The Ballad of Frankie Silver (37 page)

“Not I,” I said. “If the dreadful day comes, I hope I am far away from the site of the execution, and I shall wish to hear nothing whatever about it then or later.”

As I started to cross the threshold into the open air, John Boone called me back. “Mr. Gaither,” he said, “you do realize, don’t you, that as clerk of Superior Court you are the highest-ranking officer of the court in the county?”

“I suppose so,” I said. “Why do you mention it?”

The old sheriff put his hand on my shoulder. “I wondered if you knew that you are the state’s witness to the hanging.”

*   *   *

Late that night, after most of the household had gone to bed, I sat before the fire in the great hall at Belvidere, copying out the confession that I had taken down. I heard the rustle of skirts and the soft patter of slippers on the oak floor. I had hoped that it was Elizabeth, come to keep me company after putting young William to bed, but I saw Miss Mary in the doorway, carrying the decanter of brandy.

“I thought you might need fortification, Mr. Gaither,” she said. “Shall I pour you a glass?”

“Thank you,” I said, without troubling to look up, for I did not wish to lose my place.

She set the glass down beside the candle and poured another for herself, at which point I did look up, but although I raised my eyebrows at this impropriety, I said nothing. “I have come to read the confession,” she said, taking the chair next to my writing table.

I sighed. At dinner that night I had spoken of my visit to the jail, but before anyone could press me further about the details of that meeting, I had changed the subject to talk of a visit to Charlotte, and the squire had come to my aid, steering the conversation away from the distressing subject again and again. I knew, though, from seeing Miss Mary’s thoughtful stare farther down the table, that despite our best efforts at shielding the ladies, I had merely delayed the discussion.

“The document may distress you,” I said.

Miss Mary smiled. “Why, Mr. Gaither,” she said, “I knew that she had killed him. I merely wish to know why.”

Without another word, I handed over the paper and watched as she read my summary of Mrs. Silver’s declaration. Her expression did not change. “I thought it must be something like this,” she said at last. “A simple girl like that could hardly have been roused to murder for anything less. It is not murder, though, is it, Mr. Gaither?”

“Mr. Wilson says that it was clearly a case of manslaughter, if not justifiable homicide. The law realizes that people must defend themselves. Or it should.”

“Yet she was sentenced to death for it.”

“That is so. However, we believe that justice was not served in this case, and we are doing everything in our power to have the judgment set aside.”

I could see from Miss Mary’s expression that she had no doubt that they would carry the day. The Erwins are people of power and influence. They know how to go about these things. They know all the right people in Raleigh, and elsewhere. I was a new member of the family, and I had not the confidence of my new kinsmen.

“People wonder why I have never married,” Miss Mary said, taking another sip of her brandy. “There is too much risk in the venture. A woman is quite at the mercy of a fool or a brute, and one can never know the bargain one has made until it is too late.”

“We are not all such bad lots,” I protested.

Miss Mary smiled. “Not all snakes are poisonous,” she said, “but I leave them all alone just the same.” She took another quill from the pewter pot on the writing table. “Have you many more copies to make? I write a fair hand. Let me help you.”

We spoke very little after that, but sat side by side until the fire burned low, copying the cold words of Frankie Silver’s confession until we knew the phrases by heart.

*   *   *

A few days later, I arrived at Belvidere just before the dinner hour, having escaped the premises for most of the afternoon because an afternoon tea was taking place in the great hall. I had no sooner shaken the dust from my boots than Miss Mary appeared, brisk as ever, and thrust several sheets of paper into my hands. “Just the person I wanted to see,” she informed me. “Read this and tell me what you think.”

I arranged the sheets of paper in order and began to read.

June 29, 1833

To His Excellency David L. Swain:

Governor of the State of North Carolina

Your petitioners are fully sensible of the Delicacy of presenting to you this petition. Yet they Justify themselves by claiming as a duty peculiar to the Sex to be allways on the side of Mercy towards their fellow beings and to the female more particularly.

