D. H. Starbuck
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."
Governor William W. Holden wrote in his letter of recommendation, which was co-signed by 8 other people, "Mr. Starbuck — by his learning, diligence and devotion to the interests of the government, has given general satisfaction.
Should we fail in this, then I fear freedom of speech, of election, of civil liberty itself, in this state is gone.” He asked that the federal government provide “corresponding [military] efforts…to thwart their settled purposes” if the trials were unsuccessful.
Fearing acquittal if he challenged Judge Brooks on this issue, Starbuck altered his approach for indicting Klansmen in the state and formed a new plan focused solely around the Ku Klux Klan Act.
Judge Brooks defied public expectations and broke with his previous rulings, calling the Klan "the most damning blot upon the character of [North Carolina] the history records."
[18]: 54–56 Attorney General Akerman personally attended many of the North Carolina trials, using his presence to apply pressure on prosecutors and judges for maximum sentencing.
[20]: 245 [21]: 71 [22]: 69 Ultimately Starbuck's strategy to use only the Ku Klux Klan Act was successful, and he convinced the grand jury to indict fifty-six Klansmen by June 1871.
[21]: 71, 99 [23]: 123 Starbuck wrote a letter to Attorney General Akerman on the success of his Ku Klux Klan Act focused strategy: "It was a new law which had never before received judicial construction and we were without any precedent for any form of indictment.
"[18]: 56 Gracious for his early victories, Starbuck felt entitled "to the gratitude and thanks of the law abiding people everywhere and especially of the Republican or Union Party of the nation which it was the purpose of this daring conspiracy to destroy.”[21]: 71 Bristow continued urging Starbuck to pursue judgments of all cases that were ready, and to prioritize cases involving Klansmen with "[higher] social standing and character" so as to make public examples of them and help to demoralize resistance to reconstruction efforts in the region.
Shotwell was owner to many failed Democratic Party newspapers, including one in Rutherford county, a former Confederate soldier, and a member of the state legislature for a time.
[18]: 57–58 The grand jury was issuing so many arrest warrants resulting from this wave of information that by the Autumn of 1871 the Klan was regarded to have collapsed in South-Western North Carolina.
[20]: 244–246 Amidst this growing caseload, Judge Bond was forced to announce that there was no more room in the docket for him to take up new cases in North Carolina, as he had to return to his usual circuit court.
Starbuck wrote to Governor Caldwell, asking him to "make the prosecuting officers of the state courts" continue with trials and "attack upon the routed and scattered hosts of the K Klux.
The evidence in these cases discloses the horrid facts of the tearing of fathers, sons, and brothers from the bosom of their families at the hour of midnight, and the infliction upon their naked flesh of the torture and the lash, the brutal exposure of helpless females, and, occasionally, the commission of murder by bands of disguised men to make their intimidations the more emphatic.
Indeed, every means which the most fertile imagination of these fiendish monsters and enemies of the Union could invent have been resorted to to inspire the Unionists with fear and terror, and to destroy their freedom of thought, action, and manhood.
Had it not been for the passage of said acts of Congress and the active enforcement of them the spirit of treason would to-day revel in high carnival over the entire South, and effectually crush out and overawe the Union sentiment of the southern country, as it did in the days of the rebel government.
Yet the utmost vigilance in the rigid enforcement of these acts of Congress is and will be necessary to suppress the spirit of treason lurking in the hearts of the disaffected and treacherous enemies of the Government, and to preserve the freedom of the citizen in the full and free exercise and enjoyment of the elective franchise and the rights and immunities of citizenship.
[26]: 13–14 Senator Daniel D. Pratt of Indiana, in his arguments to extend The Ku Klux Klan Act on May 17, 1872, submitted letters before congress as a part of his remarks.
Also, the weakness of Starbuck's strategy to only pursue indictments for crimes laid out in the Ku Klux Klan Act was that it left open disputes over whether the Fourteenth Amendment could be legally upheld in court.
[18]: 58–59 [21]: 71, 99 In 1880, Starbuck was one of ten men appointed to a committee to select Republican delegates from the state of North Carolina to vote in the 1880 National Convention.
It was revealed, according to a nationally syndicated newspaper account which ran in The New York Times, that Cannady, after having been privy to a personal conference with Sherman, had agreed to secure other committee members' loyalties by promising favors and government office appointments.
Even so, the likelihood of Barringer's appointment was still considered to be "probable", as Lusk had "been compelled in the execution of his office to make himself very unpopular, and [had] no influence in his district."
It goes on to say that Masten, Wilson, and Starbuck soon thereafter "retired on account of age", creating a void in the city's law practice which Buxton was able to, in part, help fill.
The editor of the Salem newspaper, the People's Press, wrote in 1852, "An occasional walk to our adjoining neighbor Winston never fails to impress us with the growing importance of the place."
Along with Butner's wife and seven children, Augustus Staub (a farmer from Prussia) and Rufus Watson Wharton (a lawyer from Beaufort County) are also listed as residents in the home.
[53] On October 23, 1854, the Aufseher Collegium of the Salem Moravian community refused an application by a married member of the church, William Shore, to purchase "a lot behind that of Mr. Starbuck, east of Winston, to build a house.
[43]: 5588 Evidently, her request was granted as the Personalia of the Congregation in Salem For the Year 1851 lists that she was confirmed by the church and "admitted to the choir of the single sisters" while away on a visit to Lititz.
[59] Upon the newly wedded couple's return to Winston-Salem, the Salem Collegium made a decision to allow Ellen to remain a member of the church despite her choice to marry outside the Moravian faith.
[78] Seth was a physician and surgeon who took up work in Winston-Salem after moving there from Wake County, where he grew up on Harmony Plantation, which is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
[77] Ellen's brother Jacob (35) had also moved to Salem Chapel with his first wife Cornelia (25), where they raised their children Harry (3) and Edward (7 months), the latter of whom was born in November 1879.
