page_title: D. H. Starbuck
section_title: Professional life
hierarchical_section_title: D. H. Starbuck / Professional life
caption_attribution_description: 1880 Republican National Convention at Chicago, Illinois. A view inside the Interstate Exposition Building (known as the "Glass Palace") during the convention; James Garfield (center, right) is on the podium, waiting to speak.
context_page_description: Darius Henry Starbuck was a North Carolina lawyer and political figure who served as United States Attorney for the entire state, and then for the Western District of North Carolina after the state was divided into two districts.
context_section_description: Starbuck graduated from New Garden College, before studying law under John Adams Gilmer. In 1840 he was admitted to the bar. After settling in Salem around 1849, he soon took to his law practice in Forsyth.
  Following the secession of South Carolina from the Union on December 20, 1860, citizens of Forsyth County were reported in local newspapers as having sparred over the subject of the possibility of the future secession of North Carolina. The county's Whig newspaper, The People's Press, is cited as having advised its readers to "watch their tongues" in response to the recent outbreak of quarreling. A public meeting was arranged to be held at the Winston courthouse on December 29 to discuss this issue. In 1860, Forsyth had a population of 12,692, of that population an estimated 800 citizens attended the meeting that day, roughly 16% of the total population. R. L. Patterson, who was asked to serve as chairman of the meeting, said that the event was held for members of the community to "counsel together" — "and to see if there was not some common ground on which all [local] parties could unite in the present crisis." D. H. Starbuck was one of five men who addressed the meeting. It was Starbuck's motion that the chairman appoint a committee of fifteen gentlemen to draft resolutions on how the meeting should act. Starbuck was among the men appointed to the committee. Rufus Watson Wharton with whom Starbuck had previously shared a residence in 1850, was also among them. Other notable members included lawyer and editor of The Western Sentinel Col. John Wesley Alspaugh, Dr. Beverly Jones, Dr. T. F. Keehln, Col. Joseph Masten, lawyer John Watson, and Judge Thomas J. Wilson. After two hours the committee returned with eleven resolutions. These resolutions consisted largely of rhetoric that was being argued throughout the country already. Notably, one of these resolutions proposed levying high tariffs on states which did not cooperate with the return of fugitive slaves. The fourth resolution stated "that waiving the Constitutional question of the power of a State to secede from the Union, such act of secession, if effected peaceably, is not an appropriate and adequate remedy for the injuries under which the Southern States are now laboring. To depart from the Union, leaving behind in the hands of her supposed enemies, all her accumulations of eighty years, in which she had proportional rights, would be a sacrifice on the part of a State, except under pressure of overruling necessity, as incompatible with her dignity as her interests.” The eleventh resolution called for the publication of these resolutions in all local newspapers, and that copies of these resolutions should be sent to the General Assembly and Congress. It was reported that all fifteen committee members voted unanimously in favor of the resolutions. The choice to vote unanimously was likely an influence of the Quaker teaching of Consensus decision-making, due to the community's religious heritage. To attest to the political attitudes shared among members of both political parties in Forsyth after the court house meeting, both The People's Press and the county's Democratic newspaper, The Western Sentinel, agreed that North Carolina should not secede from the Union. The People's Press ran a headline on the meeting stating, "Secession has no abiding place in Forsyth." The Western Sentinel concluded its report of the events more cautiously with the statement "Union if we can, otherwise its alternative." The third resolution was to select members of the community to be sent to the state constitutional convention of 1861. Starbuck, as well as Rufus Watson Wharton, were among the men selected to served as delegates from Forsyth County to the conventions. Starbuck was also a representative of the 1865 state convention which brought North Carolina back into the union.
  Starbuck was first appointed to the U.S. Attorney's post for the state of North Carolina on December 20, 1865 by President Andrew Johnson. In the general election of 1868, he was elected State Superior Court Ju
caption: View of the floor of the 1880 Republican National Convention in Chicago, Illinois, to which Starbuck was a delegate
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