page_title: David Settle Reid
section_title: External links
hierarchical_section_title: David Settle Reid / External links
caption_attribution_description: North Carolina State Capitol in Raleigh, North Carolina. Governor David S. Reid is in the foreground.
context_page_description: David Settle Reid was the 32nd Governor of the U.S. state of North Carolina from 1851 to 1854 and a U.S. Senator from December 1854 to March 1859. His uncle was Congressman Thomas Settle, and his brother was Hugh Kearns Reid.
  He was born in what would later be Reidsville, North Carolina, an unincorporated town named for his father, Reuben Reid. At age 16, David Reid became the first postmaster for the town. He studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1833. From 1835 to 1842, Reid served in the North Carolina Senate. He was a U.S. Representative from 1843 to 1847. Reid ran for governor in 1848 as a long-shot candidate. In his campaign, Reid promoted the now-obscure cause of "free suffrage," i.e. that there should not be different standards for who could vote for members of the North Carolina House of Commons and of the North Carolina Senate. It was assumed that more voters would only increase the Whig domination of the state, but the Whigs denounced suffrage reform as "a system of communism unjust and Jacobinical." To everyone's surprise, Reid lost to Charles Manly by only 854 votes.
context_section_description: United States Congress. "David Settle Reid (id: R000144)". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
  History of Reidsville
  David Settle Reid at Find a Grave
caption: Governor Reid is seen in the foreground of this 1861 photo of the North Carolina State Capitol.
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