 He was the first governor in the United States to be removed from office through impeachment.After the national Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 went into effect in an effort to reduce violence in the South, the U.S. Attorney General, Amos T. Akerman, vigorously prosecuted Klan members in North Carolina.During the late 1870s, there was renewed violence in the Piedmont area, where whites tried to suppress minority black voting in elections.