The subject of this petition is an unfortunate creation of our Sex, Mrs. Francis Silver who was Sentenced by our court to be executed on the last Friday in June, but by your goodness respited until the second Friday in July. We do not expect to refer you to any information in this that you are not already familiarly acquainted with, only it be the treatment the unfortunate creature received during the life of her husband.

We do not refer you to this with a cause of Justification but wish to reiterate the various unfortunate events which have taken place in the world in consequence of the woman’s abuse, indecorous, and insupportable treatment in which the creature now before your Excellency for God’s mercy has, contrary to the law of God & the country, yet so consistent with our nature, been her own avenger.

Hear her own wrongs.

The husband of the unfortunate creature now before you we are informed, Gov., was one of that cast of mankind who are wholly destitute of any of the feelings that is necessary to make a good husband or parent. The neighborhood people are convinced that his treatment of her was both unbecoming and cruel very often and at the time too when female Delicacy would most forbid it he treated her with personal violence.

He was said by all the neighborhood to have been a man who never made use of any exertions to support either his wife or child, which terminated, as is frequently the case, that those dutys nature ordered and intended the husband to perform are thrown to her.

His own relations admit of his having been a lazy, lady-trifling man.

It is admitted by them also that she was an industrious woman, but for the want of Grace, Religion, and Refinement she had committed an act that she herself would have given a world to be able to call back.

We refer you to the child who is an infant and needs the child’s mother. We hope that your Excellency will extend to the unfortunate female all the help you can, even to a pardon, & wipe from the character of the female in this community the Stigma, namely of a woman being hung under the gallows.

Yours sincerely,
Mary E. Erwin

Appended to this carefully wrought document were the signatures of nearly every gentlewoman in the county. I traced my finger down the list: the attorneys’ families were well represented. Thomas Wilson’s wife, Catherine Caldwell Wilson, who is the Erwins’ niece, and Mr. Wilson’s mother, Eunice Worth Wilson, had signed the petition also. The name of my own dear wife Elizabeth was there, as was that of her sisters Delia Erwin and Catherine Gaither, my brother Alfred’s widow. My mother-in-law, Matilda Sharpe Erwin, and her sister Ceceilia Sharpe Erwin had signed the document. There was Martha McEntire Walton, daughter of the innkeeper and wife of Thomas Walton, a landowner and former justice of the Court of Pleas and Quarter Sessions. I saw the name of Jane Tate, a relative of our former sheriff Will Butler, and Goodwin Bousehell, of the Methodist minister’s family. Eliza Grace McDowell, granddaughter of a general and a colonel of the Revolution, had signed the petition, as had her cousins Matilda and Elvira Carson, who are McDowells on their mother’s side, like their cousin Annie Maria McKesson, also listed. Catherine Carson, the young bride of our United States congressman Sam Carson, had added her name and influence to the petition. I fancied that I could feel the paper growing warm in my hands, and I wondered if the governor would be similarly affected. It is true that women do not vote or hold elected office, but if the old adage is true, that “the hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world,” then there were enough imperial hands represented here to turn the firmament upside down. The daughters and granddaughters of governors, and generals, and congressmen, and wealthy landowners, and lawyers, and signers of the Constitution were all arrayed in a force that made me think of ancient Britain’s Queen Boadicea in her war chariot leading the charge against a Roman legion. The respectful request for a political favor was nothing less than a demand, for all its careful phrasing. I did not envy David Lowry Swain his office or his duties that day, or on any day since.

“Well, what do you think?” Miss Mary asked me, when I had set the document aside.

“I hardly know,” I said. “Are there no ordinary women who wish to see the prisoner reprieved? No miller’s wife, or tailor’s daughter?”

Miss Mary had the grace to blush. “Certainly there are,” she replied. “I would hope that every woman in the county and indeed the whole state would wish to see this poor creature saved from an undeserved fate, but time is short, and we had no time to spare for collecting signatures far and wide. Besides, I think these names will carry weight with the governor.”

I nodded. “The names will be familiar to him, to say the least. It reads like an index of North Carolina history.”

