The Ballad of Frankie Silver

by Sharyn McCrumb

  Among the onlookers I saw old men selling meat pies and cups of cider from a stone jug. The termgala comes from gallows, and now I saw the truth of that word used to describe festivities. Most of those present did not know the prisoner or the victim, perhaps they did not even know the details of the case, but they were happy to have the monotony of their dreary lives broken by a spectacle, however tragic its outcome.

  The summer sun beat down on me, and flies buzzed around the tail of my mare, and I realized that I was thirsty. I dabbed at my forehead with a linen handkerchief and vowed silently that my tongue would blacken and burst before I would take cider from those merry scavengers with their tin cups.

  More people streamed into the meadow, and I knew that the sheriff’s procession must be near. I saw James Erwin break away from the others and canter toward me across the grass. He guided his great bay horse alongside mine. “At least we’ve a clear day for it,” he said, waving his straw hat at the clustering mayflies. “I thought the heavens themselves would open up for this travesty.”

  “So they should,” I said. “This woman does not deserve to hang.”

  A great roar went up from the crowd as the wooden cart rolled up the dirt path and lumbered across the field. We moved our mounts closer to the oak tree, ready to offer assistance if any were needed. From the top of Damon’s Hill, one can see all of Morganton spread out like a child’s toy village, and I turned away from the scene in the meadow to look at the deserted streets below.

  James Erwin was watching me. “There will be no rider,” he said.

  He was right. There was not. The dusty streets were as empty and silent as if it were midnight. My last hope was gone.

  The cart was positioned beneath the oak tree now, and a deputy tossed one end of the rope over the thickest limb, a great log of a branch about twelve feet above the ground. It took him two tries to get the rope across it, and he suffered the jeers of the crowd for his clumsiness, though I doubted if those that mocked him could have done it any better.

  James Erwin nudged me then, and nodded toward the crowd grouped closest to the cart. Isaiah Stewart and his son Jackson had shoved their way to a position near the prisoner, but a constable had stationed himself beside them, and I saw no sign of weapons. Frankie Silver saw them, but she made no move to embrace her father or brother, and her expression had not softened. She was dry-eyed and so were they.

  The sheriff had taken one end of the rope and was making the noose: seven loops and a slipknot at the top of them. The softened rope was still greasy with mutton tallow, and flies kept alighting on the length of it. John Boone swatted them away. Tears streamed down his cheeks, and I think he was struck by the indignity of the poor creature’s last minutes on earth. I was glad that someone wept for her.

  At last all was in readiness. The people swarmed closer to the cart for a better look, and the lawmen shooed them away again like mayflies. They will want a piece of the rope for a keepsake.

  Gabe Presnell took hold of the horse’s halter to steady the cart, for the animal was frightened by the crush of people around it.

  A minister who had approached the cart laid his hand upon Mrs. Silver’s shoulder and spoke to her in an urgent undertone. I knew that he was beseeching her to confess her sins, so that she might be forgiven and be spared the fires of hell in the Hereafter. She made him no reply, however, and a moment later he began to pray aloud in a sonorous voice. “Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy loving kindness…”

  “The fifty-first Psalm,” muttered James Erwin. “The Tyburn Hymn, it’s called, because they always said it over the condemned at the scaffold in London.”

  “… Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God…”

  Frankie Silver was pale, and her breath was coming in great gulps, but she seemed unmoved by the oration. She looked at the sky. Perhaps her thoughts were elsewhere, and the intonations of the minister were a fly buzz among the roar of the crowd.

  “… For thou desirest not sacrifice; else would I give it: thou delightest not in burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart…”

  Someone shouted, “Get on with it!” and others in the crowd took up the chant.

