The Ballad of Frankie Silver

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 moment 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.