Posted on 04/10/2011 5:58:56 AM PDT by Libloather
Pardon of former governor to be heard next week
By GARY D. ROBERTSON, Associated Press
Updated: 4:29 p.m. Friday
RALEIGH, N.C. — North Carolina lawmakers will try again to consider pardoning an ousted post-Civil War governor while meeting next week in the same historic building where the House impeached and the Senate convicted him after he sent troops to fight the Ku Klux Klan, a pardon sponsor said Friday.
**SNIP**
Holden, a Republican, was impeached in 1870 after he ordered a militia to quell activity by the KKK in Alamance and Caswell counties. He was convicted by the Democratic-controlled Senate in March 1871 on six counts following after a seven-week trial, making him the first governor removed from office in the United States. The Republicans returned to power in the Senate the first time since in January.
**SNIP**
Recent historians have said Holden was a target of Reconstruction-era Democrats, who had favored secession in the Civil War and didn't care for Holden, a former Democrat viewed as a turncoat.
Holden called out the militia in 1870 after the Klan hanged a black Republican and stabbed a white Republican senator to death. The militia brought the region under control with little opposition. Holden defended his actions and died in 1892.
(Excerpt) Read more at wral.com ...
Wow.
The Democrats would do the same thing today if it were in their interests.
Not inherently inconsistent with fighting the KKK.
It would be interesting to read a analysis of his career by a historian with no axe to grind. But such are hard to come by.
The racial violence in the South after the war was not necessarily always and only the result of evil white men attacking innocent blacks.
Although that was no doubt the general trend.
The Civil War casts a long shadow.....NC was a divided state in those days. The foothills and mountain regions pretty much were Unionist in their sympathy, and in some places were in revolt against the Confederate gov’t. Union forces occupied the coast early in the war, and the central and eastern parts of the state were pretty solidly Confederate. Even today the politics of the state reflect those divisions- the coast and east generally have dominated state politics in the past century or so. The Republicans after the war were seen as part of an enemy occupation force, and didn’t do too well in the most populous areas. And one of the scars left after the war- politics were not something that got discussed much. The older people when I was child taught me that politics were subject to be avoided- being a Republican in a Southern Democrat world meant your people had been on the wrong side.... Of course, that world is vanishing here. God only knows what the future will bring....
Edit: “A subject TO be avoided..”
bttt
I’ve often wondered why so many blacks are democrats. I’m surprised this possibility never occurred to me before, but could it be because they were historically hanged for being Republicans? Even today, witness how they’re treated when they openly advocate anything associated with Republicans. At the very least, they’re called Uncle Toms. Often it’s more severe.
Look at the ones in general that vote rat.
I think too many Americans don’t know the KKK was Democrats. Perhaps if the mascot of the Democrat Party was cloaked in a white sheet with its ears, and tail protruding the symbol would be the clear message needed.
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