  A few moments later the parson stepped away from the prisoner’s side, and Sheriff Boone clambered into the cart and motioned for Mrs. Silver to rise. She swayed for an instant as she got to her feet, and one of the deputies took a length of rope and bound her hands to her sides. The sheriff, his furrowed face still streaked with tears, untied the black poke bonnet and removed it from her head. The crowd gasped to see that the prisoner’s blond hair had been cropped as short as a boy’s. It could not be allowed to entwine in the rope, which might have caused her more pain, but nonetheless it was a final indignity, and I grieved to see her shamed so.

  The sheriff slipped the noose over her head and tightened it, placing the knot on the left side of her neck.

  “Frances Stewart Silver,” he intoned, “it is my duty as sheriff of Burke County, North Carolina, to carry out the sentence handed down by Judge Henry Seawall of the Superior Court, that you be taken to the place of execution, and therein hanged by the neck until you are dead. And-” His voice faltered for a moment. He took a deep breath and managed to say, “And may God have mercy on your soul. Have you any last words?”

  She had not been able to speak in court. She had kept her silence for the long months after the trial. Even those few of us who had heard her confession had not heard all of it, for she would not talk about the cutting up of Charlie Silver’s body, nor would she speak of her ill-starred escape from the county jail. This was her last chance. Her last chance, too, to make her peace with Almighty God so that she might be received into paradise. Many a highwayman confessed his guilt upon the scaffold for fear of torments in the Hereafter. Surely this poor creature would do no less.

  She nodded, and took a step away from John Boone, toward the surging crowd, who suddenly fell silent, for she had begun to speak. “Good people… I…”

  “Die with it in you, Frankie!”

  Isaiah Stewart’s voice rang out across the meadow. The words were a harsh command, and for a moment they hung there in the air, echoing in that charged silence, and then the roar from the spectators resumed louder than ever.

  Frankie Silver hesitated for a moment, and a look passed between her and her father. He stared at her, stern-faced, arms crossed, waiting.

  She stepped back and nodded to John Boone that she was ready. He was weeping openly now, but she was calm, and I’d like to think that her thoughts were on the Queen of Scots, whose story I had told her that morning, and how that Stuart woman had died bravely and with the dignity of a queen.

  “The father has silenced her,” said James Erwin, after a startled silence. “Where was he when the Silver boy was murdered?”

  “Miles away,” I replied. “In Kentucky, on a long hunt.”

  “So he cannot be guilty.Then what did he not want her to say? ”

  I shook my head. Frankie Silver would take her secret to the grave. It was little enough to let her keep.

  She stood there trembling in her white linen dress, with her hands roped to her sides. They slipped a white cloth hood over her head, so that the eager spectators could not revel in her death agonies. A man on the ground took hold of the end of the rope which dangled from the low branch, lashing it securely to the trunk of the oak.

  “I cannot watch this,” said James Erwin.

  Before I could reply, he had turned his horse and trotted away. He passed behind the crowd, and by the time he reached the edge of the meadow, the bay was in full gallop, and a moment later he had vanished from sight.

  So I was left alone: the state’s official witness, there to see that the will of the people of North Carolina was done as the governor wished it done. They stood her up until the rope was taut, and then someone took hold of the horse’s bridle and led it away, so that the cart was no longer beneath the prisoner. For a mo
ment her tiny feet had teetered on the edge of the cart, and then they dangled in the air above the grass of Damon’s Hill. The crowd gave a great shout when they saw her struggle at the end of the rope, swaying gently amid a circle of mayflies.

  And I had to watch.

  I am afraid now. I count my breaths, knowing how few are left to me. But deep underneath the pounding terror is a disbelief that I am bound to die. I cannot see the way of leaving this world, and I cannot imagine the next one. If I am to go to hell, then where is Charlie Silver? And if we should meet in paradise, will there be forgiveness between us? On your head be this, Charlie, for you are the one who made all of it happen. I reckon you have paid for it dear enough, though, and if God has pardoned you, then I will.

  I wonder if there are mountains in heaven. The preacher talks of the city of God, but even if it is peopled with angels, I don’t want to go there. I am done with walls. I shall camp in God’s wilderness, where it is always summer. Then I will truly be home.

