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Sunday, February 7, 2021

Editorial About Tragic Life of Sarah Wyckoff, Feb. 2, 1921

The tragic life and pitiful death of Sarah Wyckoff, who breathed her last at the age of 76 in the State Penitentiary Monday of this week, ought to set to rest completely those who argue that the power to pardon should be abolished in North Carolina.

In the prime of life, at the age of 38, Mrs. Wyckoff was dragged from her little country home in the mountains of Alexander county, locked in jail, hailed before the Judge and jury of her peers and tried for her life. She narrowly escaped hanging. And all the people thought her lucky to get off with a life sentence in the State prison. She was buried behind stone walls in Raleigh and everybody forgot her until one day a man came down to die up in Alexander county and on his death-bed confessed that he, and not Sarah Wyckoff, committed the crime for which the woman was being punished.

Of course, the Governor pardoned her. But it was too late. Sarah Wyckoff was then an old woman. Her near relatives were all dead. She had no friends. She could not bear to face a world without relatives and without friends. She declined to take the proffered hand of mercy extended by the Chief Executive and asked to be permitted to die in her cell.

And so she died. But in her life and in her death she will forever bear mute testimony to the frailty of human agencies in their effort to mete out justice in this world. Juries and Judges do make mistakes. In this case they made a horrible, a tragic, blunder. And that is why the pardoning power must be safeguarded and maintained in North Carolina. Most of the time mistakes of courts are found out in time to be, at least in part, corrected by the official having the power to pardon.

And now Sarah Wykoff is dead. If we were called upon to write her obituary we should say that her life in large measure was a sacrifice to atone for the shortcomings of her fellow men. It is no less a monument to the inherent worth of mankind. Forty-two years she spent behind prison walls because a scoundrel chose to live a life bought by the price of her incarceration. He had committed the crime for which she paid the penalty. For many long years she remained in her prison home because it was the only place in which she felt at home. Now she is dead. Her name is washed in the blood another sprinkled upon it. The memory of her life remains as a heavenly benediction to a restless, often despairing, world. This terrestial globe could well afford to whirl in space for a thousand years if thereby just one such life could be lived. The other world is enriched by the advent of a spirit of such noble character. Sarah Wyckoff lived well.

The world pays high sounding tribute to its spectacular heroes, its men of might deeds. It too often forgets that it is in reality sustained by the courage, unsung, unheralded, of countless heroes of which Sarah Wyckoff was one. She stood at the grave of him to whom she had pledged fidelity for life falsely charged with his murder. She was condemned to forfeit a life’s freedom for the alleged deed. She was born from fatherless, motherless children and hurled into seclusion. Friends, relatives, neighbors, scorned her. She was branded a felon, yet she lacked the murder’s soul. And through all this she lived and waxed strong in spirit. Scores of people worry and fret over trivial troubles. Only slightly harassed, they despair of the world and deem it a failure. Their patience gives way a the injustices of men and the laxity of society. They fling charges of depravity at mankind, and couwardly they acknowledge the evil one as stronger than God. Such persons find a stern rebuke to their pettiness in the life Sarah Wyckoff lived. And so God works through his countless silent heroes to ennoble the race.

From the editorial page of the Winston-Salem Journal, Feb. 2, 1921, Sanford Martin, editor in chief, Clarence Scroggs, city editor.

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