"Barbara Frietchie"—Refutation of Whittier's Myth.
Whittier's famous poem has been several times shown to be founded on a myth; but as it is being continually republished in collections of his poems, and has been introduced into several school readers which are widely circulated, it seems proper that we should place in permanent form the refutation of this slander of "Stonewall" Jackson and the brave men he led:
Letter from General J. A. Early.
Having seen in a recent number of the Dispatch a communication from Frederick, Maryland, to the Baltimore Sun, in relation to a letter from "An ex-Confederate" to the Los Angeles (California) Bulletin, endorsing the authenticity of the oft-repeated story of Barbara Frietchie's flaunting the "old flag" in the faces of General Jackson and his troops, and being fired upon by the General's order, and also an article in the supplement to the Sun of the 24th instant containing two letters from Frederick to disprove the story; and having been appealed to twice to take some notice of it —once when it appeared in a historical magazine published in Philadelphia, I believe; and again when Whittier's poem on the subject appeared in a reader or book containing "choice selections" or something of the kind, designed for use in the schools, I take this occasion to tell the true story of the flag flaunting before our troops as they passed through Frederick, Maryland, in September, 1862.
In the first place, I must give an extract from what the writer in the Sun calls Whittier's "lofty numbers," as follows:
| "On that pleasant morn of the early fall, "When Lee marched over the mountain wall— "Over the mountains winding down, "Forty flags, with their silver stars, "Flapped in the morning wind: the sun "Up rose old Barbara Frietchie then, "Bravest of all in Frederick town, "In her attic-window the staff she set, |
It must be confessed that these are pretty tall figures; especially when it is remembered that General Lee's army crossed the Potomac a short distance above Leesburg, in Loudoun county, and did
