disband on September 21, and on November 10 he declared that there was no longer a state of insurrection in Alamance and Caswell counties. Conservative and Democratic-leaning newspapers heavily criticized his actions and his political opponents coined the name "Kirk–Holden war" to describe the affair. The General Assembly subsequently filed articles of impeachment against Holden in December and ultimately removed him from office in March 1871. Holden was the first governor in the United States to be removed in such fashion, and his campaign against the Klan and impeachment crippled the image of the Republican Party in North Carolina for many years. The General Assembly repealed the Shoffner Act and passed another law designed to grant amnesty to Klansmen. Background Political situation in North Carolina In 1861, the state of North Carolina seceded from the United States and joined other Southern states in forming the Confederate States of America. The Confederacy subsequently fought with the non-seceding states, or Union, during the American Civil War. The conflict caused intense political divisions within North Carolina, as many of its residents, particularly in the mountains and coastal regions, were opposed to the war and maintained Unionist sympathies. Politician William W. Holden unsuccessfully sought election as Governor of North Carolina in 1864 on a "peace platform" which included withdrawing from the war. The Confederacy ultimately lost the war in 1865 and North Carolina reverted to the jurisdiction of the United States. The issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation during the conflict meant that the federal government recognized the freedom of over 330,000 enslaved blacks in North Carolina; this came into effect in most of the state with the end of the war. With the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in December 1865, slavery was formally abolished across the United States. In 1867, the United States Congress passed the Reconstruction Acts, which placed most of the Southern states under military occupation; North Carolina was placed in the Second Military District. The acts also disfranchised many former Confederates, and required states to revise their constitutions to enfranchise freedmen and ratify the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which granted equal citizenship to black people. That year, Holden organized a Republican Party branch within North Carolina with both black and white members. North Carolina Republicans generally favored equal citizenship and civil rights for all persons regardless of race. The opposing Democratic Party,