17 Oct. 1802–4 Mar. 1879
In 1833, Battle was named one of a commission of three charged with the responsibility of revising the statutory laws of the state, and in 1837 he was one of two commissioners to see the revised statutes through the press. In 1839 he was a delegate to the Whig National Convention that nominated William Henry Harrison for the presidency. In 1840 he was appointed a superior court judge, and in 1843 he moved his family to Chapel Hill to educate his sons at the university. Becoming professor of law in The University of North Carolina in 1845, he served continuously in the position until 1868. In 1848 he was given an interim appointment to the state supreme court, but the legislature did not confirm him in the position. He was, however, reelected a superior court judge. In 1852 he received a permanent appointment as a justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court; he served until his removal by the Reconstruction Act of March 1867. In 1868 he moved to Raleigh to practice law in partnership with two of his sons.
The General Assembly of 1871–72 appointed Battle sole commissioner to revise the North Carolina statutes, and the legislature of 1872–73 authorized the publication of the result as Battle's Revisal. For several years at this period of his life, Battle served as president of the Raleigh National Bank. His wife died in 1874, and in 1876 he returned to Chapel Hill with his son Kemp, who had been elected president of the reopened University of North Carolina. He again served as professor of law in the university until his death at Chapel Hill in 1879. Burial was in Oakwood Cemetery, Raleigh. His portrait was presented to the North Carolina Supreme Court in 1892.
In addition to his work as reviser of the state's statutory law, Battle edited several of the early volumes of the North Carolina Reports and in 1865 prepared a digest of the decisions of the North Carolina Supreme Court, which he published in three volumes at his own expense. He was a charter member of the antebellum North Carolina Historical Society; prior to the Civil War he wrote for the University of North Carolina Magazine biographical sketches of early justices of the state supreme court and short articles on the early history of The University of North Carolina. Although he was reared in a Baptist family, he did not affiliate with any church until middle life, when he joined the Episcopal church, his wife's denomination. He was for many years a vestryman of the Chapel of the Cross, the Episcopal parish church of Chapel Hill, and for thirty-five consecutive years was lay delegate to the denomination's general convention. Before the Civil War he was a Whig and during Reconstruction a Conservative. Although he supported the Confederate cause once North Carolina had seceded, he considered secession unwise and deplored the Civil War.
Battle was the father of ten children, two of whom, Julian and Thomas Devereaux, died in infancy. The six sons who reached adulthood were all graduates of The University of North Carolina: Joel, Junius Cullen, Wesley Lewis, Kemp Plummer, William Horn, Jr., and Richard Henry. Battle's oldest daughter, Susan Catharine, who never married, was long an invalid. His youngest daughter, Mary, married William Van Wyck II.