Caswell County Courthouse

A striking example of Victorian architecture, Caswell County Courthouse has served as the seat of county government since its construction in 1861. In addition to its design, the courthouse is known for its association with one of the most infamous murders in the state's history: the assassination of Republican state senator John W. Stephens in the courthouse basement on May 21, 1870. Members of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) killed him in an ambush. This and countless other incidents perpetrated by the KKK, including the lynching of the town of Graham's Black commissioner Wyatt Outlaw on February 26, precipitated an event that became known as the "Kirk-Holden War," which was an 1870 military campaign to quell KKK violence in Caswell and Alamance Counties. The event resulted in the eventually decline of the Republican Party in North Carolina and the impeachment of Governor William W. Holden, who started the campaign. The courthouse was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1973.

Architecture

The courthouse, which is built of brick and covered in stucco, features many decorative elements. These include a cupola, tall arched windows, pilasters (columns) separating the second-floor windows (some of the pilasters are topped with Doric and Corinthian, and others have capitals made of ears of corn and tobacco leaves), and a decorative curved cornice each side of the building.

The building is the county's fourth courthouse. The third courthouse was built in 1833 but was a badly damaged in a fire in 1857. The county briefly considered repairing it but ultimately decided to build the current one. Modern county government buildings have been built and are located a block away to the north.

Kirk-Holden War (July-November 1870)

The South was still reeling from the effects of the Civil War in the late 1860s. Tension existed between whites who desperately wanted to improve their economic standing and those who wanted to assimilate former enslaved Blacks into society. Many whites were white supremacists who vehemently opposed these policies and did not believe Blacks should have equal rights. In North Carolina, the Conservative Party became the voice of whites who held these views.

To further their cause, many of these individuals joined the KKK, which emerged in North Carolina in 1868 and became a major force of violence and intimidation (beatings, whippings, torture, murder, and threatening others with death) by 1869. Most of the KKK's activity occurred in the north-central part of the state, where the population was mostly white. However, many whites and nearly all of the Blacks in the region voted for Republicans. Conservative whites saw this alliance of Blacks and whites as a political threat. This is why the KKK focused its attention in the region.

Wyatt Outlaw:

In the late 1860s going into 1870, the KKK perpetrated a campaign of continuous violence, which included the lynching of Wyatt Outlaw (1820-1870) and the assassination of John W. Stephens (1834-1870). Outlaw, whose father was a white plantation owner and whose mother was one of the owner's slaves, was a prominent and well-respected figure in the county. For most of his life he was enslaved and ended up in Alamance County, where he escaped and joined the Union Army during the Civil War.

After the war, Outlaw became a carpenter for the N.C. Railroad in the town of Company Shops (now the city of Burlington) and then opened a shop in the town of Graham in 1867. By the late 1860s, Outlaw had become a local leader of the Republican Party and an obvious target for whites and the KKK (some Blacks also criticized him for not advocating for violent measures against whites). On the night of February 26, 1870, around 60-80 KKK hooded members arrived at Outlaw's house on horseback and seized him. They lynched him on a tree just 20 to 30 yards away from the Alamance Courthouse. None were tried for Outlaw's murder.

John Walter Stephens:

Stephens was born in Guilford County. By the time he arrived in Yanceyville in 1866, he had worked as a tobacco trader for a number of years. He became an agent of the Freedmen's Bureau, which was the federal agency tasked with assimilating freed slaves into society, and an active member of the Republican Party. Stephens interacted with many local Blacks, who considered him a political ally. They helped elect Stephens, who was a moderate and advocated against retaliation against whites, to the state senate in 1868. Many local whites hated him and his church expelled him. On May 21, 1870, Stephens was at the Caswell County Courthouse where a Democratic convention was being held. He was there to try to persuade a local Democrat, Frank Wiley, to run for reelection as a Republican. However, Wiley lured Stephens into a basement room where Klansmen were waiting ambush. They stabbed him to death and left him there where he was found the next day.

In response to these murders and the continued KKK violence, in June Governor Holden appointed a former Union general named George Kirk to assemble a militia to stop the violence and restore law and order in Alamance and Caswell Counties. Holden also declared a state of martial law and suspended the writ of habaes corpus in the counties. The campaign began in July when Kirk and his men arrived in Yanceyville. Over the course of the next several weeks, Kirk arrested around 100 men, including respected community members. Holden also ordered Kirk to ignore the writ, which the state supreme court had granted in some cases of the men who were arrested.

Holden disbanded the militia in September but in November declared a state of insurrection in both counties. Kirk, who was under constant threat of arrest, turned himself in to a U.S. marshall and was transported to Raleigh. There, he was released quietly and went back home to Tennessee. In the state legislature, the Democrats had gained control in the August election. In December, the legislature, now under Conservative control, impeached Holden, who became the first governor to be convicted and removed from office, which occurred in March 1871.

The campaign against the KKK was not a war; no battles were fought. But Conservatives used the term "war" to mislead the public into believing that Holden was attacking law-abiding citizens for political gain. As a result, this convinced many whites to blame the campaign on Holden rather than the KKK. The use of "war" was also meant to remind whites of the painful memories of the Civil War and the feelings of resentment toward the North and the Republican Party. Ultimately, the Kirk-Holden War contributed significantly to the failure of Reconstruction in North Carolina.

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Brisson, Jim D. "The Kirk-Holden War of 1870 and the Failure of Reconstruction in North Carolina." Thesis, University of North Carolina, Wilmington, 2010. http://dl.uncw.edu/Etd/2010-3/brissonj/jimbrisson.pdf.

"Caswell County Courthouse." National Park Service - National Register of Historic Places Nomination Form. June 4, 1973. https://files.nc.gov/ncdcr/nr/CS0001.pdf.

Hill, Michael. "Kirk-Holden War." NCPedia. 2006. https://www.ncpedia.org/kirk-holden-war.

"Kirk-Holden War (1870)." Caswell County Historical Association. Accessed July 16, 2021. https://sites.rootsweb.com/~ncccha/memoranda/kirkholdenwar.html.

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