“Mr. Bevins has promised to write a letter accompanying the petition. You see his wife’s name there among the others. Surely this will prove to the governor that all the county desires a pardon for that poor wretched woman.”

“Did Mrs. Silver ask you to draft such a letter?”

“No. How could she think of such a thing? She knows nothing whatever about it. In fact, it was Colonel Carson who suggested it.”

“What? Old Huntin’ John?” The colonel was a prominent landowner, and father to our congressman Sam Carson, and I wondered how he came to be dabbling in a backcountry murder case. “What has he to do with it?”

“Poor Mr. Stewart is beside himself with worry over the fate of his daughter, and he appealed to Colonel Carson for advice in the political aspect of the matter.”

I frowned. “I think Mr. Stewart should have considered the political side of the case before he broke his daughter out of jail.” I raised a hand, forestalling their protests of his innocence. “And if he did not do it, he certainly condoned it, and he certainly knows who did.”

“He is a desperate man, Burgess,” said Elizabeth, with a look of genuine, if misspent, concern.

“Her unlawful escape from confinement shows little respect for the law, my dear,” I said sternly. “I am sure that the governor will be less inclined to mercy than he would have been if she had not shown her contempt for North Carolina justice.”

“Why shouldn’t she show contempt for it?” Miss Mary demanded. “She has seen little enough of it. She was condemned at her trial without a chance to tell her side of the story. The State Supreme Court considered the case without having anyone present to speak on her behalf. And now you tell me that Governor Swain will judge her harshly because she refuses to sit obediently in her little cell and wait for them to come and kill her?”

I had no more heart to play devil’s advocate with her, for she voiced my own sentiments—if, that is, a clerk of court were permitted to have any.

*   *   *

In the weeks since Frankie Silver’s escape and return to jail, Burke County had besieged the governor with letters and petitions asking that the prisoner’s life be spared. Colonel Newland continued to press his case, and Mr. Wilson wrote as he had said he would, giving Mr. Swain the details of the prisoner’s confession. Life went on as usual in Morganton, with weddings and christenings and even a fancy dress ball at Bellevue, but inevitably the talk returned to the prisoner chained on the second floor of the jail. What could be done to save her?

On the twenty-first of June a letter arrived from Raleigh via the Buncombe Mail, granting the prisoner a two-week stay of execution. The governor said in his order,
It has been represented to me that the prisoner has been deluded by false hopes of pardon. Now therefore know so that, to the end that further space may be allowed her to prepare for the awful change that awaits her, and by virtue of the power vested in me by the Constitution of North Carolina, I do hereby respite said Frances Silvers until the second Friday in July next.

John Boone showed me the letter, so that as the officer of the court, I might make note of the official change in the schedule.

“Well,” I said, “we have two more weeks to circulate more petitions.”

Boone nodded. “I wonder if it’s a kindness, though, to give the girl hope.”

*   *   *

Mr. Bevins wrote his letter accompanying the ladies’ petition, and even Nicholas Woodfin had come to Burke County to do what he could. Woodfin took one of my copies of the confession, and he spent many days riding through the outlying districts of the county gathering the names of other citizens upon petitions for clemency. I was gratified that Mrs. Silver’s young lawyer should take such trouble on her behalf, long after his duties in the courtroom were done, but I thought his time and influence could have been better spent in other ways.

“Nicholas Woodfin is riding from one homestead to the next up the mountain getting backcountry farmers to put their
X
on a petition to save Frankie Silver. I cannot understand it!” I was holding forth to Squire Erwin as we took a Sunday afternoon ride along the John’s River bottom land that formed one of the boundaries of Belvidere. The plantation runs to nine hundred acres of cultivated land, dotted with smokehouses, sheds, and slave cabins. Beyond that, several thousand more acres of forest and mountain complete the estate, ensuring that William Willoughby Erwin is truly “lord of all he surveys.”

When I said again that I did not understand Woodfin’s behavior in the Silver case, the squire reined in his mare to a slower pace and gave me an appraising stare, as though I were a schoolboy parsing Latin. “What would you have him do?”