User:LurganShmith/sandbox

U.S. Attorney
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 Judge of North Carolina's Eight Judicial District, but declined the office in hopes of continuing as U.S. Attorney under the new administration of Ulysses S. Grant. His choice to decline the position was likely made due to his religious beliefs as a Quaker. American Quakers believe, “Liberty of conscience being ... essential to the well‐being of religious societies, we ... therefore advise and exhort all in profession with us, to decline the acceptance of any office or station in civil government, the duties of which are inconsistent with our religious principles.” In January 1869, president Grant received letters of recommendation for Starbuck's reappointment. 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. We believe the interests of the government and the welfare of society would be subserved by his continuance in the office, while his re-appointment would be a just recognition of the services of an officer who has performed his duties with more than ordinary ability and fidelity." U.S. District Judge George W. Brooks, at the time judge of the same court where Starbuck served as District Attorney, wrote in his letter of recommendation, "Mr. Starbuck was one of the very small number of citizens of prominence in that part of North Carolina, that remained under the control of the rebels after the first year of the rebellion — who adhered to the Union. Before the rebellion his efforts were against that movement — during the existence of the rebellion his efforts were — directed toward the restoration of the authority of the federal government — And since that authority has been restored — he has been an earnest advocate of the reconstruction measures of Congress." Judge Thomas Settle, who at the time was serving as the newly elected Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of North Carolina, wrote, "Allow me to recommend D. H. Starbuck, as District Attorney for North Carolina. He was appointed to this position, upon the reorganization of the Courts in this state; and has discharged its duties to the satisfaction of the good people of the State. He rendered zealous and efficient aid in reconstructing the State upon its present basis. In the general election of April 1868, he was chosen as one of our Superior Court Judges, but declined that position for the place he now occupies. The [Grant] administration has no warmer friend than Judge Starbuck, and his reappointment would give general satisfaction to our people." Grant eventually did reappoint Starbuck in 1870. When it was decided that the North Carolina District Court should be divided into eastern and western districts, President Grant received a letter of recommendation from David L. Bringle, recommending Starbuck to be replaced on the newley created court by lawyer William H. Bailey. This recommendation, however, fell on deaf ears, as in 1872 Grant appointed Starbuck as the first U.S. attorney for the western district, while his old post in Raleigh, now the eastern district, went to Richard C. Badger. In 1876 Starbuck was replaced in the western district by Virgil S. Lusk.

North Carolina Ku Klux Klan Trails
Following the passage of the Ku Klux Klan Act in April of 1871, which suspended the writ of habeas corpus to combat the Klan, Solicitor General Benjamin Bristow wrote to Starbuck on June 6 of that year, bringing to his attention Klan activities in “Rutherford and adjacent counties.” A mob of around 50 Klansmen had abducted and brutalized J. M. Justice, a local Republican lawmaker who was then scheduled to testify against members of the Klan. Superior Court Judge G. W. Logan had to call upon Governor Caldwell requesting military protection after he had received death threats from the Klan. President Grant sent about sixty-five Union Cavalrymen into the county for support. Judge Logan issued warrants for the arrests of the offending Klansmen. Solicitor General Bristow instructed Starbuck to perform a “prompt and diligent investigation of all these cases, and vigorous prosecution of the guilty parties,” asking him to “bring the supposed offenders to a speedy trial.” Conscience of the strength the Klan held in the state, Starbuck wrote to then Attorney General Amos T. Akerman over his fears that the trials would end with acquittals. He wrote in the letter, “We have to contest against a terrible combination of men bent upon the acquittal of these men. 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. Judge George Washington Brooks and Judge Hugh Lennox Bond would preside over the trials. Judge Brooks had previously rendered verdicts which had weakened the usage of the Fourteenth Amendment and sided with Klansmen. A Charlotte Democratic newspaper wrote of the judge's involvement in the cases to say they were “prepared to find in Judge Brooks an honest Judge who would give, as far as lay in his power, a fair trial to the alleged [Klansmen].” It is important, however, to note that Brooks had previously written a letter of recommendation to president Grant on behalf of Starbuck's appointment as district attorney after Starbuck abdicated his elected role as Judge over the same court Judge Brooks would subsequently presided over. Judge Bond was a Republican, who was “determined to put down [the] outrages” of the Klan, Starbuck stated himself. Judge Bond had previously dismissed a case brought forth by “Ku Klux lawyers” against a Union Colonel for “assault and battery and false imprisonment.” Starbuck wrote that he was cautiously optimistic Bond's presence would help to mitigate Judge Brooks's influence over the proceedings.

