:''For other persons named Daniel Barringer, see
Daniel Barringer.''
'Daniel Moreau Barringer' (
30 July 1806 –
1 September 1873) was a
Whig U.S. Congressman from
North Carolina between 1843 and 1849.
Born near
Concord, North Carolina, in 1806, Barringer attended the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Graduating in 1826, he went on to study law in
Hillsborough and was admitted to the bar, beginning a law practice in his hometown of Concord in 1829. That same year, Barringer was elected to the
North Carolina House of Commons; he would serve there until 1834, and also in 1840 and 1842. He was also a member of the 1835 North Carolina constitutional convention.
In 1842, he was elected as a
Whig to the
28th United States Congress, and was subsequently reelected to the
29th and
30th sessions. During the 30th Congress, he chaired the Committee on Indian Affairs and the Committee on Expenditures in the
Department of State. Declining to run for a fourth Congressional term in 1848, Barringer was appointed by President
Zachary Taylor as
minister to Spain, where he served from 1849 to 1853. In 1854, upon returning to North Carolina, he served one term in the House of Commons.
At the outbreak of the
American Civil War, Barringer was a delegate to the
1861 Peace Convention held in
Washington, DC, and then after the war was a participant in the
Union National Convention of 1866. He chaired the North Carolina
Democratic Party in 1872. Barringer died
September 1,
1873, in
White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, and was buried in
Greenmount Cemetery in
Baltimore, Maryland.
Barringer was the older brother of Civil War
cavalry Brigadier General Rufus Barringer. They were nephews of
Daniel Laurens Barringer, who had previously been a Congressman from North Carolina. Barringer's son,
Daniel Barringer Jr., became famous for proving the meteoritic origins of the
Meteor Crater in
Arizona.