names will be familiar to him, to say the least. It reads like an index of North Carolina history.”
“Mr. Bevins has promised to write a letter accompanying the petition. You see his wife’s name there among the others. Surely this will prove to the governor that all the county desires a pardon for that poor wretched woman.”
“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 Xon 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