of the University of North Carolina," "Trials and Judicial Proceedings in the New Testament," "The Colonial Laymen of the Church of England in North Carolina," and "Fifty Years' History of the Episcopal Church in North Carolina."