Representative Thomas Settle III and Maurice Nathaniel Corbett 1896

 "Mr. W. E. Christian, the versatile correspondent of the Raleigh News and Observer, has taken our young Congressman under his special care and is watching over him with the fidelity of a fond parent. Mr. Christian declares most emphatically that Settle has appointed a Caswell County negro named Corbett his private secretary. Mr. Settle declares there is 'nothing in it' (the report) but Mr. Christian offers to prove it by sworn testimony. All of which is of some interest to Mr. Settle's 20,000 constituents."

The Reidsville Review (Reidsville, NC), 7 February 1896.

Thomas Settle III (10 Mar. 1865–20 Jan. 1919) was born in Rockingham County, educated at Georgetown College in Washington, D.C., passed the bar in 1885, and began practicing law in Wentworth. He was solicitor of the Seventh Judicial District (1886–94), a Republican congressman for two terms (1893–97), and an unsuccessful candidate for governor in 1912. He later resided in Asheville but was buried in Wilmington, the home of his wife, Eliza Potter.

Source: Dictionary of North Carolina Biography, William S. Powell, Editor. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press (1994).

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Maurice Nathaniel Corbett (1859-1931) [see photograph]

The schism in the Afro-American community reflected both the rifts among white Republicans and the philosophical differences among Negro leaders. In general these leaders were professional men or tradesmen who belonged to the black middle class and took an active role in black social organizations. In varying degrees they displayed a sense of race pride. During the campaign of 1892, Maurice N. Corbett, a black politician from Caswell County, explained to Thomas Settle that the Negro community could no longer afford to support candidates opposed to "Afro American political equality." Blacks could not quietly follow the GOP when their "brethren" were being lynched with "no howl against it. . . . We have followed blindly the leadership of Mott and Judge Russell," complained Corbett, "and now we find them the worst enemies the negro has had in the state, having used their utmost influence against the appointment of any colored men . . . to positions in the state."

This was in a July 22, 1892 letter from Corbett to Settle.

Source: Crow, Jeffrey J. and Durden, Robert Franklin. Maverick Republican in the Old North State: A Political Biography of Daniel L. Russell. Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 1977.