"Shoot if you must, this old gray head, But spare your country’s flag"

During the first invasion of the North in September of 1862, Confederate troops passed through the pro-Union town of Frederick, Maryland. It was here that General Robert E. Lee drafted his Special Order 191, which commanded Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson to capture the Union garrison at Harpers Ferry while the rest of the Confederate army continued further north, through the town of Frederick. 

Photo: teaching.msa.maryland.gov

The march through Frederick has been memorialized in the poem The Ballad of Barbara Frietchie by John Greenleaf Whittier. The story goes that in the morning, Union flags decorated the town of Frederick, but by the afternoon, when Stonewall Jackson and his men came through town, only one flag was flying. When Jackson saw the flag, he ordered his men to shoot at it, and in the words of the poet Whittier, Barbara Frietchie responded:

"Shoot if you must, this old gray head,

But spare your country's flag," she said

The nobler nature within him [Jackson] 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 that free flag tost

Over the heads of the rebel host.

Photo: loc.gov

While this is an inspiring story and has been taught in schools, it is, unfortunately, not a true story.

Barbara Frietchie was indeed a real person and she did live in Frederick at the time, but she was not the one who waved the Union flag above the Confederate soldiers. Also, it was not Jackson who rode through town, but rather A.P. Hill and his men. Instead of the elderly Frietchie (or Fritchie) having an altercation about the flag, it was in fact her neighbor Mary Quantrell, a 30 year old woman. After the poem was published in 1863, Quantrell sent Whittier a letter asking him to correct the poem, but the story of a 96 year old woman scolding the famous Confederate officer Stonewall was more dramatic than the real story, and instead, Barbara Frietchie became famous, so much so that on a visit to America in 1943, Winston Churchill recited the entire poem while visiting Frederick. 

Photo: library.brown.edu

Frietchie was a strong Unionist and made her views known, but when Quantrell flew the flag defiantly, Frietchie was not seen in public. Instead, in the days after the Union victory at the Battle of Antietam, Frietchie stood on her porch as Union General Ambrose Burnside and his men passed by and she waved a Union flag for their success. In response, the men cheered her and told her they hoped she lived a long life. Frietchie died that December but she has been immortalized in the Ballad of Barbara Frietchie. 

Photo: goodreads.com