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North Carolina's Governors
William Woods Holden (1818-1892) was the only Chief Executive in North Carolina to be impeached and removed from office. Born near Hillsborough, he had little formal education but apprenticed at a newspaper as a boy. He studied law at night and received his license in 1841, but he preferred journalism to legal practice. He arranged to purchase the North Carolina Standard, the Raleigh based organ for the Democratic Party, and became sole owner and editor. In the sectional crisis, Holden advocated the Union over secession while agreeing with southern interests in most other cases. As resistance proved futile, he accepted and voted for secession at the 1861 convention. Holden used the Standard to promote a new Conservative Party, which in 1862 nominated Zebulon B. Vance for governor. With his newspaper spearheading the campaign, Holden led Vance to victory. The editor and the governor disagreed on how to conduct the war and faced off in the 1864 election. Holden suffered a humiliating defeat. On May 20, 1865, President Andrew Johnson appointed Holden provisional governor. Jonathan Worth, nominated by Conservatives, defeated Holden that fall and Holden resumed editorship of the Standard. Radical Reconstruction of the South provided the perfect venue for Holden to make another bid for governor and he attained his goal in 1868. Holden vowed to destroy the Ku Klux Klan. His campaign to stem racial violence in Alamance, Caswell, and Orange Counties, known as the "Kirk-Holden War," ended his political career. Charged with "high crimes and misdemeanors" stemming from the campaign against the Klan, Holden was impeached and turned over his duties to Lieutenant Governor Tod R. Caldwell on December 20, 1870. The trial began on January 30, 1871, and lasted nearly three months. On March 22, the North Carolina Senate found Holden guilty and ordered him removed from office. For a while Holden edited a newspaper in Washington, D.C., and then accepted the job of postmaster in Raleigh. A stroke in April 1882 forced his retirement; he died ten years later and was buried in Raleigh's Oakwood Cemetery.
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