the violence, telling the body, "Numerous complaints have been made to me of violence and mob law in certain counties, by parties who ride at night armed and disguised [...] injuring, insulting, and punishing inoffensive whites and colored persons." Holden thought that a revised law would ameliorate victims' fears and would protect black and white Republicans from Klan assaults. State Senator T. M. Shoffner of Alamance County introduced a bill to Holden's request on December 16, titled "An Act to Secure the Better Protection of Life and Property". Its provisions empowered the governor to suspend the writ of habeas corpus, declare a state of insurrection "whenever in his judgement the civil authorities in any county are unable to protect its citizens in the enjoyment of life and property", and request the assistance of federal authorities if state militia proved insufficient. Conservatives in the legislature delayed passage of the bill—dubbed the Shoffner Act—and particularly objected to the provision for the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, suggesting it was unconstitutional. The provision was removed and the act was passed into law in January 1870. The Klan was affronted by the law and several Alamance Klansmen plotted to kill Shoffner at his home. The plan dissolved after Shoffner was tipped off and went elsewhere, but he continued to receive death threats and eventually fled to Indiana. Klansmen in Moore also proposed the assassination of Holden during this time. Prelude Klan violence in Alamance County and the murder of Wyatt Outlaw Klan violence in the Piedmont worsened after the passage of the Shoffner Act. Early in the morning on February 26, about 100 masked Klansmen rode to Graham, Alamance County, and abducted Wyatt Outlaw, a town commissioner and leading black figure in the county's Republican Party chapter. They hanged him in the courthouse square and pinned a note to his body, reading "Beware, you guilty, both white and black." That evening Klansmen visited the Alamance home of black Republican Henry Holt. Holt was not there, but the Klansmen told his wife that he should leave the area or face the same fate as Outlaw. Holt promptly fled the county. Less than two weeks later another black man, William Puryear, was found dead in a millpond tied down to a rock. Puryear, who was mentally disabled, had claimed to have followed two of Outlaw's killers to their homes and identified them. Graham Republican