Kirk–Holden war was a police operation taken against the White supremacist Ku Klux Klan organization by the government in the state of North Carolina in the United States in 1870.
Image: Sign in front of courthouse. Yanceyville, Caswell County, North Carolina. Photograph taken October 1940
Photographer: Marion Post Wolcott, 1910-1990, who worked for the Farm Security Administration during the Great Depression documenting poverty, the Jim Crow South, and deprivation.
Source: LOC
The Kirk–Holden war was a police operation taken against the White supremacist Ku Klux Klan organization by the government in the state of North Carolina in the United States in 1870.
The Klan was using murder and intimidation to prevent recently freed slaves and members of the Republican Party from exercising their right to vote in the aftermath of the American Civil War.
Following an increase in Klan activity in North Carolina—including the murder of a Black town commissioner in Alamance County and the murder of a Republican state senator in Caswell County—Republican Governor of North Carolina William W. Holden declared both areas to be in a state of insurrection.
In accordance with the Shoffner Act, Holden ordered a militia be raised to restore order in the counties and arrest Klansmen suspected of violence.
This resulted in the creation of the 1st and 2nd North Carolina Troops, which Holden placed under the overall command of Colonel George Washington Kirk.
In July 1870, Kirk oversaw the deployment of the 2nd North Carolina Troops in Alamance and Caswell counties, while the 1st North Carolina Troops garrisoned the city of Raleigh.
A total of 82 men in Alamance and 19 in Caswell were detained on suspicion of Klan-related activity, including a former member of the United States Congress and the sheriffs of both counties, and Klan activity in both counties promptly ceased.
No one was killed during the campaign, though the militiamen at times showed poor discipline and used foul language.
Kirk's second-in-command also exceeded his orders and sent men to arrest a newspaper editor in Orange County, which was not declared to be in insurrection.
Holden initially refused to have the men brought to regular courts under writs of habeas corpus, planning to try them by military tribunal, but eventually gave way to pressure from Chief Justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court Richmond Mumford Pearson and United States District Court Judge George Washington Brooks.
As a result, 49 men were indicted in court for crimes, but all were ultimately acquitted and released by late August.
The militiamen were also deployed to guard polling stations during North Carolina's legislative elections on August 4, but Holden's use of the militia as well as other complaints about Republican corruption and Klan intimidation led the Conservatives and Democrats to take a majority of seats in the North Carolina General Assembly.
Holden ordered the militia to disband on September 21, and on November 10 he declared that there was no longer a state of insurrection in Alamance and Caswell counties.
Conservative and Democratic-leaning newspapers heavily criticized his actions and his political opponents coined the name "Kirk–Holden war" to describe the affair.
The General Assembly subsequently filed articles of impeachment against Holden in December and ultimately removed him from office in March 1871.
Holden was the first governor in the United States to be removed in such fashion, and his campaign against the Klan and impeachment crippled the image of the Republican Party in North Carolina for many years.
The General Assembly repealed the Shoffner Act and passed another law designed to grant amnesty to Klansmen.
Political Situation In North Carolina
In 1861, the state of North Carolina seceded from the United States and joined other Southern states in forming the Confederate States of America. The Confederacy subsequently fought with the non-seceding states, or Union, during the American Civil War.
The conflict caused intense political divisions within North Carolina, as many of its residents, particularly in the mountains and coastal regions, were opposed to the war and maintained Unionist sympathies. Politician William W. Holden unsuccessfully sought election as Governor of North Carolina in 1864 on a "peace platform" which included withdrawing from the war.
The Confederacy ultimately lost the war in 1865 and North Carolina reverted to the jurisdiction of the United States.
The issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation during the conflict meant that the federal government recognized the freedom of over 330,000 enslaved Blacks in North Carolina; this came into effect in most of the state with the end of the war. With the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in December 1865, slavery was formally abolished across the United States.
In 1867, the United States Congress passed the Reconstruction Acts, which placed most of the Southern states under military occupation; North Carolina was placed in the Second Military District.
