William Woods Holden

Background

William Woods Holden was born on November 24, 1818 in Orange County, North Carolina, United States. He was the son of Thomas W. Holden and Priscilla Woods.

Education

Ambitious from childhood, Holden made good use of his limited educational opportunities, and when he was ten became printer's devil to Dennis Heartt, editor of the Hillsboro Recorder, with whom he stayed for six years.

Career

After a year of newspaper work in Milton, North Carolina, and Danville, Virginia, Holden returned to Hillsboro as a clerk. In 1837 he went to Raleigh where he worked on the Star, the leading Whig paper, studying law during his scanty leisure. His political writing attracted attention, and in 1843 he was offered the North Carolina Standard, the leading Democratic paper, on condition that he become a Democrat. He accepted and began enthusiastically the work of inspiring a minority party. The Whigs reviled him as a turncoat and traitor, but the Democrats soon regarded him as a gift from heaven. A fighter and an intuitive and masterly politician, he led them to victory and made the Standard more powerful than any other newspaper has ever been in North Carolina.

During these years he preached editorially the most advanced secession doctrine. In 1858 he was a candidate for the gubernatorial nomination, but was defeated by John Willis Ellis, chiefly through the efforts of former Whigs.

Embittered by this disappointment and by his defeat for the Senate in the following legislature, he drifted away from his old party associates until in 1860 he was out of accord with them on state issues and wavering with respect to state rights between advanced secessionist and pure nationalistic doctrine. He was a delegate to the Charleston and Baltimore conventions and refused to withdraw from the latter. In the campaign he supported Breckinridge, though his heart was probably with Douglas, and after Lincoln's election, favoring a "watch and wait" policy, he was elected a Union delegate to the convention which the people rejected. He was also elected to the secession convention, where he voted for secession and pledged "the last man and the last dollar" to the Southern cause. Rapidly cooling towards the war, he aided in the establishment of a conservative party.

He supported Z. B. Vance for governor in 1862, believing undoubtedly that he would himself control the administration and bring about a breach with the Confederate government. When he discovered his mistake, he broke with Vance, and in the summer of 1863 was the leading figure in the peace movement. As a result, a Georgia regiment destroyed his press and his friends retaliated by similar injury to the administration organ.

In February 1864, immediately after the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, he suspended the Standard for several months. In May he announced his candidacy for governor with no platform but a general understanding that his election would result either in a convention to secede from the Confederacy, or in direct negotiation with the Federal government. He was defeated and remained quiet until May 1865, when President Johnson made him provisional governor. Since Holden had played fast and loose with parties, men, and principles, few had any confidence in him. He used his official power for personal ends, to punish old enemies, reward new friends, or stifle opposition, and in consequence he was defeated at the November election. Once more he shifted position, and, cooling from his fervid support of the President, favored the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment.

In the spring of 1866 the President appointed him minister to San Salvador, but the Senate refused confirmation. Increasingly bitter, he now advocated rigorous punishment of the "rebels, " and urged that Congress control reconstruction. The Fourteenth Amendment soon seemed too lenient, and in the winter of 1866-1867 he spent much time in Washington advising radical leaders and working for the overthrow of the state government. In 1865 he had opposed the liberal policy adopted by the legislature towards the freedmen, but on January 1, 1867, addressing the negroes in Raleigh, he advocated unrestricted negro suffrage. He early won the favor of the Carpetbagger element which flattered and entirely controlled him. Elected governor in 1868, he began a highly partisan administration which was characterized by the most brazen corruption, extravagance, and incompetency. No one charged him with personal financial profit, but he screened and protected the guilty. The cause which he upheld was soon doomed.

The legislature of 1870, at his urgent insistence, passed a number of acts directed against the Ku Klux, one of which authorized him to proclaim any county in a state of insurrection and to use the militia to suppress the uprising. In March he declared Alamance in insurrection; in June, with an election approaching and every indication pointing to a Democratic victory, following the advice of Senator John Pool and assured of aid from President Grant, he planned to raise two regiments of state troops with which to suppress the opposition and carry the election.

In July he proclaimed Caswell County in insurrection. George W. Kirk, a noted Tennessee bushwhacker in command of one illegally recruited regiment, occupied both Caswell and Alamance, arresting a number of peaceful citizens and treating them with great brutality. By Holden's personal order Josiah Turner, editor of the Sentinel, the leading Democratic paper, was arrested outside the insurrectionary area. When Kirk, under Holden's order, refused to obey the writ of habeas corpus, Chief Justice Pearson declared the power of the judiciary exhausted. Civil war was impending when Judge George W. Brooks of the federal district court issued the writ and discharged the prisoners, the President declining to interfere. Meantime the Democrats had swept the state in the election. The state troops dispersed and the House of Representatives impeached Holden, presenting eight articles against him, on six of which he was convicted. He was removed and forever disqualified from holding office. Going to Washington, where he failed to secure federal aid, he became one of the editors of the Daily Morning Chronicle (Republican). In 1872 Grant appointed him minister to Peru, but he declined, and becoming postmaster of Raleigh in 1873, held the place until 1881.

Achievements

• Holden is remembered as a prominent politician and governor of North Carolina. During his administration, he worked to provide civil rights for African Americans in the state, and halt violence created by the Ku Klux Klan. Holden was the second governor in American history to be impeached, and the first to be removed from office. In 2011, Holden was posthumously pardoned by the North Carolina Senate.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Papers of William Woods Holden, Volume 1: 1841-1868

    (Papers of the Hillsborough native who was editor of the R...)

Religion

Rapidly cooling towards the war, he aided in the establishment of a conservative party.

Politics

At first Holden was a member of the Whig Party from 1841 to 1843; then he was member of the Democratic Party from 1843 to 1865; for a year he was a National Unionist; and from 1866 and onward Holden was a Republican.

Personality

In personal intercourse Holden was kindly, generous, and charitable.

Connections

Holden was twice married: first, in 1841, to Ann Augusta Young, and second, to Louisa Virginia Harrison, both of Raleigh.

Father:

Thomas W. Holden

Mother:

Priscilla (Woods) Holden

Spouse:

Louisa Virginia (Harrison) Holden

Spouse:

Ann Augusta (Young) Holden

Daughter :

Mary Eldridge (Holden) Sherwood

Daughter :

Ida (Holden) Cowles

Brother:

Henry Nash Holden

Sister :

Margaret Comer Holden Murdock

Sister:

Rebecca Ann Holden McKerall

Brother :

Emory Brock Holden

Brother :

Preston Leonidas Holden

Brother :

Addison Lea Holden

Daughter:

Lulu Tucker (Holden) Ward

Daughter:

Henrietta Reid (Holden) Mahler

Daughter:

Laura Haylander (Holden) Olds

Daughter:

Beulah Williamson (Holden) Henry

Son:

Joseph William Holden

Son :

Charles Collier Holden

References

• William Woods Holden: Firebrand of North Carolina Politics (Southern Biography Series)