Starbuck had initially formed a more ambitious plan for indictments which would have challenged Judge Brooks's previous verdicts on the Fourteenth Amendment. 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. His new plan was to prove that the "outrages were committed to intimidate the victims to the abandonment of their Republican and Union principles" and interfere with the "freedom of elections." Starbuck was under constant pressure from Bristow to prosecute the cases "with vigor and energy to final judgement." On day one of the trial the defense attempted to have two out of the three counts as laid forth by Starbuck against the Klansmen thrown-out due to "vagueness." Judge Bond overruled the motion. The defense tried to question the constitutionality of the charges, but they failed in these efforts as well. 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." Brooks went on to rule the jury was legally summoned and rejected appeals for mercy in his sentencing. Attorney General Akerman personally attended many of the North Carolina trials, using his presence to apply pressure on prosecutors and judges for maximum sentencing. 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. Forty-nine of those indicted went on to be successfully convicted over three trials. Starbuck held a 75% conviction rate for his Klan related cases in 1871. These decisions by the grand jury made Starbuck the first federal prosecutor to successfully try a case which upheld The Ku Klux Klan Act in a Federal court in the United States, and the most successful person to ever try members of the Klan by statistics. 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. We have not only convicted those who did the deed of scourging, but we have convicted 16 who were proved only as members of the order of the “Invisible Empire.” On behalf of the prosecution we insisted & was sustained by the event that the purpose of this order was proven to be, to destroy the freedom of election by intimidation that all who became member of the order thereby became joint conspirators in the one common unlawful purpose & were alike guilty. This was a great point gained, on which makes any member of the Clan liable to punishment and is the blow which I think will suppress the organization." 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.”

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. Randolph Shotwell is a notable example of the type of prominent Klansmen targeted by the trials. 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. J. M. Justice identified Shotwell as one of the Klansmen who had attacked him. He was given a sentencing of six years hard labor in a federal penitentiary and fined $5,000, the harshest punishment given to any convicted Klansmen in the trials. President Grant, however, offered clemency to those convicted in return for information that could lead to the arrests of other Klansmen. Shotwell was among the men who were pardoned in this deal by the president, though he did serve two years in prison before receiving commutation of his sentencing. Shotwell began speaking publicly, asking fellow Klansman to confess so that they could be pardoned by the Grant administration. Amidst this, Republican Party officials were also inundating Starbuck's office with letters reporting Klan activity across the state. Senator Pool wrote to Virgil S. Lusk in October, then working as Starbuck's Assistant U.S. Attorney, demanding the District Attorney's office investigate “a number of outrages recently committed in Sampson County.” Even former Governor Holden wrote to Starbuck in November, giving him information about a group of Klansmen in the state, telling Starbuck to “make inquiry” and “promptly prosecute.” Subsequently, the court was quickly overwhelmed with new cases. The grand jury would indict 493 Klansmen that year. 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. 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." Despite Starbuck's hopes that the Klan would "be forever suppressed in [North Carolina]," the Klan resumed activities in the state within a year of the cases being brought to a halt. While Starbuck directly refuted his claims, by March 1872 Judge Logan, reported his district was "still infested" with Klansmen.

