BARBARA FRIETCHIE
[J. L. Underwood.]
Here is a part of the story of the Maryland woman and the Federal flag in the famous poem of John G. Whittier:
“Bravest of all in Fredericktown
She took up the flag the men hauled down;
In her attic window the staff she set
To show that one heart was loyal yet.
Up the street came the rebel tread,
Stonewall Jackson riding ahead:
Under his slouch hat left and right
He glanced; the old flag met his sight.
‘Halt!’ the dust-brown ranks stood fast,
‘Fire!’ Out blazed the rifle blast,
It shivered the window pane and sash,
It rent the banner with seam and gash.
Quick as it fell from the broken staff,
Dame Barbara snatched the silken scarf.”
This is poetry, but it is not history. It is not truth. It does not sound like it. Nobody but men like Whittier, blinded by New England prejudice and steeped in ignorance of Southern people, would for a moment have thought Stonewall Jackson capable of giving an order to fire on a woman. None of the story sounds at all like “Stonewall Jackson’s way.” To their credit the later editions of Whittier’s poems cast a grave doubt on the truth of the story, and now Mr. John McLean, an old next-door neighbor to the genuine Barbara Frietchie, has given to Mr. Smith Clayton, of the Atlanta Journal, the true story showing Whittier’s tale to be nothing but a myth. Mr. Clayton says:
“Coming up to Washington from Richmond the other day I brushed up an acquaintance with a very pleasant, intelligent and, by the way, handsome gentleman, Mr. John McLean, a conductor on the Richmond, Fredericksburg and Washington Railroad. In the course of conversation he mentioned Frederick, Md. I laughed and said:
“Did you ever meet Barbara Frietchie?”
“Why, my dear sir,” he replied, “she lived just across the street from my father’s home.”
“You don’t say so?”
“It’s a fact; and let me tell you, that poem is a ‘fake,’ 303 pure and simple. I was a child during the war, but I’ll give you the truth about Barbara Frietchie as I got it from the lips of my father and mother.”
And then he told me this interesting story:
“Ever been to Frederick?”
“No.”
“Well, just where the turnpike enters the town my father and mother lived in the old homestead. Directly across the way lived Mr. Frietchie. He was a tailor, and a good, clever man and honest citizen. His house had two stories. On the ground, or street floor, was his shop. The family lived up stairs. There was a balcony to the upper story of the house facing the street. It was from that balcony that the flag was waved, but Barbara Frietchie had no more to do with it than you. General Stonewall Jackson, returning from Monocacy, passed through Frederick at the head of his army. He entered the town by the turnpike and marched between the house of Mr. Frietchie and the home of my parents. There was a United States flag in the tailor’s house. His eldest daughter, Mary Quantrell, thinking that the Union army was coming, mistaking Jackson’s men for the Federals, seized this flag, ran out upon the balcony and waved it. Observing her, General Stonewall Jackson, who was riding at the head of his troops, took off his hat, and ordered his men to uncover their heads. They did so, and General Jackson said that he gave the order to uncover because he wanted his men to show proper appreciation of a woman who had the loyalty and patriotism to stand up for her side. Those are the facts. My parents were there. They told me. I tell you. There was no sticking any flag staff in any window. No order by General Jackson to ‘Halt’ and ‘Fire;’ no seizing of the flag and waving it after it had been shot from the staff; no begging General Jackson to shoot anybody’s grey head but to ‘spare the flag of his country’—all of this is described in the poem—but none of it happened. Very funny about Barbara Frietchie being four score and ten.”
“Who was Barbara Frietchie?”
“Why she was the young daughter of Mr. Frietchie—the 304 young sister of Mary Quantrell, who waved the flag—that’s all.”
Mr. McLean told me that he had three brothers in the Federal army. His brother was doorkeeper of the Maryland assembly, and his uncle a member during the stormy sessions held at Frederick, when that body hotly discussed, for many days, the question as to whether Maryland should secede.