  I hope that when they stand me up high with the rope around my neck, they will let me turn toward the mountains. I would like to see them one last time. My Nancy is up there. It’s all right if she forgets me, if she is happy in days to come. Let her be happy.

  I cannot think about my Nancy anymore. I mean to die like a soldier.

  They meant to be kind this morning. John Boone kissed my forehead and said that he would see me in heaven, and dear Sarah Presnell brought me pie as I was leaving on the cart. “I made the hood that will cover your head,” she whispered to me as she placed the pastry in my hand. “I soaked it in lavender water, so that when you can see no more, you will still have the smell of flowers to keep up your courage. Take a deep breath.”

  Yes, a last deep breath. But at least it will smell of flowers.

  The earnest young lawyer also tried to comfort me. He told me tales about a queen whose name was the same as mine, but what do I know of queens and far-off castles? What does that tell me about what it will be like to die here, in a field in Burke County? It is terrible not to know what is coming. The white dress told me. Perhaps Miss Mary meant it as a sign to me, and if so I understood, and then I was no longer afraid. I put on the clean white dress, and at last I knew where I was going.

  I remembered what was going to happen.

  You dress yourself in a white robe, and you go with your kinfolk to the gathering place on the bank of a river. The preacher comes and stands at your side. He says words over you… I have done this before… and a great congregation of people is there to witness the change in you… The minister puts his hand on your head, and he plunges you downward into the river of death, and you float there for what seems like forever with your lungs bursting for a gulp of air. At last it is over, and when you rise up again, you will be glad, and free, and purified. And then you will walk with God.

  And then you will walk with God.

  At last-at long last-it was over, and they cut her down. Her little head fell forward upon her breast, and they laid her on the ground, while Dr. Tate felt her pulse for signs of life. There were none. We had seen the life go out of her, though it went slowly, and the sight was so harrowing that the great loutish crowd were themselves reduced to tears. I hope they were sorry they had come.

  The body of Frankie Silver was given to her father and brother, with the hood still mercifully covering her face with its staring eyes and protruding tongue. Still stone-faced and silent, the Stewarts wrapped the tiny form in a blanket and laid it in the back of their wagon. They were heading back up the mountain, they said, to bury Frankie with her own people on Stewart land. But it is July, and the breathless heat makes the flies relentless. Forty miles up mountain is a long journey with a lifeless body in high summer. I think they must have buried her secretly that night somewhere along the Yellow Mountain Road, and it saddens me to think that she lies alone, so far from her loved ones. But she is at peace now in her fine white dress, and she is well away from Charlie Silver, so perhaps she is glad after all.

  That night I went to James Erwin’s home and sat in silence by his fireside, drinking his brandy and not setting out for home until I was sure that Belvidere would be in darkness, and all the ladies long asleep.

  Burgess Gaither

  AFTERWARD

  After the death of Frankie Silver, I continued in my position as clerk of Superior Court for four more years, after which I went into private practice. My career had prospered, and I like to think that my ability had as much to do with my success as my family connections. Perhaps I never really felt at home in Morganton society, but I learned well enough how to act the part, and there were times when I went so far as to forget that I was an outsider in the ranks of the aristocracy. My family was as good as any of theirs, but the wealth was lacking. After two generations, the lack of a fortune removes one from polite society, so I took care that I should acquire one, for I had my sons to think of.

  I represented Burke County in the State Senate in 1840-41, and at the end of that time President Tyler honored me with the appointment of superintendent of the United States Mint in Charlotte. Two years later, I returned to the State Senate, and this year, 1851, I ran for the United States Congress. I lost, though, to Thomas Clingman, so perhaps I shall return to the state legislature next year, if the good people of Burke see fit to send me back.

