Stanly earned his reputation as North Carolina's greatest orator of his generation during his first term in Congress.

After an unsuccessful bid for re-election in 1843 due to unfavorable redistricting, Stanly returned to North Carolina, where he served as a member of the House of Commons from 1844 to 1846 and again in 1848.

He was speaker of the State House from 1844 to 1846, and his impartial presiding was hailed by Commoners of both parties as returning dignity to the chamber in the place of the former political rancor.

He declined to run for a sixth term in the elections of 1853 and instead moved to California and practiced law in San Francisco.

[1] Abraham Lincoln appointed Stanly military governor of eastern North Carolina with the rank of brigadier general on May 26, 1862.

Stanly resigned this office less than a year later on March 2, 1863, in a dispute with President Lincoln over the Emancipation Proclamation.

[4] Stanly's nephew Brigadier General Lewis Armistead, fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War.