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