Murder In The Old Courthouse A True Event From Reconstruction Days

Preface

First told five decades after the fact and through the eyes of a 92-year old Confederate veteran, who was the last living pculprit, this  is a true-to life tale of conspiracy, murder and political intrigue.  His “deathbed” confession put to rest a political assassination, which had haunted North Carolinians for sixty-five years.
The old man often recalled that during the Reconstruction Era, none of the “carpetbaggers” was more infamous than Albion W. Tourgee of New York.  In the days following General Lee's surrender at Appomattox Courthouse, he came to Guilford County, North Carolina with nothing but the clothes on his back and idealistic dreams in his mind.
His sole intention was to elevate the newly freed Negroes to full citizenship.  The major follower in his drive was John W. “Chicken” Stephens, an expatriate from Rockingham County, so named for allegedly stealing two chickens.  The two men soon arrive in neighboring Caswell County and begin organizing freedmen, an activity that infuriated local residents.  Chief among them were Captain John G. Lea, Captain James T. Mitchell and former Sheriff Frank Wiley.
Political turncoat William W. Holden aligned himself with Tourgee and together, the two men formed the Republican Party in North Carolina. At the same time, fiery and radical newspaper editor Josiah Turner Jr. began a campaign of hate and intimidation designed to bring Tourgee and Holden to their knees. 
After Tourgee and his fellow Republicans swept the 1868 elections, a group of shadowy nightriders calling themselves to Invisible Knights of the Ku Klux Klan appear in Caswell County and elsewhere in North Carolina.  Operating with full impunity and under the nose of local authorities, they kidnap, beat and even kill Negroes.  
Tourgee and Stephens counter the Ku Klux with violence of their own and everything comes to a climax on the morning of May 21, 1870.  The stone-cold body of Stephens is discovered in an unused plunder room of the Caswell County Courthouse with a rope twisted tightly around his neck and three stab wounds in his chest and throat
The assassination of "Chicken" Stephens becomes the most sensational crime in North Carolina history and the State, led by Tourgee and Holden, spared no expense in bringing his murderers to justice.  Their efforts culminated in a probable cause hearing before the North Carolina Supreme Court, but not even one suspect ever is convicted and held accountable.  
Despite intensive scrutiny, the identities of Stephens' assassins remained a closely-guarded secret until October of 1935.  The “deathbed” confession of the dying Confederate veteran is finally unsealed in Raleigh and the names of the murderers become known to an awaiting public.