Second Hanging In Scott County

The following story was written for the Gate City Herald in the early part of the 20th Century:

It was the second execution by judicial decree that the people of Scott County ever witnessed and the first I ever saw.

There was no delay in the court proceedings at the May term. The late Col. Henry A. Morison was Commonwealth's attorney and trial Judge Col.

Samuel V. Fulkerson. The very mention of these two men meant in that day that the law of our old State was supreme. Money and family influence cut no figure in those honest times. Wish it could be said the same in these days of so much disregard of the sacred ties of human life. In some sections of our county murder has become almost a past time, especially on the Sabbath at church, a thing unheard of and unknown in those happy years that gave Scott county a name we all became proud of. It is a sad reflection to one who has been spared as I have, and who has lived through the blood letting period of our Civil War, and who has lived in states where the law was above men.

The wagon bearing the doomed man from the old jail wended its way slowly down and up to the gallows, Pate nicely dressed and sitting on his coffin. As soon as we crossed Little Moccasin Creek the green woodland set in. The air was fragrant with the wild grapevine bloom, the white capped alders on either side. The sweet mountain wild birds were singing. I seemed to me that truly every prospect was pleasing and only man was vile. That poor fellow seemed to take in every object as he must have realized it to be the last view he would ever have of nature’s peaceful loveliness.

Soon the grim gallows was reached and beside it was an open grave. The prisoner, two divines and the late venerable Dr. Herron ascended the trap door. A guard of a hundred men under the direction of the late Capt. James D. Vermillion stood in a circle around. The mountainsides were covered with humanity; even the trees were loaded with boys (said to have been 5,000 people). Rev. Gaines preached the funeral and Rev. Reuben Steele led in prayer, and they sang. "Roll on, sweet moments, roll on, and "Let the poor pilgrim go home, go home".

Then Pate arose and in a clear voice gave out an old hymn and led the song, the first verse being:

"And am I born to die, To lay this body down? And must my trembling spirit fly Into a world unknown?

Then they handed him a Bible and he read the 121st Psalm.

As he read the first lines he glanced at the steep slope of Clinch Mountain. When had read the chapter he gave a solemn warning to young men, and when the death cap was drawn over his face, as the late Rufus Fugate jumped off the trap door, Pate in a loud voice said: "This is what the whiskey bottle has brought me to." He had requested the sheriff to tap the trap with his hatchet before he cut the rope.

Baxter S. Pate has gone to that great Tribunal, where we all must appear. Godforbid that I shall ever stand before that great Tribunal with the blood of any man on my hands. In the war I tried to do the duty required of me, and I am glad to be able to say in those over three years of horror, to knowledge I never killed a man.

Poor Pate, in his pleading to the young men said, "Oh I would give ten thousand worlds if I could only recall the deed that brought me to this fate."