  Despite the time I have spent at the Mint in Charlotte, and with the legislature in Raleigh, Morganton continues to be my home. A dozen years ago I built a little house on North Anderson Street. It is a one-story Greek Revival-style house, designed by Mr. Marsh of Charlotte, nothing as grand as Belvidere, of course, but it has a fine pedimented entrance porch supported by fluted Doric columns, and it is quite suitable for a town-dwelling attorney of modest means and no pretensions to aristocracy. I shall be happy to spend the rest of my days in that house, when I am no longer called upon to serve the citizenry with duties elsewhere.

  Old Squire Erwin died in 1837, two years before his granddaughter Delia was born to Elizabeth and me. So now we have two sons, William and Alfred, to carry on the names of our departed loved ones, and our darling Delia, who is a proper little lady like her mother.

  I saw Nicholas Woodfin from time to time after the trial of Frankie Silver, of course, for we were brother attorneys in the same district, and our paths were bound to cross both professionally and socially, for he, too, was a Whig in politics. He had prospered in the years since I first knew him. He is a shirttail relative now, for he married Miss Eliza Grace McDowell of Quaker Meadows, my wife’s cousin, and though they make their home in Asheville, we see them from time to time.

  Woodfin served in the State Senate the year after I left it, but his true renown was as an eloquent trial attorney. By tacit agreement, we did not speak of his first capital case for many years thereafter. I think he was ashamed of his failure to secure a pardon for his client, and I think he was genuinely grieved and blamed himself for her tragedy. Since then, I have heard many of our fellow attorneys remark on the curious fact that Nicholas Woodfin refused to represent clients who were on trial for their lives. I thought I knew the reason why.

  It was nearly twenty years after the case of Frankie Silver that we met again under circumstances that called to mind the events surrounding our first encounter.

  In November 1851, William Waightstill Avery, a prominent fellow attorney and my own nephew by marriage, was charged with murder.

  Waightstill was a student in college at the time of the trial of Frankie Silver, which made him nine years younger than I, and I had always considered myself an older relative rather than a comrade. He was the son of my wife’s eldest sister Harriet, who had married Isaac Thomas Avery of Swan Ponds. Young Waightstill, who was named after his paternal grandfather, North Carolina’s first attorney general, was a clever and hardworking fellow who had graduated as valedictorian of his class at the state university in Chapel Hill. He went on to read law with Judge William Gaston, qualifying to practice in 1839, the year tha
t I was elected to represent Burke County in the North Carolina State Senate. In 1851, at the time of his trial, Waightstill had just completed a second term representing Burke County in the North Carolina House of Commons. He was thirty-five years old.

  The tragedy that led to his being charged with murder began eighteen days earlier, when Waightstill Avery was arguing a civil case in the McDowell County Superior Court. He was representing a McDowell County man named Ephraim Greenlee, a former client of attorney Samuel Fleming of Marion. Greenlee was accusing Fleming of fraud in connection with some disputed property, and during the course of arguing the case, Waightstill Avery blamed Sam Fleming for the disappearance of a will that was relevant evidence in the matter. I am not sure whether he was arguing that Fleming was careless, incompetent, or deliberately concealing the pertinent documents for his own gain, but one interpretation is scarcely better than the other when a lawyer’s reputation is at stake.

  Fleming took exception to this slur on his skills as an attorney, for, of course, he denied any blame in the matter. Fleming was a tall, red-faced fellow with a thatch of auburn curls and a fiery temper to match. He towered over young Waightstill Avery, quivering with indignation and shouting that he’d have satisfaction for this insult to his honor.

  Avery took this for the usual legal bravado that one hears bandied about in the law courts, but this time he had misjudged his opponent, with fatal consequences. When court was adjourned, Avery gathered up his papers and left the courthouse, but when he got outside, he saw that Samuel Fleming was waiting in the street for him, shouting abuse and brandishing a rawhide horsewhip in a threatening manner, while the north wind whipped his cape about him, making him look like an avenging devil. There’s those who would say that’s exactly what he was. Sam Fleming was not rich in friendships.