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Impeachment and Conviction

When: December 1870 to March 1871
Where: Raleigh, North Carolina
Part of: William Holden first U.S. governor removed by impeachment

Holden was impeached by the House in December 1870 and convicted by the Senate in March 1871 on six charges related to the Kirk-Holden war.

The North Carolina House impeached Holden on December 14, 1870, following Democratic legislative gains. The Senate convicted him on six of eight charges in party-line votes on March 22, 1871. This removal marked the first time a U.S. state governor was ousted by impeachment.

Sources

William Woods Holden Wikipedia, revision of 2026-08-25
Raleigh, North Carolina Wikipedia, revision of 2026-09-19

Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.