Senator Daniel D. Pratt of Indiana, in his arguments to extend the The Ku Klux Klan Act on May 17, 1872, submitted letters before congress as a part of his remarks. One of these letters, written April 19, 1872, was from Attorney General Geo. H. Williams, who had replaced Akerman in December. Williams reported in the letter that Starbuck had successfully found indictments for 944 individuals under the Ku Klux Klan Act by that date. Also submitted was an emotionally stirring letter from Starbuck himself. Along with the Senator's speech, it would go on to be published and circulated through political pamphlets throughout the country to help garner support for the extension of the act. By 1973, Despite national efforts to extend the Ku Klun Klan Act and Starbuck's petitioning of government officials, with mounting caseloads backlogged in the court system, high legal and military costs, and pressures from within the court, Starbuck had to enter all remaining indicted cases nol pros (will not prosecute).

D. T. Corbin would go on to use legal precedents established by Starbuck to help with his efforts in prosecuting the Klan in South Carolina. Corbin's efforts in the neighboring state were dramatically less successful statistically, although Corbin did see many more cases to completion than Starbuck. For the year of 1871, in all cases brought forth to the court by Corbin, his rate of success in cases that ended in conviction was only 48%. Compare that to Starbuck's 75% conviction rate that same year. Corbin's lower conviction rate was the result of much harder push back within the state at all political levels. 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 wether the Fourteenth Amendment could be legally upheld in court. D. T. Corbin would push back on the decisions of Judge Brooks and go on to be the first Federal Prosecutor to successfully try a case with a judgement to uphold the Fourteenth Amendment.

Ancestry
The Endsley-Morgan House in Colfax, Guilford County, North Carolina, one of many properties once owned by Starbuck's father, is today on the National Register of Historic Places. Darius is a descendant of the Starbuck Family of Nantucket, known for whaling. The family is an inspiration for the Moby-Dick character Starbuck, who is the namesake of Starbucks Coffee. The home of Starbuck's paternal great-grandfather, Thomas Starbuck, is among those still standing in the Nantucket Historic District in Nantucket, Massachusetts. Darius is the fourth great-grandson of the Nantucket settler Tristram Coffin through his daughter Mary Coffin Starbuck (1645 - 1719). Tristram served as the first chief magistrate of Nantucket. Tristram Coffin's home, located in Newbury, Massachusetts, still stands and is a non-profit museum today. Starbuck's fifth cousin through Coffin was the renowned abolitionist, women's rights activist, and social reformer Lucretia Coffin Mott, who will be featured on the United States ten-dollar bill starting in 2020. Darius is the descendant of Nantucket, Massachusetts settler Peter Foulger and his wife Mary Morrell Foulger through two family lines, one starting with their son Eleazer Folger (1648–1716) and his wife Sarah Gardner Folger (c. 1651 – 1792), and the second through their daughter Experience Folger Swain (d. 1739) and her husband John Swain (c. 1664 – 1738). Darius is a descendant of both siblings through his paternal grandmother Rachel Folger Starbuck (December 30, 1747 – August 30, 1842). Through both siblings Darius is the first cousin four times removed of Benjamin Franklin. Darius's distant cousin J. A. Folger would go on to found the Folgers Coffee Company in 1850. The eponymous home of Starbuck's maternal great-grandfather, Col. Isaac Beeson, in Colfax, North Carolina, survives and is on the National Register of Historic Places. Isaac's parents (Starbuck's great great-grandparents) Richard and Charity Grubb Beeson were both ministers of the Quaker faith. Starbuck is the third great-grandson of John Grubb. Grubb was an original settler of the Delaware Colony while it was under the dominion of the Province of Pennsylvania, and a two-term member of the Pennsylvania Provincial Assembly from New Castle County. Grubb also had a prolonged legal dispute with William Penn, founder and namesake of the Pennsylvania colony. Grubb's home, now known as the Grubb/Worth Mansion, still stands today. Historically, some researchers have asserted the possibility that Starbuck's third great-grandmother, Rachel Pennington Beeson may have been a daughter of the Quaker minister and writer Isaac Penington and his wife Lady Mary Proud Springett, a claim which would make Rachel Pennington the half-sister of Gulielma Maria Posthuma Springett, the first wife of William Penn. This claim, however, has been rebuffed by researchers who believe Rachel and her husband Edward Beeson to be a match with a couple who married in the parish of Thrussington upon Leicestershire in 1660 before immigrating to the Americas. No conclusion can be definitively made.

