he tells as he has from the land of his birth. It is possible that he may have once been in the Confederate army, but if so I venture to affirm that all the shooting he ever did was with a "long bow." If he heard General Jackson give any such order as that mentioned by him and described in Whittier's poem, or witnessed any firing, by his or any other officer's command, upon a flag in Barbara Frietchie's or any other woman's hand, then he heard and witnessed what was heard and witnessed by no other mortal man. Neither General Jackson nor any other officer in our army was capable of giving such a command.
On the morning that we passed through Frederick, on the expedition for the capture of Harper's Ferry, the two following incidents occurred, one of which I witnessed in person and the other was described to me by an entirely reliable officer of Hays' Louisiana brigade: As my brigade, of Ewell's division, was marching through the town, on the street which connects with the road to Boonsboro', a young girl about ten or eleven years old was standing on the platform in front of a framed wooden house, on the left side of the street as we marched, with a small flag (United States), of the size commonly called candy flags, in her hand, which she was slowly waving while reciting, in a dull, monotonous tone, "Hurrah for the Stars and Stripes! Down with the Stars and Bars!" By her side stood another girl about five or six years old, looking as if she did not know what it all was about, and the girl who was going through the performance seemed to have no heart in the matter, but to be merely going mechanically through a recitation she had been taught. The doors and window-shutters of the house were closed, and not another human being was visible about it. The men, as they passed, laughed and joked pleasantly about the affair, but not a rude or unpleasant remark was made by them. The only indication of a disposition to interfere with the girl was by a one-legged man who had been accompanying one of my regiments on horseback during the campaign. When I got up I found him somewhat excited, and upon my asking him what was the matter, he called my attention to the girl with the flag, and said he had a good mind to get down and take the flag from her. He had evidently taken two or three extra drinks, and I told him he was a fool—to go on and let the girl alone—she could do no harm with her candy-flag; and thereupon he moved on.
The other incident occurred farther on—I think just across the bridge in the western part of the town. As the Louisiana brigade (Hays') was passing, a coarse, dirty-looking woman rushed up a narrow alley with a United States flag, very much soiled, which she thrust out of the alley, when an Irish soldier in the brigade, with his ready Irish wit, made a remark about that "dom'd ould dirty rag," as he called it, which sent her back with her flag in a hurry, and no effort to take the flag from her was made. Upon these two incidents, I presume, are based Mr. Whittier's "lofty numbers" and the disputed claims to the honor and glory of having flaunted the "Union flag" in the faces of Stonewall Jackson's "ragged
