North Carolina Senate votes to pardon ex-gov 140 years after he was impeached for calling out militia to face KKK - AP http://bit.ly/ig5a0E
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Meeting in the same building where Gov. William Woods Holden was removed from office 140 years ago, North Carolina lawmakers took a step Tuesday toward clearing the Reconstruction-era governor of wrongdoing related to his efforts to stop Ku Klux Klan violence. The state Senate, meeting in the old Capitol building where it hasn't met regularly in 48 years, voted 48-0 in favor of pardoning Holden, who was impeached in 1870 by the House and convicted by the Senate at the close of a seven-week trial a few months later. Holden was the first governor removed from office in the United States, the result, according to contemporary historians, of a Democratic-led Legislature bent on harming the Republican for calling out a militia to quell an insurrection in two Piedmont counties that resulted in the killings of white and black citizens. During an era of swift racial changes following the Civil War, Holden brought in soldiers to quell activity by the KKK in Alamance and Caswell counties following several slayings, including a Republican senator stabbed and strangulated. A pardon vote got sidetracked three weeks ago when a staff member placed a document on senators' desk questioning whether Holden deserved to be cleared, in part by citing an early 20th-century historian., RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Meeting in the same building where Gov. William Woods Holden was removed from office 140 years ago, North Carolina lawmakers took a step Tuesday toward clearing the Reconstruction-era governor of wrongdoing related to his efforts to stop Ku Klux Klan violence. The state Senate, meeting in the old Capitol building where it hasn't met regularly in 48 years, voted 48-0 in favor of pardoning Holden, who was impeached in 1870 by the House and convicted by the Senate at the close of a seven-week trial a few months later. Holden was the first governor removed from office in the United States, the result, according to contemporary historians, of a Democratic-led Legislature bent on harming the Republican for calling out a militia to quell an insurrection in two Piedmont counties that resulted in the killings of white and black citizens. During an era of swift racial changes following the Civil War, Holden brought in soldiers to quell activity by the KKK in Alamance and Caswell counties following several slayings, including a Republican senator stabbed and strangulated. A pardon vote got sidetracked three weeks ago when a staff member placed a document on senators' desk questioning whether Holden deserved to be cleared, in part by citing an early 20th-century historian.
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