Sharyn McCrumb - The Ballad of Frankie Silver

My mind was on other matters, I suppose. I was thinking of the baby’s cough, and of whether my old black coat would see me through another season, and I was wondering whom I should be put next to at dinner this evening, for I was too tired for sparkling inanities with the ladies or the sober political doomsaying of my elders. “John Sevier,” I said, to show that I was listening. I barely glanced at Sheriff Boone, for I was anxious to begin the evening, if only to see it over with. “A hero of the Battle of King’s Mountain. Sevier was a fine, bold fellow, and a patriot.”

“Perhaps too bold,” said the sheriff. “But I believe he was a good man nonetheless.”

I nodded. There were those who said that Sevier had been too cruel in his treatment of the Indians, but I hardly thought that John Boone would be concerned about such matters some thirty years after the fact. Then I recalled that Sevier had run off with another man’s wife over in Tennessee, and I wondered if the sheriff was hinting at some domestic trouble of his own as yet undreamed of by his neighbors. Surely not! Not wishing to hear treacly confidences from this somber old fellow, I eased the subject along a new path. “John Sevier. Indeed, sir, Old Nolichucky Jack was a credit to this country, whatever his personal faults, but, Sheriff, I believe that if we talk of the region’s favorite sons, surely it is your uncle whose fame has spread throughout the world, and whose star will burn the brightest and longest in memory. Rightly so.”

John Boone blushed and nodded. The sheriff is the nephew of the great pioneer Daniel Boone, but he himself is a kindhearted and modest man, not much given to boasting about his lineage, and I wondered what had prompted his musings on long-dead heroes. I made one or two other inconsequential remarks praising the pathfinder of Kentucky, to which he made little reply, and then I took my leave of the sheriff. I left him standing in the twilight, and now that I think back on it, the old fellow looked as if he had something more to say to me but didn’t quite know how to begin. I left him thus, with his piece unsaid.

I realize now, of course, what had put the thought of John Sevier into his head. It was not Sevier’s exploits in the Revolution that John Boone had been thinking of, nor of his elopement with Susannah Tipton, but a later incident, much closer to home. Nearly fifty years ago-before the time of Sheriff Boone and myself, but an incident still talked about-John Sevier and his supporters had wanted the mountain country to rid itself of North Carolina’s ownership. He had ample justification for this, I am sure, because North Carolina had been willing to cede the western lands to the federal government in payment of its war debt from the Revolution. We are a neglected section of the state even to this day. The State of Franklin was formed from the eastern counties of what is now Tennessee, and Sevier became its governor. Four years later the bold endeavor to form a new state collapsed in political infighting, and in 1788 the state of North Carolina sent a party of armed men to arrest John Sevier, to be tried on a charge of treason.

He was brought in chains over the mountains to Morganton-a sad plight for one of the great leaders in our war for independence. The sheriff of Burke County at the time, William Morrison, had served with Sevier at King’s Mountain, and he was appalled that his old commander should be treated thus by order of the craven politicians in Raleigh. Sheriff Morrison struck off the prisoner’s chains, and granted him bail so that he might remain in Morganton, but not under lock and key, awaiting trial. The bond money was put up by the grandfathers of Eliza Grace McDowell. These old soldiers, Charles and Joseph McDowell, were themselves brothers, and also brother officers of John Sevier’s, one a colonel and the other a general in the Revolution.

Sevier must have had powerful enemies in North Carolina government, or perhaps the politicians merely wished to make an example of anyone who would question the state’s authority. They meant to hang John Sevier, right there in Morganton, but that faithful old soldier-turned-sheriff William Morrison would have none of it. Before the court could be convened, word went out to John Sevier’s son that his father was at liberty within the town, but in peril of his life come the trial date. By and by, Sevier’s brother and his son John Jr. rode into town with some of his supporters, leading Sevier’s favorite saddle horse. Young Sevier found his father in the tavern with his old comrades, the McDowells of Quaker Meadows. “I’ve come to take my father home, sirs,” the young man told his father’s companions.

The McDowells wished John Sevier Godspeed, and they watched him ride off with his faithful friends toward the Yellow Mountain Road, which would take them at last into Tennessee and away from the jurisdiction of the state of North Carolina. No posse ever set out to bring them back. Nothing more was ever done by the sheriff of Burke County or by the state of North Carolina to prosecute John Sevier. Indeed, in the autumn of the very next year, Sevier was elected to the North Carolina Senate, and he took his place in that august body and was present when the legislators voted to reinstate his rank of brigadier general. It was as if he had never been a shackled prisoner and the object of North Carolina’s vengeance.

Surely that was the incident in John Sevier’s life that John Boone had been thinking of-not the war, not the attempt to secede from North Carolina, not the incident with the Tennessee lady, but the escape from the Burke County jail. The successful, unpursued escape from the very jail that Sheriff John Boone was now sworn to guard. Sometimes justice can best be served by avoiding the process of the law.

Frankie Silver escaped from jail that night.

Many stories were put about as to how she was able to flee, and I cannot say with any certainty which story is true. Everyone agreed that intruders had entered the building through a basement window and had unlocked the cell by means of a key. It seemed to have been done in stealth, for there was no battle between guards and rescuers. The most fanciful storytellers claimed that Frankie Silver’s brother Jack had made a wax impression of the lock of her cell door, and that he carved a key that would fit that lock, but I have never put much faith in that tale myself. I think-though I should never dream of saying it, much less trying to prove it-that a kind and scrupulous man could not bear the thought of hanging that poor, friendless little girl, and so, taking his text from the example of his predecessor Sheriff William Morrison, this gentleman left his own keys where the friends of the prisoner might get at them and thus spirit her away-perhaps, like John Sevier, to Tennessee, and then onward to the great empty Western lands, where she could disappear forever, beyond the reach of North Carolina’s terrible revenge. Or justice. Call it what you will.

The next morning word of Frankie Silver’s escape spread around the county as fast as a horse could run. I was sitting peacefully at the breakfast table when a commotion in the hall alerted us to the presence of an urgent visitor, and one of the young constables burst in past the servant to tell me the news. I set down my cup and stared at the fellow. He fairly danced on the handwoven rug in his muddy boots, rifle in hand, and he had not even remembered to take off his hat when the servant let him in the front door. “She’s fled in the night, Mr. Gaither!” he said, and his eyes were bright with excitement as if he were announcing a fox-hunting party rather than a grim search for a killer. “Frankie Silver has broke out of jail!”

I stared at him for one stricken moment, thinking a dozen thoughts at once. Finally I managed to say, “Was anyone hurt in the escape?”