The acts also disfranchised many former Confederates, and required states to revise their constitutions to enfranchise freedmen and ratify the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which granted equal citizenship to Black people.
That year, Holden organized a Republican Party branch within North Carolina with both Black and White members.
North Carolina Republicans generally favored equal citizenship and civil rights for all persons regardless of race.
The opposing Democratic Party, also known during this time as the Conservatives, encompassed a range of opinion but generally advocated for the withholding of certain rights from non-Whites and forcing Blacks to work menial jobs.
Republicans dominated the convention which revised the state constitution in 1868, resulting in a more democratic document.
That year state legislative and gubernatorial elections were held. The Democratic Party attempted to paint the Republican Party as the "Negro" organization, but the Republicans won a majority in the North Carolina General Assembly and Holden was elected Governor of North Carolina by over 18,000 votes.
Numerous Black men were also elected to office. Federal military presence diminished, though troops remained posted in the capital city of Raleigh. In 1869 North Carolina ratified the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, guaranteeing the right to vote to all citizens regardless of race or color.
Rise Of Ku Klux Klan Activity
The Ku Klux Klan was founded as a fraternal society in December 1865 in Pulaski, Tennessee by several former Confederate officers. It quickly became a vehicle for terrorizing Black people and White Republicans across the South.
In 1867, several Klan chapters met in Nashville and produced a constitution endorsing White supremacy and requiring potential members to support "the restitution of the Southern people to all their rights".
Organization of the Klan was loose and fractured across regions, but all chapters were generally committed to limiting the rights of freedmen and opposing the Republican Party.
Klan activity first cropped up in North Carolina during the elections of 1868. It committed some acts of violence to warn Black people — including destruction of Blacks' property—but had little impact on the conduct of the contests.
Klan membership grew as White North Carolinians became frustrated with the Republican government and by 1869 Klansmen were murdering Black people to intimidate them and prospective Republican voters.
Klan murders continued throughout the Piedmont region of the state through 1869 and 1870, especially in the counties of Moore, Chatham, Alamance, Orange, and Caswell.
Violence was worst in counties that had significant Black populations.
Local authorities were unable and often unwilling to prosecute Klan-related offenses.
At Holden's request, in February 1869 the General Assembly authorized the creation of a detective force to investigate and undermine the Klan. Arrests were made but the violence continued.
In November Holden asked the General Assembly to strengthen the provisions of the state militia law so that he could better confront the violence, telling the body, "Numerous complaints have been made to me of violence and mob law in certain counties, by parties who ride at night armed and disguised [...] injuring, insulting, and punishing inoffensive whites and colored persons."
Holden thought that a revised law would ameliorate victims' fears and would protect black and white Republicans from Klan assaults.
State Senator T. M. Shoffner of Alamance County introduced a bill to Holden's request on December 16, titled "An Act to Secure the Better Protection of Life and Property".
Its provisions empowered the governor to suspend the writ of habeas corpus, declare a state of insurrection "whenever in his judgement the civil authorities in any county are unable to protect its citizens in the enjoyment of life and property", and request the assistance of federal authorities if state militia proved insufficient. Conservatives in the legislature delayed passage of the bill—dubbed the Shoffner Act—and particularly objected to the provision for the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, suggesting it was unconstitutional.
The provision was removed and the act was passed into law in January 1870.
The Klan was affronted by the law and several Alamance Klansmen plotted to kill Shoffner at his home. The plan dissolved after Shoffner was tipped off and went elsewhere, but he continued to receive death threats and eventually fled to Indiana. Klansmen in Moore also proposed the assassination of Holden during this time.
Klan Violence in Alamance County And The Murder Of Wyatt Outlaw
Klan violence in the Piedmont worsened after the passage of the Shoffner Act.
Early in the morning on February 26, about 100 masked Klansmen rode to Graham, Alamance County, and abducted Wyatt Outlaw, a town commissioner and leading Black figure in the county's Republican Party chapter.
They hanged him in the courthouse square and pinned a note to his body, reading "Beware, you guilty, both white and black."
That evening Klansmen visited the Alamance home of Black Republican Henry Holt. Holt was not there, but the Klansmen told his wife that he should leave the area or face the same fate as Outlaw.
