The semi-weekly messenger. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1897-1908, 1900-05-08
AN OLD LIE


that the old woman Barbara Fritchie,
at Frederick, Maryland, did wave the
american flag and f1aunt it at General
IStonewall Jackson. 1t was shown
years ago that it was pure fiction-aI
Yankee lie. The Chicago Tribune gives
up the story as false. 1t quotes two.
well informed authorities and says:
1T certainly looks as if Barbara Frit-
chic must be given up. Now, who is
the young lady Warner McKinsey,
lgodson of Barbara, says waved the
flag in the faces of the confederates?"
The Quaker poets clarifying lines are
based on a lie, as other things are con-
cerning the south believed in by north
Iern people. The Charleston News and
Courier comments as follows:
1.-The Tribune will be interested to
learn, perhaps, that more than one pet
Iticoated loyalist in Maryland and Penn
%lSylvania waved the sacred emblem
from doors n windows at the confed-
lerates, well knowing that they had
nothing to fear from the grey soldiers,
and McKinsey's young woman was
doubtless of this numbe Another in
Frederick raised her apron and dis
Iplayed a flag worn apron fashion under
it. The chatting she got from some of
the nags in the dusty column was too
much for her, however, and she disap-
peared in haste. Many old confederates
will recall the incident"
General Bradley T. Johnson, a native
of Frederick, and his family residing
there at the time, has written a column
or more in the Baltimore Sun showing
up the falsity of the old silly story
about the old gal and her Haunting flag.
1T is conclusive for he was the first to
take possession of the town when the
lconfederates. advanced. He gives all
1.-THE particulars of the occupation from
first to last. The town was particular
lily loyal to the cause of the oppreSsorS.
The occupation began on 9Th Septem-
Der, 1862, and ended on 10th. He tells
of his exit, the streets his brigade
marched through and many particu-
lars. This shows the animus of the
"loyal" women:
Il rode by one house the doors were
packed with women. There was lolling
Iout of the window an old lady who had
long survived her beauty and her teeth,
looking at the whole ragged, barefoot,
and dirty procession with hate and
IScorn writ all over her ugly counter
ance. AS I came up some one in the
room behind her evidently told her who
I was, n she turned her face to me
and made the most diabolical, grotes-
que, toothless, grimace conceivable, ex-
Ipressive Of her estimate of rebels, and
that particular Frederick rebel espec-
Tally"
General Jackson did not go hat way,
nor did he go by the Fritchie house on
Patrick street. He never was closer
than a square to the house. His route
lis described. General Johnson says:
1.-The point of the fable is tina Jack
son ordered troops to fire a voIley at a
flag Haunted out of a garnet window by
an old woman n then fled from the
scene of his cowardly crime overcome
by remorse. That part certainly is
untrue. Val Ebberts, who lived dag
Ionally across the street from old Bar
bara, and was her nephew, published a
letter years ago in which he said that
she was bedridden al the time and
never saw a rebel nor Haunted a flag.
1 do not believe she ever did. But if
she had waved 200 flags no one in that
army would have molested her, unless
1by 7lDes more or less polished from the
lpr.vates in the ranks-principally less.
General Early was there. He saw
70 big flag anywhere. There were
plenty of candy flags-he called them
toy flags in the hands of children n
lpinned across the bosoms Of their
mothers and grown sisters"
But the old lie will live just as thou
sands of other lies have lived. There
are some people who are so blinded
that they woul rather believe a lie
tina nthe ruth. In Falstaff's day the
world was greatly given to lying as fat
Sir John intimates, n the world has
not improved since in its love Of the
truth.