TheShoffner Act was astatute intended to restore order inNorth Carolina counties whereKu Klux Klan (KKK) violence raged.
Introduced byAlamance County Republican senator T. M. Shoffner, the Shoffner Act, which was passed by theNorth Carolina General Assembly in 1870, empowered the governor to suspendhabeas corpus and use the statemilitia.[1] Theact was astatute intended to restore order inNorth Carolina counties whereKu Klux Klan (KKK) violence raged.
Local indignation over the Klan's excesses caused GovernorWilliam W. Holden to declareAlamance andCaswell counties to be in a state of insurrection and invoked the Shoffner Act, and brought in Colonel George Kirk to restore order; the acts of Colonel Kirk's troops to end Klan terrorism came to be known as theKirk-Holden War.[2]
Senator Shoffner was burned in effigy in several counties,[3] and the KKK unsuccessfully tried several times to kill him.[4] To escape revenge by Klansmen against him, he and his family fled toHendricks County, Indiana.[5]
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