Holt promptly fled the county.
Less than two weeks later another Black man, William Puryear, was found dead in a millpond tied down to a rock.
Puryear, who was mentally disabled, had claimed to have followed two of Outlaw's killers to their homes and identified them. Graham Republican H. A. Badham wrote to Holden, saying, "Every republican in the County who has stood up for his own rights and that of freedmen, is in danger. The civil authorities are powerless to bring these offenders against law and humanity, to Justice."
On March 7, Holden issued a proclamation of a state of insurrection in Alamance County. Hoping to use this as a warning against future offenses, Holden dispatched 40 federal troops stationed in Raleigh to Alamance.
The lieutenant in charge of the soldiers reported that the situation was deteriorating and convinced the mayor and a local magistrate to issue warrants for the arrest of 12 men suspected of involvement in various murders, but the charges were dropped when other citizens offered alibis and death threats were made against the officials.
Holden subsequently wrote to United States President Ulysses S. Grant to ask for assistance. Mindful that the Shoffner Act did not empower him as governor to suspend the writ of habeas corpus, he wrote:
If Congress would authorize the suspension by the President of the writ of habeas corpus in certain localities, and if criminals could be arrested and tried before military tribunals, and shot, we would soon have peace and order throughout all this country.
The remedy would be a sharp and bloody one, but it is as indispensable as was the suppression of the rebellion [during the Civil War.
Grant responded by dispatching more federal troops to North Carolina, but took no additional action. Holden made further appeals for federal support, asking United States Senator for North Carolina Joseph Carter Abbott for help and sending North Carolina Adjutant-General A. W. Fisher to Richmond, Virginia to speak with Major General Edward Canby, commander of the Second Military District, to ask for reinforcements from the United States Army.
Canby was not convinced that Alamance County was truly experiencing an insurrection and told Fisher that only the president could send more forces.
United States Secretary of War William W. Belknap eventually dispatched two infantry companies to the county. North Carolina Klansmen remained attentive to the situation in Alamance and realized that Holden was isolated, but tempered their activities in the county over the next few months.
For his part, Holden dispatched more detectives across the state to investigate the Klan and encouraged local authorities to take action.
Klan Violence In Caswell County And The Murder Of John W. Stephens
Meanwhile, Klan violence in Caswell County escalated.
Klansmen flogged (beat) at least 21 Black and White Republicans between April 2 and May 15, and murdered Robin Jacobs, a Black man from the vicinity of Leasburg, on May 13.
The Republican State Senator of Caswell County, John W. Stephens, became increasingly fearful of Klan attack.
On May 21 he went to the Caswell County Courthouse in Yanceyville to watch the county Democratic Party host its nominating convention. After watching the proceedings he accompanied Frank A. Wiley to the ground level of the courthouse.
Stephens wished to convince Wiley, a Democrat and former sheriff, to seek re-election to the office with his support and thus achieve a political reconciliation in the county.
Wiley had secretly agreed to work with the Klan and lured Stephens into a trap; between 10 to 15 Klansmen awaited him on the ground floor and detained him.
John Lea, the founder of the local Klan chapter, entered the room where Stephens was being held with more men. One Klansmen, G. T. Mitchell, held a rope around Stephens' neck, while another, Tom Oliver, stabbed him to death.
The Klansmen left and locked the room, planning to return to move the body that night.
After Stephens failed to return home that evening, his brothers and friends came to the courthouse to look for him. One of them saw a body in the locked room through a window and, after forcing their way inside, identified it as Stephens.
The coroner conducted an inquest which included the interviewing of numerous persons, including Wiley and Lea, who lied about their knowledge of the affair. Caswell County Sheriff Jesse Griffith, himself a Klansmen, made no serious attempts to investigate the killing.
The coroner's report ultimately concluded that the state senator was murdered by "persons unknown", and the circumstances of the killing remained unclear until Lea's signed confession to participation in the events was published posthumously in 1935.
Klansmen and the Conservative press accused Black people of committing the murder.
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