Sharyn McCrumb - The Ballad of Tom Dooley

When the good captain told me of the incident in Wilkes County, my first thought was how improvident it had been of this Dula fellow to indulge in an act of private violence in such perilous times as these. Surely we had troubles enough in the land, with bushwhackers marauding the country roads, carpetbaggers infesting the new state government, and all manner of profiteering and petty scoundrels at work picking at the carcass of the Old North State for the spoils of war, without some callow young veteran adding a senseless murder to the burden of the populace.

The young woman’s death occurred in May of 1866-we were then only a year past that war that had brought enough carnage to the states comprising the Confederacy to put one in mind of the End of Days. And the accused is a veteran of the 42nd infantry-not one of mine, thank heaven, though I have heard it said that I spent little time with my regiment while I had it, so that I might not even recognize a staff officer, much less a humble private. Still, everywhere I go I am beset by men who claim to have served with me in the War, and I hear them out, smiling and clasping their hands, but mostly I am thinking that if all those who claimed to have fought with the 26th North Carolina had really done so, we could have beaten the Yankees and Napoleon besides.

Captain Allison interviewed the two prisoners when they were first brought in to custody, and so when I arrived in Wilkes County to take nominal charge of the case, I sat down with him on that fine October afternoon, savoring the sunshine and a basket of mountain apples that some well-wisher had bestowed upon me outside the courthouse. Another comrade in arms, no doubt.

I had seen the prisoner for a short while that day, just to introduce myself and to assure him that I would do what I could for him. Do what I could for him. How often that phrase has come to my lips these past five years! When I was Governor, every day’s post brought a heartrending letter from some poor wife or mother, pleading with the all-powerful Governor of North Carolina to release her only son from his regiment, or to let him come home to be tended until his wounds healed. I sent them back what sympathy I could, but the truth was that even governors cannot tell the army what to do, and they would have paid no attention to me had I tried.

Usually the appeals on behalf of soldiers came from poor people in the mountain counties, because they are proud to claim me as one of their own. I know what swallowing of pride it took for these stoic and self-reliant people to ask for help from a powerful stranger, and I shared in their shame-theirs for asking and mine for being powerless to help them. Save a poor enlisted man with no influential family connections? Why, that’s exactly who does die in a war, and everybody knows it-except, I suppose, the friends and family of the poor boy trapped in the thick of it. I doubt that even an emperor could change that fact of life-much less a governor.

That feeling of helplessness in the face of a poor young soldier came back to me as I stood there in the jail in Wilkesboro, echoing that threadbare phrase for the thousandth time. I wonder how many of the grieving wives and mothers actually believed that I could perform a miracle on their behalf. Judging by the polite but wary look on the face of the prisoner, he had no such illusions about my ability to cheat death. I felt sorry for him. Illusions make life bearable.

He was polite to me, a little in awe perhaps of having the former governor come to see him, but he seemed to take no comfort from my empty phrases. Perhaps that would make it easier for both of us when the inevitable verdict came in.

“Why did he do it then?” I asked Captain Allison. I was paring the apple with my little silver knife, but I was no less attentive for that. If I cannot pace, then I think better when I focus on some small task at hand. I could tell by the expression on that careful lawyer face of his what reply was forthcoming, and I held up my hand to forestall it.

“Yes, Allison, I know. Dula is presumed innocent until those twelve scoundrels that comprise the jury say otherwise. We’ll take that as read. But we are not in court now, and there is no one in earshot of this porch to make mischief with our conversation, so just tell me why he is thought to have done it-if that phrasing suits you better.”

I do believe the captain blushed, either at my plain speaking or in contemplation of the answer he would be forced to give to my question. He hemmed and hawed for a bit, looked away, and finally mumbled, “It is woman trouble, Governor.”

I sighed. “We have a new governor in Raleigh now. It might be best to leave off calling me that before the Federals take a notion to haul me back to Capitol Prison for presumptuousness.” I wouldn’t put it past them. “Woman trouble, is it?”

He nodded unhappily. “The accused has a sordid reputation for being unchaste.”

I was glad that my mustache hid the smile I could not quite suppress. “Well, he was a soldier, Allison.”

“So were we all, Gov-er, Mr. Vance. I hope that military service did not cause us to lose the honorable principles we were taught in church and in childhood.”

“Perhaps our client did not acquire those same principles, and surely the women he associated with were not the gentle ladies we are accustomed to.”

Allison shuddered. “I should say they are not. Some of the details of this case… we shall have to clear the court of all female spectators-though why they would wish to attend in the first place, I cannot imagine.”

Well, I could. But I let that pass. “Now what exactly do you mean by woman troubles?”

Captain Allison leaned forward, hand cupped above his lips, and hissed at me, “He has the pox, sir!”

I have the honor to be married to a preacher’s daughter, who was raised in the genteel society of the Morganton planter class, so perhaps he thought I would be as easily shocked as my Harriette by such news, but I grew up in the rough-and-tumble world of the Carolina backcountry, and, after my father died, my family ran a way station for the cattle drovers who passed through Madison County. Between my association with these colorful specimens of humanity, my early career as a country lawyer, and my later years in Congress, I was quite inured to the specter of human iniquity in all its many forms.

I cannot say that I understood the impulse, though.

You might think otherwise, for, as I said, I grew up in the mountains that form Carolina’s border with Tennessee, and many of the frontier folk up there had little use for the social conventions, and I do confess that for a year or two I enjoyed the drinking and the dancing of rough-and-ready Asheville, and I’ll even admit to brawling a time or two, before I came down with the fever of ambition and went to bettering myself through education and mingling in polite society. In those days I lived up to the light I had, but it wouldn’t have been bright enough to read by.

Despite my youthful escapades, the one snare that I never got caught in was a dalliance with unsuitable women. I never let my youth and high spirits blind me to that extent to the road that lay ahead. I was intent on bettering myself, and the road to privilege is best traveled alone until you are almost there.

As pretty and winsome as a frontier girl might be at seventeen, she would have proven a millstone around my neck if I had tried to marry her and drag her, unlettered and unrefined, up to the seats of the mighty, where I was bound and determined to go. I knew better than to risk my future for the momentary pleasure of a youthful romance. I waited until I was accepted to read law with the Woodfin brothers, two prominent attorneys in Asheville, and then I began in earnest the hunt for a suitable bride.