“She leaned far out on the window sill,
And shook it forth with a royal will.”
That there is no semblance of truth in these statements is proved by
numerous witnesses. One of them, a near relative of Dame Barbara,
testifies thus: “As to the waving of the Federal flag in the face of the
rebels by Dame Barbara on the occasion of Stonewall Jackson’s march
through Frederick, truth requires me to say that Stonewall Jackson, with
his troops, did not pass Barbara Frietchie’s residence at all, but
passed up what is popularly called ‘the Mill Alley,’ about three hundred
yards above her residence, then passed due west toward Antietam, and
thus out of the city.” “Again,” continues the witness, “the poem by
Whittier represents the venerable lady (then ninety-six years of age) as
nimbly ascending to her attic window and waving her small Federal flag
defiantly in the face of Stonewall Jackson’s troops. Now what is the
fact? At the period referred to, Dame Barbara was bedridden and
helpless, and had lost the power of locomotion. She could only move as
she was moved, by the help of her attendants.”
So much for one of the best of poets as a chronicler. Mr. T. B. Read, in
describing Sheridan’s ride from Winchester to Cedar Creek, on the
gigantic black horse whose neck, in the language of Job, was clothed
with thunder, and the glory of whose nostrils was terrible, says,—
“——Striking his spurs with a terrible oath,
He dashed down the line ’mid a storm of huzzas;
And the wave of retreat checked its course there, because
The sight of the master compelled it to pause.”
It is a matter of acceptation among military men that the retreat had
been checked, the lines re-formed, and the tide of battle turned by
General Wright before Sheridan’s arrival on the scene of action. All he
had to do was to encourage with cheering words, and to infuse into the
shattered ranks his own sanguine spirit.
Bret Harte undertook to make a hero of John Burns of Gettysburg, who
“stood there heedless of jeer and scoff, calmly picking the rebels off.”
Gettysburg people, who know whereof they speak, say that so far from
Burns playing the hero in the manner indicated, he was driving his cows,
and unwittingly got within the Confederate lines. Realizing his
unpleasant position, he scampered homeward in such haste that he
scratched his face and tore his clothes in the brambles—the nearest
approach to bullet marks of which he could boast.
Even when our poets turn back to earlier periods for inspiration, their
little discrepancies are not beyond danger of exposure. In Mr.
Longfellow’s beautiful “Hymn of the Moravian Nuns of Bethlehem, at the
Consecration of Pulaski’s Banner,” he says,—
“When the dying flame of day
Through the chancel shot its ray,
Far the glimmering tapers shed
Faint light on the cowled head;
And the censer burning swung
Where, before the altar, hung
The blood-red banner, that with prayer
Had been consecrated there.
And the nuns’ sweet hymn was heard the while,
Sung low in the dim, mysterious aisle.”
After this introduction follows the hymn:
“Take thy banner! May it wave,” etc.,
and after the hymn, the couplet:
“The warrior took that banner proud,
And it was his martial cloak and shroud!”
There was no sisterhood, properly speaking, at Bethlehem during the
Revolution. The inmates of the Sisters’ House were under the care of a
Mother Superior, but they were bound by no vows, and were free to leave
if they wished. They abounded in good works, were full of the spirit of
devotion, and had morning and evening prayers in the chapel. But there
was no cowled head in that little chapel, no swinging censer, no altar;
these were not in accord with the Moravian mode of worship. Famous
needlewomen were those good sisters, and they excelled in embroidery.
Pulaski, during a visit to Bethlehem, admired their work, and ordered
for his legion a cavalry guidon of crimson silk. When finished, he paid
for it; it was a commonplace business transaction, with no thought, on
either side, of presentation or consecration. The noble Pole was
mortally wounded at the siege of Savannah and was buried in the Savannah
River. Whether the guidon, miscalled a banner, was used as his shroud,
those who have seen it in the rooms of the Maryland Historical Society
in Baltimore, can testify.
Even the novelists claim indulgence in this sort of license. In that
fanciful story of Bulwer-Lytton, “The Last Days of Pompeii,” for
example, he says (Book v. ch. vi.),—
“The air was now still for a few minutes; the lamp from the gate
streamed out far and clear; the fugitives hurried on—they gained the
gate—they passed by the Roman sentry; the lightning hashed over his
livid face and polished helmet, but his stern features were composed
even in their awe! He remained erect and motionless at his post. That
hour itself had not animated the machine of the ruthless majesty of Rome
into the reasoning and self-acting man. There he stood amid the crashing
elements; he had not received the permission to desert his station and
escape.”