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Songs Written and/or Produced by + incorrect song credits
There are a few songs written or produced by Lady Gaga for other artists that were officially released that aren't listed in the article under the "Other appearances" section.

Also two of the songs that are listed in the same section are listed with incorrect credits.

-"Big Girl Now" is credited as "(with New Kids on the Block)". The correct credit is "(New Kids on the Block featuring Lady Gaga)"

-"Full Service" is credited as "(with New Kids on the Block)". The correct credit is "(New Kids on the Block featuring New Edition). Lady Gaga is not a performer on this song, she is only a songwriter.   (References 5 & 6 apply to Both Big Girl Now & Full Service)

As for the missing songs:

2008
- "Quicksand" (Britney Spears) from "Circus" (track 16 from the Europe iTunes deluxe edition) [Songwriter & Background Vocalist]

2009
- "Lola" (Veleria) from "| Freshly Squeezed" (track 2) '''[Songwriter] '''

- "Fever" (Adam Lambert) from "For Your Entertainment" (track 10) & "Glam Nation Live" (track 4) [Songwriter & Background Vocalist]    (Note that for Reference 13 "Stefani Germanotta" is Lady Gaga's birth name)

2010
- "Let Dem Hoes Fight" (Trina featuring Kalenna Harper) from "Amazin'" (track 13) [Songwriter & Producer]

2011
- "Invading My Mind" (Jennifer Lopez) from "Love?" (track 9) [Producer]

- "Hypnotico" (Jennifer Lopez) ''from "Love?" (track 12)'' [Songwriter] (Note that for Reference 23 "Stefani Germanotta" is Lady Gaga's birth name)   (References 25 & 26 apply to Both Invading My Mind & Hypnotico)

--LurganShmith (talk) 06:13, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

Expansion of "Other charted songs" section discussion
I felt with Lady Gaga's excessive hits on Billboard dance charts in the US (her home country which makes this edit approved per Wikipedia guidelines) it would only make since to add the songs that charted on them to this list. I've formatted two new tables that include the charted songs, but I'm not sure which option is more appropriate. The Billboard Hot Dance/Electronic Songs chart is the most comprehensive dance songs chart as it compiles data from all sources (digital-download purchases, maxi-single purchases, club play, and radio play), but it hasn't existed until January 17, 2013. To make up for the time before it I've included it's per-existing subsidiary charts Dance/Electronic Digital Songs and Hot Dance Club Songs.

Option 1 is more visually appealing and less crowded but compiles the charts in two separate columns. The first column is for the preferred Hot Dance/Electronic Songs chart with notions to the previously dominate chart Hot Dance Club Songs. The second column is the now sub-chart Dance/Electronic Digital Songs, which for the time after January 17, 2013 and onward in future additions to the table makes is irrelevant and a waste of space.

Option 2 is less visually appealing and crowded with notes explaining how for the period before January 17, 2013 the peak positions are from the the subsidiary charts Dance/Electronic Digital Songs and Hot Dance Club Songs, but has one less column taking up space after the date the newest chart started.

Could anyone who reads this comment back with which option (1 or 2) they prefer or with any help or suggestions what so ever in regards to solving this problem?

Lili Marleen former quote box style
--LurganShmith (talk) 15:09, 24 June 2014 (UTC)

Promotional singles
-LurganShmith (talk) 08:20, 2 August 2015 (UTC)