Seems that once more William W. Holden’s raising something of a ruckus in North Carolina, some 140 years after he was impeached and removed from the governor’s office. For now comes a story (courtesy of ASU graduate student Victoria Jackson) about an effort to grant Holden a pardon (which passed the state senate) on, of all days, April 12, 2011.
Holden had a rather interesting political career, from Whig to Democrat to unionist to Confederate politico to negotiated peace advocate to Andrew Johnson’s provisional governor to a Republican who battled the KKK in North Carolina (resulting in his impeachment and conviction when Democrats gained control of the state legislature. As one might guess, he picked up his share of enemies along the way. Nor was his opposition to the KKK the only reason cited by his foes for his removal from office: they pointed to questions about his role in railroad bond issues and the like, raising the question of corruption. However, it’s hard to deny the role of racism and terrorism in his downfall, even if one suspects that his conversion to black rights was grounded in the politics of pragmatism.
Much like Jefferson Davis, Holden did not seek pardon in his lifetime, believing he had done nothing wrong. And, just as in the case of Davis, someone over a century later decided that it was time to let bygones be bygones.
Not everyone agrees with the decision. Carlton Huffman launched a one-man campaign against it that received some attention. Of course, the cry of political correctness was raised, and let’s leave it at that.
Although I understand the symbolic value of such gestures, I’m not particularly a big fan of them in most cases. I’m more intrigued that Holden remains a figure of controversy among North Carolinians. The debate over the pardon reminds us that it was a divided South as well as a divided Union.
Your thoughts?
I very much agree that these exercises in historical correction should not be wasting the time of legislators. My favorite current one is the efforts to give Cushing a MoH for Gettysburg: neither Holden nor Cushing will be helped by a long posthumous pardon of Medal. However, I suspect if I were a member of the legislature, I would vote in favor — why rile up those who might vote for me. And riling up Mr. Hoffman would be good clean fun!
On the level of the person involved it does seem pointless.
But on other levels officially recognizing past wrongs as wrongs is never a bad thing.
A pardon does imply wrongdoing so maybe overturning the verdict “on appeal” would be a better way to frame it.
It could be argued that there are still problems with Southern perceptions of the sectional conflict because like the Japanese after World War II they were not, the way the Germans were, forced to honestly confront their past because the victors deemed the task inconvenient.
I feel the big difference between the South , the Germans and Japanese after World War II is, up until secession the south and its people were Americans just as the north. Japan and Germany were not. After the war the south became Americans again, both north and south were once again the same country. After WWII Japan and Germany were not. The North and South were all one country and spoke the same language, they were same people . Minus the few secession years both before and after the ACW they were under the same president and same government in Washington . Before WWII Japan and Germany were sovereign countries , one in Europe and one in Asia. After WWI they remained independent from the United Sates, they once again were sovereign countries. A very different situation . After the ACW mutual business alliances and political alliances developed between many in the North and South, we as Americans had to live together in the same country once again, side by side everyday. Lets not forget slavery was a key issue in the south in connection to secession and the ACW , but the key issue in the North was saving the Union. So dragging Reconstruction on and making it much harsher on the south could have turned the US into a ‘Northern Ireland’ or ‘Palestine ‘ type situation. After the ACW the US had bigger fish to fry than to further punish the south. There were railroads to build, coal and other mining to expand, there was a west to conquer and the list goes on and on. I think that type of massive expansion was far more important than the further punishment of some ex-confederates in the south. There was a united empire to build.
I tend to agree with Charles here. The objective of reunion complicated matters in a way that was not evident in the cases of Germany and Japan; on the other hand, there was a security interest that Germany, Japan, and the US shared after WW2, and there really wasn’t such an interest for the former CSA to play ball with the USA occupiers after 1865.
For lack of a better term , I see a Banana Republic mentality interwoven in the south both before and after the war.
Huh? My point was about being forced (or not) to confront your history honestly as a general proposition. The Germans were forced to honestly confront their history; thus, flashing a Nazi salute gets you arrested in Leipzig. The Japanese were not; thus, their at best grudging acknowledgement of Nanking and feeling of victimization over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The South is closer to the latter than the former. You dispute this? If not, what was the point of your responses?
However well the idea plays as a general proposition in the abstract, Charles and I were commenting on why it didn’t happen at the time (or for some time to come). The Japanese example, however, underscores the notion of complicity by the conqueror, as Americans have second-guessed the decision to drop the bombs in a way that I find unsatisfactory given the alternative. Also, in both cases there was no overthrow of the US-supported regimes, whereas clearly there was in the case of Reconstruction … just saying. Whether things should have happened is one debate; why they didn’t happen is another.
This reminds of the recent attempt by former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson to pardon Billy the Kid. Governor Richardson was unsuccessful though.
It would be interesting if someone sought a pardon for John Brown.
That would be, although I’d actually be against it… even though John Brown was on the right side of history in the end.
That’s the way I felt about pardoning William H. Bonney; murder is murder afterall.
Yeah, I tend to agree as well. Southerners were back on the Supreme Court by the 1880s or 1890s I believe, and I think they constituted a majority at some point (at the time of Plessy v. Ferguson – the main dissenter interestingly was from Kentucky). I need to double check this claim though.
Manifest destiny could only take so much time to rectify slavery.
Oops… way off on Southerners making back on to the Supreme Court so soon after the Civil War. There seem to have been just two on the Plessy v. Ferguson court, Justice Harlan and Justice White, and Justice Harlan had been a Federal officer during the Civil War. White seems to have served the Confederacy in some capacity.
So only one ex-Confederate white Southerner on the court for Plessy v. Ferguson.
Several of the justices were, however, war Democrats who faded back into their party ranks after the war. However, a majority of the justices who led the retreat from Reconstruction in the 1870s from the bench were Republicans. Food for thought.
But I don’t accept the view that the North was punishing the South in Reconstruction, nor that it was harsh. Saying they had “bigger fish to fry” seems an acceptance that black disenfranchisement was no big deal. I think it was a big deal, and the South would have seen it as punishment in any case. The cost of the North burying the hatchet with the South and accepting black disenfranchisement was a century of pain for millions of folks.
Have you seen the book “Without Sanctuary”? or read other accounts of the terror campaign in the South? I’m not an emotional person, and I take myself to read at a scholarly distance of evaluation on the CW, but that doesn’t mean I should ignore the facts on the ground for those living at the time in doing so. I can feel the terror and violence of those who suffered it and that is part of my scholarship too. See “Without Sanctuary” and see if it doesn’t make you uncomfortable. US Grant said years after the war that it would have been better if the North had really occupied the South because they wouldn’t have gotten the idea that they could ignore the laws that the war was all about, and Southerners wouldn’t have hated them any more than they already did, which is likely true given the fantastical nature of the claims made by so many Southerners.
Ugh, sorry for the duplication and punctuation errors. I should have done this in a text editor and pasted it in. Editing in a combox sometimes doesn’t go well for me.