I came across this biography of North Carolina Governor William W. Holden when the Athens Library was discarding it last year along with hundreds of other books it had withdrawn from its shelves. I salvaged about 500 of them, mostly on historical topics, and this was one I'd had my eye on for a long time. One reason for the interest: when Becky and I got married, our first address was on Holden Street in downtown Raleigh, near Oakwood Cemetery. The main reason is because my overriding historical interests these days are with North Carolina's role in the Civil War and with Reconstruction. My interest in both was first tweaked two years ago by Prof. Timothy Tyson's book, Blood Done Sign My Name about a racially motivated murder in Oxford, NC in 1970. In that book, Tyson makes it clear that North Carolina was not a very willing participant in the Civil War, that the state's hand was more or less finally forced by Lincoln's call for 75,000 NC troops; next to Virginia, it was the last state to secede. I'd always been taught the "solid South" myth regarding NC's role in the Civil War, and I have since learned that this was indeed a myth, that NC was basically a state of small farmers, the vast majority poor and not owning any slaves. The war was pushed by a small but politically powerful minority of slave-owning planters and others with the time on their hands (like Holden) to be politically bellicose but physically separated from the dangers of their threats; it was truly 'a rich man's war, but a poor man's fight' as most planters opted to hire replacements or, like Holden himself, join local (and non-traveling) 'home guards' to supposedly provide local protection while most (poor) men were away fighting.
Before reading Holden, I had also done further research on the Red Strings, an underground organization of approximately 10,000 North Carolinians who were against the Civil War and acted as guerrilla agents for the Union. Another very influential work I came across during my graduate studies was Prof. James Loewen's 1995 classic, Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong. In it, Loewen explodes the myths, lies, and intentionally left-out history of our nation as mistold by twelve of the most widely used high school US History textbooks. Lastly, just before starting the Holden biography, I finished reading Masters Without Slaves, written in 1977 by James L. Roark.
Before reading Holden, I had also done further research on the Red Strings, an underground organization of approximately 10,000 North Carolinians who were against the Civil War and acted as guerrilla agents for the Union. Another very influential work I came across during my graduate studies was Prof. James Loewen's 1995 classic, Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong. In it, Loewen explodes the myths, lies, and intentionally left-out history of our nation as mistold by twelve of the most widely used high school US History textbooks. Lastly, just before starting the Holden biography, I finished reading Masters Without Slaves, written in 1977 by James L. Roark.
Back to Folk & Shaw's work: William W. Holden was governor of NC during Reconstruction, that is, until the KKK-dominated General Assembly ousted him for trying to protect blacks and white Republicans from Klan violence, especially in Alamance and Caswell Counties. Holden was a leading, if not the leading, newspaper editor of the1850's and '60s, publishing the Raleigh Standard, and he, like every other editor of the time, used his paper as a bully pulpit to espouse his personal opinions and to persuade others to follow him. He was the voice of the common people, originally a Democrat against the Whigs, and actually a firebrand calling for NC to stand up to the Union and to secede, but he changed his message shortly before secession, calling for cool heads not to be led astray by South Carolina's radicals and the planter class of "the cotton states." Unfortunately, it was too late, and so Holden supported NC's fighting men while railing against the increasing abuses of the Confederate central government and the suffering of the common people due to high prices and scarcity of food and other necessities. These problems were caused by not only the desparate needs of Confederate troops but also the greed of private, and not so patriotic, Southern speculators.
Eventually, after losing the gubernatorial election and the end of the Civil War, Holden was appointed governor by President Grant, but his old aristocratic enemies would go after him, especially after he declared martial law in Alamance and Caswell Counties. Holden's choice as commander, former US Army Colonel George T. Kirk, notwithstanding, something had to be done about the Klan's unbridled and unchecked (and well-documented) atrocities in that area, and Holden did what he thought best to protect freedmen and whites sympathetic to their cause. (See http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~ncccha/memoranda/kirkholdenwar.html.)
His reputation was subsequently maligned and the history of those events distorted by historians sympathetic and unobjective toward the Confederate cause. Like many Southern historians following the 1880s, these historians were given free reign by their Northern counterparts who perhaps viewed their own appeasement as a conciliatory effort toward a healing nation. Folk and Shaw have helped to set the record straight, using hundreds of quotes from the leading newspapers across North Carolina from this period to paint a much more accurate picture of the true political currents and opinions of the time from the 1850s through the 1860s and early 1870s. Note that Holden was no saint: he did not believe in racial equality nor that blacks should necessarily have citizenship or voting rights, but he did believe that they were human beings and deserved to be protected from indiscriminate harm and in the rule of law, and so he did his best to serve them in his capacity as governor. He was an emotional and passionate man, and not very concerned with being tactful, but he was a man of his times and the voice of the little man in North Carolina before that little man was dooped by the white power brokers of the state. Holden's story is one very much worth getting right to set the record straight on his life and North Carolina's role in secession, the Civil War, and Reconstruction.
(Note added on 7/25/2011: see today's post re: Holden's pardon.)
Eventually, after losing the gubernatorial election and the end of the Civil War, Holden was appointed governor by President Grant, but his old aristocratic enemies would go after him, especially after he declared martial law in Alamance and Caswell Counties. Holden's choice as commander, former US Army Colonel George T. Kirk, notwithstanding, something had to be done about the Klan's unbridled and unchecked (and well-documented) atrocities in that area, and Holden did what he thought best to protect freedmen and whites sympathetic to their cause. (See http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~ncccha/memoranda/kirkholdenwar.html.)
His reputation was subsequently maligned and the history of those events distorted by historians sympathetic and unobjective toward the Confederate cause. Like many Southern historians following the 1880s, these historians were given free reign by their Northern counterparts who perhaps viewed their own appeasement as a conciliatory effort toward a healing nation. Folk and Shaw have helped to set the record straight, using hundreds of quotes from the leading newspapers across North Carolina from this period to paint a much more accurate picture of the true political currents and opinions of the time from the 1850s through the 1860s and early 1870s. Note that Holden was no saint: he did not believe in racial equality nor that blacks should necessarily have citizenship or voting rights, but he did believe that they were human beings and deserved to be protected from indiscriminate harm and in the rule of law, and so he did his best to serve them in his capacity as governor. He was an emotional and passionate man, and not very concerned with being tactful, but he was a man of his times and the voice of the little man in North Carolina before that little man was dooped by the white power brokers of the state. Holden's story is one very much worth getting right to set the record straight on his life and North Carolina's role in secession, the Civil War, and Reconstruction.
(Note added on 7/25/2011: see today's post re: Holden's pardon.)