Sharyn McCrumb - The Ballad of Frankie Silver

“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?”

“Why, he should write to the governor, of course! It seems that everybody in Morganton with the means to a goose quill has dispatched a letter to Raleigh. Why doesn’t Nicholas Woodfin do the same? Surely he has the most influence with David Swain. He clerked under him in Asheville not three years ago!”

“And you think that the governor would grant Nick Woodfin a great political favor because the man once clerked under him?” William Willoughby Erwin smiled. “Why should he?”

“Why, because they are associates. Because Woodfin is known to him, and so his word may be given higher value than that of well-meaning strangers not known to the governor.”

The old man shrugged. “Politics is a form of commerce, Burgess. Never forget that. I assure you that our young governor does not forget it for one moment. What would it profit David Swain to grant a favor to a young pup of a lawyer from Asheville?”

“Why, it would be an act of kindness, a courtesy such as one gentleman shows to another,” I protested.

“Too much charity bankrupts commerce. I think young Woodfin knows that he has no claim upon the governor as far as favors go. He thinks that by getting the names of a few hundred voters upon a piece of paper, he may enable his mentor to see the benefit of reaching a popular decision regarding the Silver case. Grateful voters count for more than happy young lawyers.”

“So you think that the petitions will save her?”

“No. She will not be saved.” William Willoughby Erwin turned his horse away from the river and set forth on his customary path to the western end of his estate, from which he could see the afternoon sun gilding the western mountains in soft, lambent light. After a few moments’ contemplative silence, the squire said, “What do you think of James’s new bull? Have you seen him yet?”

I was not to be diverted by this change of topic. The minutiae of farming hold no interest for me. When I build a home of my own, it will be in the town, and the few horses that I’ll own for carriage and saddle use will be boarded in the livery stable. Bull, indeed, I thought. “So you think all our efforts are in vain? Mrs. Silver will not get her reprieve?”

The squire shrugged. “I wouldn’t give her one.”

I turned to stare at him. In all the months that had passed since the trial, I thought I had heard everyone I knew expressing outrage about the Silver verdict, and half the county seemed to be going to great lengths to keep the girl from being hanged. I had never suspected my father-in-law’s indifference to her fate. I was so startled that I could hardly speak. “But-but-have I not told you of her confession? She killed him in self-defense, and to save their child!”

“So she says now, Burgess. She has had a good many months to learn legal subtleties from the likes of Thomas Wilson and my daughter Mary. The fact remains that this frail and ignorant young woman cut the body of her husband into a score of pieces and hid them away. Add to that the fact that she escaped from jail and managed to elude her captors for eight days, and that she will not say who assisted her in the escape. I see no injured mountain dove in need of the protection of the state, Burgess. I see a cold and resourceful woman, who will make use of whatever comes to hand, be it influential but trusting young ladies or the key to her jail cell.” He eyed me thoughtfully. “No doubt Frances Silver is very pretty, but I am past caring about that sort of thing.”