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| Barbara Frietchie. |
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as did Jefferson Davis, his coadjutor in the monstrous crime; but he soon found to his shame and confusion that the disloyal Marylanders like Bradley Johnson, who had joined the Confederate army, had deceived him by false representations, and that, with the exception of a large rebellious faction in the more Southern slaveholding counties, the people of that State looked upon the gigantic iniquity of the conspirators and their abettors with abhorrence.
He was met with sullen scorn in the form of apparent indifference, and he was soon made to feel that under that passivity there was burning a spirit like that of the venerable and more demonstrative Barbara Frietchie, of Frederick, one of the true heroines of whom history too often fails to make honorable mention.1 Lee lost more men in Maryland by desertion than he gained by his proclamation.
Had there been nothing repulsive in the work to which they were invited, the filthy and wretched condition of Lee's troops would have made the citizens of Maryland scornful of such an “army of liberators.”
McClellan was informed of Lee's movement on the morning of the 3d, and immediately put his troops in motion to meet the threatened peril.
His army was thrown into Maryland north of Washington, and on the 7th,
1 Barbara Frietchie (who died in June, 1864) lived close to a bridge which spans the stream that courses through Frederick. When, in this invasion of Maryland, “Stonewall Jackson” marched through Frederick, his troops passed over that bridge. He had been informed that many National flags were flying in the city, and he gave orders for them all to be hauled down. Patriotic Barbara's was displayed from one of the dormer-windows, seen in the sketch of her house here given, from a drawing made by the writer in September, 1866, in which, just beyond it, the b ridge is seen. Her fla was pulled down. The remainder of the story has been told in the following words of John G. Whittier:--
Up rose old Barbara Frietchie then,
Bowed with her fourscore years and ten ;
Bravest of all in Frederick town,
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 slouched 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;
She leaned far out on the window-sill,
And shook it forth with a royal will.
“Shoot, if you must, this old gray head,
But spare your country's flag,” she said.
A shade of sadness, a blush of shame,
Over the face of the leader came;
The nobler nature within him stirred
To life at that woman's deed and word;
“Who touches a hair of yon gray head
Dies like a dog! March on!” he said.
All day long through Frederick street
Sounded the tread of marching feet.
All day long that free flag tost
Over the heads of the rebel host.
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| Barbara Frietchie's House. |
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