“Nicholas Woodfin is riding from one homestead to the next up the mountain getting backcountry farmers to put theirX 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.”
“But four members of the original jury signed her petition.”
“Eight jurors did not sign,” the squire replied. “The governor will go with the majority.”
“But think of all the names on the entreaties to Swain! Think of the ladies’ petition: your wife, and her mother Mrs. Sharpe, Miss Mary, and Mrs. Sam Carson, and all the other gentlewomen in Morganton.”
“Ladies cannot vote. What does it matter what they think?”
“But the governor is acquainted with all of them socially. How can he say no to them without seeming like a brute?”
“That is just what I have been asking myself, Burgess. It is what interests me most about the whole affair. He will have to be very clever about it, to be sure.”
“There has never been a woman hanged before in the state of North Carolina,” I said.
“I daresay that if she were a slave woman you could save her, by pleading that her death would constitute the loss of valuable property to her owner. Then she might be let off with a good flogging. But Frankie Silver is a white woman of no breeding, wealth, or influence. She is of no use to anybody.” The squire turned his back on the mountains and the setting sun. “Time to head for home, I think,” he said. “Unless you’d care to have a look at James’s bull?”
The letters and petitions were duly sent off to Raleigh, and then all Morganton waited anxiously for the official reply, although very few of us doubted that the governor would grant a request so universally favored among the constituency, particularly since a number of prominent people had championed Mrs. Silver’s cause. But the days stretched into weeks, and it came time for preparations to be made for the execution, and still there was no word of reprieve from Raleigh.
“The governor is waiting until the last moment,” people said. “He wants to make a dramatic flourish of his benevolence.” Then they began to worry that he would misjudge the speed of the stagecoach mail delivery, and that the good news would arrive too late to save the prisoner.
At last, though, on Thursday, the eleventh of July, W. C. Bevins received the long-awaited letter. He brought it to me at the courthouse, where I was going over the material pertaining to the duties of a clerk of court in the event of an execution. I had obtained a copy of the death warrant, and I was trying to determine whether there was any set formula by which I should report to the state government that the sentence had been carried out.I have the honor to inform you… did not seem quite apt under the circumstances.
Bevins gave me a stiff bow of greeting and set the letter on the table atop my law books without a word.
Executive Department
Raleigh 9th July 1833
Dear Sir:
I have received your letter without date but postmarked in the 3rd Ins., together with the accompanying Petition of a number of the most respectable ladies of your Vicinity in behalf of the unfortunate Mrs. Silvers, who before this communication can reach you will in all human probability have passed the boundarys which separate us alike from the reproaches of enemies and the sympathies of friends. All that it is now in my power to do, is to unite in the anxious wish, which doubtless pervades the whole community to which she belongs, that she may find mercy in Heaven, which seemed to be necessarily denied upon earth, a free pardon for all the offenses of her life.